I have tried that before and found it doesn't work for me unless I have something really forcing me to get up early (classes did the job, work does not). I may just not be viewing my incentive to get up early correctly. On the other hand, my brain is bad at managing motivation in the early morning, especially if I didn't get enough sleep. It's a lot easier to see the importance in "go to sleep now" than in "wake up now", because the former happens when I'm already awake.
Also, I can (and regularly do) stay up well past the point that I'm tired enough to go to sleep, but not so tired that I want to go to sleep. The difference is usually 2-3 hours, and the net effect is that my sleep schedule creeps forward over time to the extent that, if there's nothing regulating it, I cycle through the full 24 hour period in about two weeks.
The new year is a popular Schelling point to make changes to your activities, habits, and/or thought processes. This is often done via the New Year's Resolution. One standard piece of advice for NYRs is to make them achievable, since they are often too ambitious and people end up giving up and potentially falling victim to the what-the-hell effect.
Wikipedia has a nice list of popular NYRs. For ideas from other LW contributors, here are some previous NYRs discussed on LW:
(If one of these were from you, perhaps you'd like to discuss whether they were successful or not?)
In the spirit of collaboration, I propose that we discuss any NYRs we have made or are thinking of making for 2015 in this thread.