5 Easy Steps to Get Up Early and Gain Time

There’s a lot of buzz these days about becoming an ‘early riser’ and how that supposedly increases your productivity… I don’t know if the statement is true but I have read pretty conflicting journals on how forcing yourself to get up early can decrease your productivity and such…

So…which side of the debate is correct? The people who think getting up is the most noble thing to do or the ones who think getting up early can decrease productivity?

Well…my answer is both of them.. And experience has shown both of them are correct..

How can that be? Well, I agree getting up early can increase the amount of time you have significantly but our body also seems to have a natural rhythm (hey, isn’t everything in our body pretty much a cycle?) So it makes sense that we have ‘ sleep cycles’ and getting up at different points of the sleep cycle has different effects on our overall productivity..

And Btw, if you want to read up on some of the really cool findings about sleeping, how to sleep less and wake up with more energy..I highly recommend picking up this book I recommended last month..it’s quite fascinating..

Anyhow…all that stuff aside..Here’s what I want to share with you today…

Do you remember the blog post where I said I have a HORRIBLE time getting up? And how my sleep schedule was costing me a lot of time?

Well, fast forward a couple months….I’ve tried tons of different strategies for sleep structuring and getting up early…only to get frustrated!

I swear I tried every strategy to the T but they don’t seem to work for me…I must be a really lazy person or a really deep sleeper or something like that eh?

Well, turns out…sleep patterns and getting up early means a ton of different things for lots of different people..And if love your sleep the way I do or find it extremely hard to get up in the morning..here’s 5 things I’ve learned that can cut your learning curve and help you wake up earlier (or on time atleast)…

1. Understand that it’s not a quick solution: Guess what? Your sleep pattern has been with you for a long long time…And it’s going to be challenging to change it. Can you change it though? Absolutely! It’s like recovering from a really bad jet lag…can you do it? Yes..will it take some time? Yes!

And the methods I’ll share with you here aren’t some quick tips or hacks or anything like that…they are things that work at the root of the problem to produce long term results (they way they did for me)…And I think that’s the most important stuff..don’t you?

2. Know your sleep cycle: Fancy terms? Not at all…I know it sounds strange, weird or complex when you hear it first but it really breaks down to this: You want to think back to the days when you felt amazing or highly productive after getting up..The days when you were full of energy and felt very well rested..

Having a hard time coming up with one? So did I! And here’s what you do when that happens:

a. Think of the days you got up a little easily than “normal” days…was it a different time? Did you go to bed at a different time? What was different?

b. If that doesn’t help..experiment with a couple different wake up times. Even 30 minutes difference can make a HUGE impact on your productivity. Let me give you an example:

I used to get up at 7:00 (in fact that’s what I did all last year)…And guess what? I always had a hard time getting up..I was cranky and generally not a very pleasant person to be with early in the morning

But…my mood would turn up and I’d get my energy back at around 9.

So I decided to get up at 9 on a weekend and guess what? I felt amazing! I had more energy than ever before, got up in a good mood and had a clear head…

Now 9 is good…but unfortunately, I don’t have the luxury of getting up whenever I wish…So I experimented with a couple different times and came up with one that works perfect for me. And that time happens to be 5:45…I get almost the same effects as getting up at 9 and I can still get everywhere on time.

So, the deal is..you’ll have to do some experiments and figure out the time that works best for you..

(I told you this wasn’t a quick process that stops working in couple weeks…But it’s worth the time and effort you take now)

3. How are you getting up? Is someone else waking you up in the morning? Stop that right away! If someone else is waking you up (or trying to)…chances are that person is sick of it and you’re probably sick of them yelling at you in the morning while you’re in the middle of your lovely dreamland..

Yeah, I understand! Waking people up can create tons of stress in your relationship with them…seriously! So, drop that right away…

Also…having someone yell at you or having a nasty alarm go off in the morning can start your day off on a bad note and increase your stress level..

Try a good alarm for a much safer route..

4. Try a series of alarms : Hard time hearing your alarm? Do you end up hitting the snooze button too much? Try a couple different alarms that go off within a couple minutes of each others. I currently use 3 different ones that go off within 15 minutes and I get up on the 3rd one…every day.

It gives me some sort of perceived control over the alarm (I hate having to get up just because some little device thinks I should get up and starts screaming early in the morning :|) But most importantly, this stops you from going into a new deep sleep cycle.

And the most important benefit of this is the habit…the habit of getting up at the 3rd alarm every time. It’s easier to set that habit…than having to jump off everytime the stupid alarm rings. (With this, you can ignore your alarm twice atleast!)

5. One Step at a time: If you are used to getting up at 8:30 everyday don’t start cutting off 2 hours right off the back. Yeah I know getting 2 hours extra a day is highly tempting but it can screw up your natural sleep cycle and make you incredibly unproductive.

What you want to remember here is the habit we set in the previous step. Once you have the habit of getting up on the 3rd alarm everytime..it gets easier to do that even when you move the times ahead by 30 or so minutes. I recommend move up 30 minutes every week until you’re at your desired wake up time…It seems to be the range that works best for most people.

And think about it…30 min a day isn’t bad..that’s 15 hours saved every month! And if you’re into fitness and healthy eating..that’s enough time to make yourself a healthy breakfast and lunch…

The question is..what are you going to do with the time you save? Because saving time is one thing..using it properly is an entirely different story…

How would you use the extra amount of time you gain by getting up a little earlier each day?

