Anybody have any tips for waking up early? I find unless I have something very important (usually work) I'll go straight back to sleep after my alarm or seeing the time whilst still in a haze.

Everyones different, but maybe the most important thing is routine. This stuff is all stuff you've heard before & so simple, but you really need to practise it consistently for it to work.

The main point is to try going to bed at the same time and getting up at the same time regardless of whether its the weekend or whether you have anything important to do. I'm now in my bed at 10pm every night & up at 5.30 (almost) every morning. Admittedly at weekends I sometimes stay up till around midnight and don't get up until 8/9 but this is an improvement from going to bed at 2/3am and not getting up until lunch time. Consistency and habit is the key - you'll need to do this for 3/4 weeks before it sinks in then it just becomes habit. The only thing that messes this up is if your out late on the piss and have a hang over the next day.

Usual stuff here you'll have heard a million times:

• Wind down an hour before bed. No PC or tablet, dim the lights, try and not watch TV - read a book or meditate instead.
• Change into your bed time clothes (PJs or boxers, whatever) slightly earlier - it can help your brain associate with the fact its getting close to bed time.
• Your bed is for 2 things: sleeping & shagging. If your not doing either of those things, don't use it. Even lounging on it for periods of time during the day isn't great.
• Have it in your head then when bed time comes: its bed time. Don't stay up late and watch that film, or surf the night or look up that crap on Wikipedia. Its a curfew - when bed time comes, anything else will have to wait until tomorrow morning.
  
• Set 2 alarms, make sure for one of them you have to get out of bed and cross the room to go switch it off.
• When its time to get up, don't snooze - get up. Don't spring out of bed though, just take your time. Have a shower straight away and a blast of total cold water if you can to wake you up. then get dressed, grab a coffee and your breakfast. By this time an hour or so should have passed, the shower & coffee will have woken you up, and if your dressed you'll have forgoton how early it is or how tired you were, plus its hardly worth going back to bed now after doing all these things so you'd be as well get on with it.

There's loads of other things no doubt & everyones different, but i had bad sleeping and insomnia for years and these helped me, mostly the stuff in red. With the hours i work I had no choice but to get a handle on this or I'd be completely fucked. The main thing is commiting to it and getting the consistency, try dedicating 1 month to sorting this out.

There's this other really effective method - it's called stop being a bitch & just get up

You're counselling experience shines through.

As Dan said essentially it's a case of suck it up.

If you can do it for 2 weeks then your sleep pattern will change and everyday past about 5 days starts to get easier (this comes from somebody who has worked changing shifts).

A few tricks I find that help

• Organize early appointments for those 2 weeks (gym, morning coffee, groceries) so you have to get up
• Put your alarm the other side of the room or somewhere you physically have to remove yourself from bed to stop it
• Get to bed early, put the phone/whatever away. If necessary take melatonin, Q science sleep spray or something light to help the first few days
• Don't eat or snack too late, the energy boost will keep you up

2 weeks into my new job & I've been starting at 9am every day so far but this will change slightly on a week by week basis.

I set my alarm for 7:30am. Then have the second one set for 7:50 just to get an extra snooze. When that goes off I'll either stretch for a while on bed or sit on the side of it checking my notifications for a bit but not longer than 8am. Then jump in the shower & I'm out by 10 or quarter past. Usually I make a coffee at this point that I can drink whilst having a shave.

having done this I could leave at 10 minutes to 9 since my office is only a 7 minute walk away. However from next week we will have log-in details & it'll be required that we are at our desk logged in by 9, so I'd best start leaving 20 minutes early rather than 10.

I'm already so used to getting up that yesterday I woke with a hangover & pounding headache at 9:02am & thought FUCK IVE SLEPT IN! & proceeded to throw on my office threads... It was during the panic I realized it was Saturday, & all was once again good in my life.