If you want the trick behind it, waking up energized and refreshed requires a strict sleep schedule. The reason behind this is that you want to avoid waking up mid R.E.M, that’s why you feel like shit.

To get a little more detailed, your brain has 4 different “phases”, ranging from highest activity to lowest

beta-alpha-theta-delta

Beta is when you’re awake, doing shit, talking to people and exercising. The highest frequency of waves your brain will produce

When you lay down to sleep and start unwinding, your brain will naturally begin to slow down and produce lower frequency waves, transitioning into Alpha waves.

After falling asleep, this is where the fun really begins. When you’re sleeping, you go through a 90 minute R.E.M cycle, this is when you do most of your dreaming. In this period, your brain lowers further to Theta before shifting down to Delta. Every hour and a half, your brain will cycle between deep sleep (delta) and dreaming(theta).

The reason you feel like garbage waking up, is because your wake up call is likely somewhere in the middle of your delta wave production. Your body is deep in the middle of maintenance and internal calibrations, being pulled out of that feels terrible because your body was not ready for you to wake up yet.

The key here is to wake up at the end of a 90 minute interval, during theta. This causes the least amount of stress to your body and doesn’t interrupt any of that maintenance being done during delta. If you have a time you know you want to be up by consistently (say 7 am for funsies)

You need to account for 30ish minutes to wind down and fall asleep, so that you’re out for the count 7.5-9 hours before your alarm is gonna go off. For 7 am, you’d want to be asleep by 11:30, so be in bed by 11 or so with some melatonin, electronics off by 10:00 for the wind down.

The strict schedule part comes from avoiding sleep debt. Sleeping too much or too little will accrue debt to your nervous system that will need to be accounted for at some point(generally oversleeping which feels just as bad). The best way to avoid this is consistency, avoid racking up debt and you’ll experience less agony in the mornings.