Popularity: 36% [?]

Odesk.com: Top 5 Reasons Why You Should Give it a Try

Before I start the review…here’s a quick question for you..

Wouldn’t it be nice to get up at 11 AM on a weekend, check your email account and then feel like you’ve been incredibly productive while you slept?

..I certainly love the feeling! It’s excellent especially after a long day working on unrelated things… I really do love outsourcing and the time zone difference. Getting up in the morning to see what’s been happening to make me money while I slept is as good as it gets

So you love the idea of outsourcing and have read tons about how outsourcing can save you tons of time, stress and headaches… the main question then is how do you get started?

There’s 3 options as I see it..

1. Contact freelancers yourself
2. Go to a outsourcing platform and post a request for a bid
3. Ask people you know for referrals..

While number 1 and 3 are great ways to do it…today’s topic is number 2..

There are tons and tons of these sites out there that connect buyers with providers and help you find someone to do something for you like designing your website or writing your resume etc..

Some of the most popular ones include elance.com, rentacoder.com, getafreelancer.com and guru.com…and of course oDesk.com

oDesk is a fairly “new” service and I love it! If you do any sort of outsourcing or have been thinking of trying out outsourcing check out oDesk…I absolutely love the service!

And here’s the top 5 things I love about it…

1. oDesk lets providers showcase their abilities and help them stand out with tests etc - As a freelancer you definitely want to stand out from the crowd and showcase all your skills… Now, as a buyer you want to find the people who have the skill-set you’re looking for… And oDesk makes that incredibly easy by letting providers take tests to prove their skills..

That’s especially good when you don’t get to “see” potential employees or see them work infront of you..

2. oDesk is much more than a hiring place - Again, I love this! I love the fact that oDesk makes managing teams so much easier. For example, when you hire someone for a hourly task…odesk will automatically calculate the number of hours they’ve worked for you and take the money out of your account without YOU having to do that work..

3. You get to “see” progress - Alright, this isn’t a feature I use a lot but if you do hire someone hourly you can see screenshots of their screen and figure out what they’ve been doing. I think I’ve used the feature about twice but again, it’s good to know that the people I’ve hired weren’t playing Soltaire while they claimed to be working for me..

4. The “Hire” Screen saves time - I love the Hire Screen and especially the fact that I can preview the cover letters. This is a big plus…it saves me time from having to click everyone’s name  and look at their comments. I can easily look at their coverletters and decide if I even want to look at their profiles.

Now for the number one reason…

I know what you’re thinking all the techy bells and whistles are good but….what about the providers..are they top notch?

And here’s my experience: I’ve loved most of the providers I’ve worked with through oDesk. I found them highly qualified and professional.

Of course choosing the right provider is a lot of work but I found that there’s more of these high quality providers out there on Odesk!

Give it a shot! I think you’ll love the service (and please do let me know what you think of it if you decide to try it out)

Popularity: 39% [?]

New ‘Twitter’ Site for your Business (and How to Increase productivity with it)

Wouldn’t it be nice to know exactly what everyone involved in ALL of your projects is up to? And, how would you organize that information?

Well, here’s a pretty cool web 2.0 service that can help you keep tabs on what everyone’s doing (and what they are not doing) and of course to coordinate activities and fix schedule based on that…

Yammer.com - “Twitter” type site for business

Here’s a couple ways to use this one for better productivity..

1. Check up on stuff that people aren’t doing… So you got person A to do a couple things for you…they’re off doing it and will sumbit a report to you next week…That’s all well and fine but wouldn’t it make sense to see if they’re doing something wrong, missing something? So you can correct the problem faster and stop wasting time due to mis-communication?

2. Coordinating too many projects? No worries! Keep up with the members in your team so you know exactly what to do next… Think about it…you’re working on 3 different projects with 3 different groups…you start working on project A because to you it’s the most important thing….But…team B is having slight issues and can’t deliver on time…. Now, when you are done your part for the project…you get the “news” about the problem …team B calls in to say everything’s done and ready to go…

Here’s your problem: The stuff you worked on now has to be delayed
The stuff that could’ve been done now..can’t be done because you haven’t done your part yet..

Sound familiar? Coordinating team work was never an easy task and this is where most “teams” seem to waste too much of their time…

And that’s where I see the promises of Yammer…in facilitating short to the point updates for team members to work together more efficiently..

3. Keeping everyone on the same page

4. Organization: If you work with more than 2 people and have any sort of team management or project co-ordination role…I know how though it is to keep tabs of what everyone is doing…especially if you do this for more than 2 projects at the same time.. So being able to get a quick overview is extremely helpful : )

Something else — How about Yammer for Students?

I think this is a good area of development for sites like Twitter and Yammer…think about university students who work in tons of teams on various different projects..

I remember doing tons of that..in fact, we even had a course on project management and team management in first year engineering but…even with that team management is pretty hard. You always get people who work at different paces, who’re passionate about different parts of a project and you’re sitting there scratching your head trying to figure out how to pull it all together and hand in the project!

At least that’s what engineering is like, I can’t speak for all faculties but I do think something like this would catch on in that world.

Anyhow…back to the main thing…

Here’s the link, test drive it with your team and see what it does for you.

I’ll be using it with my team for the next couple days and let you know how it goes!

Yammer.com - “Twitter” type site for business

And in case you’re wondering Yammer launched on Sep 8 08 at TechCrunch50

Popularity: 46% [?]