3 Small Decisions That Make You Feel Incredible: Do This Every Morning After Waking Up

KEYPOINTS

• 01

  Knowing isn't the same as doing

  Mel opens with the gap between knowing what you should do (exercise, update your resume, return a hard phone call) and actually doing it. Lack of motivation is one reason people get stuck. The other, she argues, is false confidence about how a decision will affect you.

• 02

  False confidence makes you think the rules don't apply to you

  Mel describes it as believing that time will stretch, your body will cope or people will change just for you, against common sense and evidence. She links it to what psychologists call the overconfidence effect, a well-established cognitive bias. Her rule of thumb: easy decisions make your life hard, and hard decisions make life easier.

• 03

  It's easier to spot in other people

  Examples: the friend sure a partner who treats her badly will change, the boss adding a huge project due in a month with no new hires, the sister planning to lose 30 pounds without changing her diet or exercise. Mel's own version is believing she can clean out her closet in 30 minutes over lunch, then ending up with a giant pile on the floor.

• 04

  Decision one: get up when the alarm rings

  Picture person A, who hits snooze for an hour, and person B, who throws off the sheets and starts the day. Mel asks which one you'd hire, date or bet $1,000 on. She used to set her alarm at 6:00 for a 7:00 wake-up so she could snooze four or five times, telling herself it was how a non-morning person had to wake up.

• 05

  Mel cites research on staying in bed

  She describes a University of South Carolina study, which she says was published in a sleep medicine journal and used sleep trackers, monitors, blood pressure tracking and blood work. As she reports it, people made to stay in bed longer had fivefold higher depression and anxiety and twice the inflammation of those who got straight up.

• 06

  Snoozing adds up to about a month a year

  Mel cites a University of Notre Dame study published in the journal Sleep, which she calls the biggest study of snoozing, with participants wearing trackers for over a year. In her reading, the average snoozer spent 26.93 minutes snoozing each morning, about 164 hours a year or more than four work weeks.

• 07

  Decision two: natural light before artificial light

  Mel says 89% of people look at their phone within 10 minutes of waking. Instead, turn off the alarm, leave the phone behind, and get outside for even a minute or two: sit on the porch, walk around the block, or even stick your head out a window.

• 08

  Two reasons morning light works

  First, attention: opening your phone lets influencers, headlines and work emergencies jump to the front of your mind before you've decided what matters. Second, circadian rhythm: experts on the show have explained that early natural light signals your internal clock to wake up, which also sets up better sleep that night.

• 09

  Decision three: water before coffee, and delay caffeine

  Mel used to start with a huge, candy-sweet coffee on an empty stomach, then sweat, feel anxious and shaky, and feel sick in exercise class. She says caffeine on an empty stomach spikes cortisol, which can worsen stress and anxiety. Now she drinks water first and waits about 90 minutes before coffee.

• 10

  The adenosine explanation, via Dr. Amy Shah

  As Shah explained on an earlier episode, adenosine is a sleepiness chemical that builds up all day and clears during sleep, with some left on waking. It takes an hour or two to drop. Caffeine blocks its receptors, so coffee right away keeps adenosine from clearing, and when the caffeine wears off you slump and reach for more.