A realization I had some time ago: Snoozing your alarm trains your brain to continue sleeping. You are conditioning yourself:
- Trigger: Alarm goes of
- Reaction: Push Snooze
- Reward: Sweet, sweet slumber
I know there was a time when I had no trouble getting out of bed. There had to be! But it’s long gone. It doesn’t matter how much sleep I get. I almost always snooze at least a couple of times. Even though I know these endless 10 minute naps aren’t helping me. Often I feel more groggy than I did before! But what’s my reaction? Snooze one more time. Maybe it’ll get better.
I’ve wasted so much time doing this! And the worst thing is, when I finally get up I feel like shit, because I know that I just wasted another hour. I’m disappointed in myself, because I failed to get up immediately, again. How can I have a happy, productive day, when it starts with a failure in something as basic as getting up?
I’ve failed so many times to stop snoozing endlessly. I’ve used multiple alarms. Put them to hard to reach places. Used an alarm that lights up the room. Nothing worked. I’ve often joked that my sleepy self is a different person from awake self, because I just didn’t seem to have any control over my snooze impulses. Now I know why. I’ve conditioned myself to snooze for years! That’s why I feel like I have no control.
But I do have control! I can get up immediately! I know I do, because I’ve done it. I always get up just in time if there is something important I can’t be late for. I’ll miss my breakfast, have hardly enough time to get dressed, but I will get there in time. I even got up at 4am without an alarm once! Just to be able to play some Unreal Tournament before school (yeah, it’s been a couple of years…).
I know I have the capacity to get up immediately. From today on I will use it. No more snooze! I will train myself to get up immediately. Each time I don’t snooze will make me stronger. Each day I get up right away will make it easier to do so next time. There might be times I cave in, there might me times I fail. But I won’t give up and over time I will succeed. I can do this! And so can you.
Edit: Here are a couple of tips to make the transition easier:
- Ask someone to help you get up (parent, flatmate, significant other)
- Write down why you don’t want to hit snooze and put that on your alarm
- Prepare a reward for getting up immediately
- Physically disable snooze on your alarm
- When you wake up, stay in bed and do Wim Hof’s power breathing (helps me immensely to wake up!)
- Keep a glass of water by your alarm and slam it when you wake up! It helps get you going.
Using a smart alarm or a daylight alarm can help you wake up when you’re more prepared to as well. I use Sleep as Android, and it wakes me up within a 30 minute time window at the point when it detects that I’m most awake. A friend uses a daylight alarm, and he says he likes it a lot.
Speaking of having a friend help to wake you up, my dog will always jump on me when she senses that I’m awake. That really helps me to get up.
Some alarm apps have math problems to solve and other things like that before you can put a snooze up.
The phone can also be left in another room. Just set the volume higher. You need to either go there to put the alarm off or keep lying, annoyed, in your bed 😂
