Let’s face it, not everyone is a morning person. You don’t spring out of bed in the morning wide-eyed and ready to face the day. When you’re having a not-so-great mental health day it can seem even harder to get out of bed. Your bed seems like the best place to spend the day – you can hide under the covers and not face the day at all.

If you’re having a day like that, perhaps you should try our “60-minute rule.”

Begin by setting your alarm for an hour before you’re supposed to wake up. So that means if you have to be up for 7am – set it for 6am– giving you 60 minutes to lay there or sleep. Once 7am rolls around, you can’t stay in bed for a minute longer, it’s time to get up.

Get out of bed and tell yourself you don’t have to be productive, but you have to get up. Make a deal with yourself, and if you don’t feel better in an hour, you can head back to bed. But at the very least, give yourself 60 minutes to be up.

Because you’re up, you should take a shower and make yourself breakfast. Chances are after that you’ll be on a roll and head out of the house because you’re up and about.

The 60-minute rule isn’t always going to work, but you should definitely give it a go when you don’t have the ambition to roll out of bed. Then at least you can say you tried – and there’s no shame in that.