The alarm rings and the hand goes towards the phone almost by itself. Email, WhatsApp, Instagram, maybe two pieces of news happy enough to make us miss sleep. Yet in the first minutes after waking up the brain is really going through a particular phase: the sleep inertiasleep inertia, during which vigilance and cognitive performance have yet to return fully operational. Brain activity gradually changes as we move from sleep to wakefulness, as electroencephalographic studies of awakening also show.
This does not make the brain “more programmable” nor does it turn the first ten minutes into the BIOS of our personality. However, there are some very simple things we can do to better accompany waking up, help the circadian clock and stop starting every morning chasing a notification.
1. Leave your phone alone for a few minutes
There is no need to attribute mysterious “dopamine spikes” to Instagram. Just pay attention. Notifications are stimuli capable of interrupting what we are doing and an experiment published on Journal of Experimental Psychology showed that even receiving one, without physically taking the phone, can disturb a performance that requires concentration.
Starting the day by going directly from the alarm clock to messages, emails and feeds means above all immediately paying attention to external requests. The phone does a great job of distracting us without needing to turn it into an narcotic substance.
2. Look for natural light
Opening the curtains, moving closer to a window, or even better, going outdoors is probably one of the most solid tips on the entire list. The light that reaches the eyes is one of the main signals used by our circadian clock to understand when it is day and regulate sleep and wakefulness.
Experiments on exposure to morning light observed effects on sleepiness, alertness and circadian phase. In a study of college students, a week of bright light in the morning was also associated with improvements in subsequent sleep.
The famous obligation to do it “within ten minutes of waking up”, however, is not a biological deadline complete with a timer. Light intensity, time, season and chronotype matter a lot.
3. Drink a glass of water if you feel thirsty
After several hours without drinking, water is a pretty sensible choice. It is more difficult to argue that we all automatically wake up 1-2% dehydrated and with the brain already slowed down.
A meta-analysis of 33 studies found a small worsening of cognitive performance with dehydration, most evident above 2% loss of body mass and in some functions such as attention and task performance. Other work has found much less clear-cut effects.
So water yes, especially if we wake up thirsty. The glass on the bedside table can remain a glass on the bedside table: it doesn’t have to become a potion to “activate the brain”.
4. Move your body, even very little
Here you don’t need leggings, a gym at six in the morning and that incomprehensible enthusiasm of people who run smiling at dawn. It only takes a few minutes. In an experiment conducted on young adults, five minutes of walking at a freely chosen intensity was associated with an improvement in a cognitive test. More generally, research on acute physical activity shows possible effects on attention and executive functions.
Taking a few steps, stretching, moving your arms and legs serves above all to tell the body, with a fairly unequivocal message, that the night is over.
5. Choose only one priority
“Set an intention” sounds dangerously close to a phrase printed on a motivational mug, yet there is a concrete cognitive phenomenon behind it.
Our goals direct attention. Some experiments on goal-guided attention have shown that stimuli related to what we are looking for can more easily conquer our attentional resources.
It doesn’t mean that by thinking hard about a promotion we’ll start finding some hidden behind streetlights. Deciding on a priority serves above all to narrow down an enormous field: among everything that could claim us today, we at least know which thing comes first.
6. Don’t start the day with an avalanche of negative input
The negativity biasthe greater sensitivity towards some negative or threatening information, is a phenomenon that has been studied for some time. Less solid is the social idea according to which in the morning this mechanism would suddenly become very powerful and bad news read at 7.15am would be destined to ruin the following hours.
It remains a very practical choice: if as soon as we wake up we open the news, work emails, family discussions and comments on social media at the same time, we are introducing an enormous amount of stimuli while we are still in the transition phase from sleep. The worst news, moreover, has a reassuring characteristic: it waits.
7. Give yourself an easy first thing to finish
Make the bed, put a cup away, write three lines, prepare what you need to go out. The “small victory” doesn’t need the usual explanation that every completed task automatically gives us a rush of dopamine.
The motivation and reward systems of the brain are far more complex. However, there is an interesting psychological element: closing a task has value for us. Experiments published in 2023 showed that people may prefer clearly completeable tasks even when the expected reward is lower.
Starting with something attainable can therefore give structure to the morning. The perfectly made bed remains optional: no neuron will come to check the corners of the sheets.
8. Give yourself a few minutes to really wake up
This is perhaps the least Instagrammable rule: we don’t necessarily have to be efficient thirty seconds after the alarm. Sleep inertia exists precisely because it takes the brain some time to transition to full alertness.
And even the much demonized button snooze deserves a less summary trial. A study published in Journal of Sleep Research involved 1,732 people and then observed 31 regular snooze users in the laboratory. In tests, thirty minutes of intermittent awakenings resulted in approximately six minutes of lost sleep, and immediately after waking up, cognitive performance was better or essentially unchanged compared to waking up immediately. The researchers found no clear effects on mood, morning sleepiness, or cortisol response.
It doesn’t mean setting eight alarms every morning after getting five hours of sleep. It means that a gradual awakening is not necessarily a bad habit, especially for those who already tend to use snooze and struggle in the early stages of the morning.
In the end, these eight habits are much less neuroscientific-spectacular than some carousels promise: a little light, water when needed, some movement, fewer notifications, a priority, a simple task and the material time to wake up. No brain reprogramming before breakfast. Which, considering the time, is already good news.
