Pre-Order Your Hangover Breakfast Tonight

If you live in a relatively urban area, before you head out for a late night, order yourself breakfast. So apps let you order several days ahead from most restaurants or you could also call. Make a simple hangover order—bacon egg and cheese bagel, or breakfast tacos, or corned beef and hash browns—either takeout or delivery. And a coffee. This will solve two problems.

1. It will lessen your regret over last night’s actions

You will be mad at Past You for drinking so much, but you will be thankful to Past You for thinking ahead re: food. If you’ve ever filled the coffee machine the night before, so it only needs one push of a button before you crawl into the shower, then you know this kind of self-gratitude.

2. It will force you to get up.

For this you will curse and thank Past You. Here is one of Lifehacker’s core foundational beliefs: it is wise to give yourself enforced deadlines. And now you are giving yourself a deadline to make yourself a tiny bit presentable—at least presentable enough to answer the door. If you order pickup, you’ve forced yourself to get out of the house, lest your breakfast get cold.

Be kind to Future You, and do not order your food for an unrealistic morning hour. Do choose a time that prevents you from slipping into Saturday dissipation, the morning that becomes afternoon, the shower that never occurs, the precious hours spent in bed on Facebook when you meant to open the Kindle app.

Do not order an aspirational breakfast. Order something you will be eager to receive, something you will drag yourself out of the house for. If you actually like healthy breakfasts after a late night, order one! If you do not, do not. Hangover self-care is more of a harm reduction approach.

Make your hangover breakfast order at the bar or the party, in front of others, during the first round. It’s a light icebreaker, they’ll advise your order or tell you where you have to order your breakfast tacos from, and they’ll find this breakfast trick much more impressive than it is.