The early bird gets to work on time: How jet lag turned me into a morning person

“I was cosplaying as a morning person and I loved it. I finally understood why early risers seemed a little smug about their leisurely sunrise routines.”

I entered the office this morning at 8.55am, five minutes before my 9.00am start time. If you’re a well-adjusted adult with a healthy sleep routine, this won’t be remarkable to you in any way; it’s probably your norm to arrive at work on time or early. And good on you! It’s also probably normal for you to have an hour or two to yourself prior to work. I’m sure you eat a leisurely breakfast, get ready at a glacial pace and walk at a relaxed speed to your car, tram, train or bus. Again, I’m impressed.

Until very recently, this way of living was entirely foreign to me. I’ve always had trouble sleeping and would categorise myself as a card-carrying night owl. Staying up late, getting minimal sleep and snoozing my alarm multiple times was my norm. This meant I was almost always leaving myself a measly 15-minute window to frantically make myself look presentable before work. I would never eat breakfast and would hardly ever pack a lunch, and sometimes – and I’m loathe to admit this on a public platform – I would Uber to work, despite living only a 15-minute walk away.

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I constantly felt like a failure. Why did I have such a complete inability to be on time? Why couldn’t I be like those smoothie-drinking TikTok girlies with their ruthlessly efficient morning routines? To mask these feelings of guilt and shame, I basically became an anti-morning person. And to a certain extent, our preoccupation with morning routines is a bit deranged (if I read about one more CEO who wakes up at 3.45am, I’m going to lose it). Some people just aren’t wired to wake up early, but the unfortunate reality is that the majority of us are forced to work within the confines of a nine-to-five schedule.

Waking up late was mentally, spiritually and, most pertinently considering we’re in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis, financially destroying me (believe me, all those four-minute Uber rides and cafe lunches add up). I knew something had to change, but how do you undo a lifetime of poor sleeping habits and rewire a completely fucked body clock? Jetlag, that’s how.

The jetlag effect

I was in the lucky position to recently travel overseas for a six-week holiday full of pasta, sun, cheap European cigarettes and an abundance of romance novels. I’m well aware an extended trip to Europe is not something everyone is able to do, especially given the current economic climate. So with that in mind, I’m not framing my experience with jetlag as a ‘hack’ – this one weird trick doctors don’t want you to know is that you just need to travel to Europe if you want to entirely change your sleep routine!!! – but more a delightful after-effect. And maybe if you’re currently on holiday or have travel in the works and are also in desperate need of changing your sleep routine, it might be worth trying. 

Post-trip, I knew I needed to get into a healthy routine before I started back at work a few days later, so I went to bed at 8pm (unheard of for me) and woke up naturally at 5.00am (absolutely unheard of for me). Unsure what to do with myself at such an ungodly hour, I went for an hour-long walk. If you’re a morning person you already know this, but there is something so serene about that time of day. I had the discombobulating experience of realising I’d been missing out; I had retrograde FOMO for all the sunrises and early morning walks I’d eschewed in favour of snoozing my alarm six times in a row. 

Once I arrived home from my walk, I had the peculiar sensation of having too much time on my hands. It being a Sunday, I usually wouldn’t have been awake and functioning until at least 10am. Instead of twiddling my thumbs (or more realistically, spending hours on TikTok), I did three loads of washing, unpacked my suitcase and cleaned my room. My chores for the day were complete, and all before 9am.

I was cosplaying as a morning person and I loved it. I finally understood why early risers seemed a little smug about their leisurely sunrise routines. I continued getting up early for the following two weeks, and even when the jetlag had pretty much subsided I found that getting up earlier was not only easier, but it was something I craved. Curious if other people had used jetlag to permanently reset their body clocks, I took to Google. Surprisingly, there isn’t much writing on the subject. The top result is from a writer called Sean Ogle for some type of digital nomad-esque blog entry titled ‘How To Get Over Jetlag (and Why You Shouldn’t Want To)’. 

“If you’re open to it, jet lag is the ultimate way to become a morning person,” it read (a statement I found myself vigorously agreeing with). “Something I’ve learned about myself, is I don’t do well with incremental change. Just go to the gym one more day a week… Try just having one drink a day… Wake up just 10 minutes earlier…  That’s all fine for a couple of days, but if I want to create significant change, I need bold moves and strict parameters,” Sean wrote.

Bold moves and strict parameters? Now this I could relate to. I’m an all-or-nothing person; I’m either an avid fan of something or not at all interested. The same thing happened when I got into running a few years back. I went from being entirely disinterested in exercise to practically spruiking the Nike Rub Club app’s benefits to anyone foolish enough to engage me in running chat.

Regretfully, something similar has happened with mornings. You’d think I’m the first person who’s ever discovered the bliss that comes with rising early and having ample time to prep for your day. Have I become an insufferable morning person? Almost certainly so, but I’ll tackle that issue at a later date. When you consider how terribly engrained my poor sleep habits were, and how insurmountable my inability to get up on time felt, it’s a wonder I was able to implement such a dramatic change.

Moreover, it’s served as a welcome reminder that you’re never too far gone; no matter how inconceivable it might seem, change is always possible. Before I start sounding like a raving mad life coach or a dollar store motivational poster, I’ll wrap this up. The takeaway? If jetlag is a tool people can use to transition from perennially tired and exhausted night owls to smug little early birds, then I’d be a fool not to share my experience.

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