I’ve been much busier lately, and find myself staying up later, and more tired than usual. As a result, even though I’d like to get up at around 5:30 AM, I find myself snoozing both alarm clocks until a little after six. I’m not late for work, but I have to rush around like crazy, which starts my day on a bad note. I’ve tried moving both alarms further away from the bed, but I just sort of get up in my sleep, bring them closer to the bed and snooze them.
Any ideas on how to force myself to get up out of bed?
It kind of makes me long for the days when the rooster would wake you up. I have a hard time imagining the farmer pounding on the head of the rooster, expecting him not to crow for another 10 minutes.
I rotate the alarms. My body gets used to a buzzer after a while and learns to ignore it. So I switch to the radio. Then when I get used to that, I switch back to the buzzer.
I find that the annoying buzzer-type, jolt-you-out-of-bed alarms wake me up about as well as a bucket of cold water. I whack the snooze button and pull the covers back over my head in spite.
So instead I set my alarm to a radio station that captures my interest. When the alarm sounds, the volume comes up slowly, for a gentler & kinder wake-up. There is usually some morning news event that captures my interest so that I am less likely to hit the snooze.
Don’t eat anything after 7 or 8pm. Give your body some “wake-up” cues: Are you a coffee drinker? Set the Mister Coffee to start brewing 5 minutes before the alarm goes off. Put a throw rug on the side of the bed if the floor is too cold. Get a cat or dog with a cold wet nose that wants to be fed at 5:30 every morning. Set the TV to come on 10 minutes after the alarm clock. If you don’t get sun through your bedroom windows, plug a lamp into a timer so that it comes on at 5:30.
But I find that none of this works if I don’t get my 8 hours.
You could always go with a Rube Goldberg sort of method. Get a small electric motor, put it on a timer, and have it pull off your covers and douse you with water.
When I absolutely had to wake up on time (I was deathly afraid of sleeping through the bar exam), here’s what I did: get an outlet timer, plug the vacuum into it, and put the vacuum near the bed. That, I promise, will wake you up. And, if your vacuum is one of those with a light on it, you get not one but two wake-up cues.
The best way to force yourself out of bed is to go to bed at a regular time and get enough sleep. For me, this means that I have to go to bed early even on weekends. It’s a pain, but otherwise it takes me until Wednesday or Thursday to get back into a routine where I get up when the alarm goes off.
I discovered one method that worked for me by accident. When they took my morning wake-up radio station off the air, I couldn’t find another one that I liked. So I switched to using the buzzer to wake me, and then immediately (before my eyes are even open) grabbing the remote and turning on the TV. Once the TV is on, I gradually wake up, and I never fall back asleep. I think this is because a) my eyes respond to the light from the TV, and b) I pay attention to the TV (unlike the music from the radio, which sometimes lulled me back to sleep).
You might give the TV method a shot and see if it works for you. Turning on both a light and a radio station that holds your interest as soon as the alarm goes off might work similarly.
I do just the opposite, I set the station to something I cannot stand. I have a horrible time waking up and wish your method worked for me Attrayant, instead I seem to incorporate whatever I was pleasantly listening to right into my dreams. :eek: Try as I might, “There’s A Tear In My Beer” is impossible to sleep through, especially played at an elevated volume.
I listen to talk radio. My alarm has two settings, so I set one for 5:30a (which I get out of bed, turn off, and go back to bed for half an hour) then the next one goes off at 6am.
I kind of lie there, dozing, then when I hear them play Clark Howard’s tip of the day I know it 6:20 and I HAVE to get up.
I am not a morning person, so it’s very difficult to get me going in the morning.
Well, as somebody who has slept through 5 (yes FIVE) alarms, some set to buzzers, some set to radio stations at top volume. my beeper, the telephone, somebody leaving a message on my answering machine asking where the heck I am, and the various noises of the rest of the world getting up, I have to say that getting enough sleep is the only way.
Psychobunny (who unfortunately sometimes has to be on call all night and is SO greatful that her hairdresser’s receptionist called her at 9:10 the other morning to change her appointment since she had to be at work at 9 and therefore was only 45 minutes late).
BTW, am I the only person who knows that after 5 times the sleep function on most alarms gives up and refuses to go off any more?
When you get into bed at night, spend a few minutes telling youreself that you really need to get up on time.
The most drastic measure is to drink lots of water before going to sleep. It’s tricky though, if you drink too much you’ll just get earlier than necessary and go to the bathroom, then go back to sleep.
