7 Things Not To Do When You First Wake Up

Drink coffee

If you think you can't function until you've downed a cup of caffeine, then go ahead and think again.

It turns out that your body naturally produces higher amounts of the stress hormone called cortisol, which regulates energy, between 8 am and 9 am. This means that for most people, the best time to drink coffee is after 9:30 am.

If you regularly down a cup before then, your body will start adjusting by producing less of the cortisol in the early morning, which means you'll be creating the problem you fear.

Hit the snooze button

You need to resist the temptation to push that snooze button. 

Sleep expert Timothy Morgenthaler told Business Insider, "Most sleep specialists think that snooze alarms are not a good idea."

This is because, if you fall back into a deep sleep after you hit the snooze button, you're entering a sleep cycle you won't be able to finish, resulting in you waking up groggy instead of refreshed.

Leave your bed unmade

According to Charles Duhigg, author of "The Power of Habit" and "Smarter Faster Better," making your bed can result in increased productivity throughout the rest of the day.

Duhigg wrote that making your bed is a "keystone habit" that can ignite "chain reactions that help other good habits take hold."

Check email

Julie Morgenstern, author of the book "Never Check Email in the Morning," told The Huffington Post, that if you start your morning with checking your emails then, "you'll never recover."

"Those requests and those interruptions and those unexpected surprises and those reminders and problems are endless," she said. "There is very little that cannot wait a minimum of 59 minutes."

Stay curled up

Harvard psychologist Amy Cuddy says that stretching out wide is a great way to build confidence as you launch into your day.

Cuddy has said that the people who wake up with their arms in a V "are super happy, like annoyingly happy."

She also said there's some preliminary evidence that people who wake up in a fetal ball "wake up much more stressed out."

Get ready in the dark

It's hard to wake up and hit by bright lights, but getting ready in the dark isn't helping your body adjust. 

Natalie Dautovich of the National Sleep Foundation told The Huffington Post that getting ready in the dark could signal to your body that it's still nighttime and could make you feel even worse when waking up.

Play it by ear

It's best to incorporate your morning activities them into some kind of routine. 

Scientists say that when we us our willpower trying to decide what to do next in the morning, we have less left later in the day when we need to concentrate on work.

So let your brain run on automatic in the morning and conserve those mental resources for when they're really needed.