Hi guys,
I’m wondering if anyone can give me some tips on how to get out of bed in the morning, particularly if I haven’t had a full night’s sleep. It’s something I really struggle to do, and now that uni has gone back, I don’t want to be sleeping through classes again, which almost cost me a subject last semester!
Psychological tips are welcomed, but I am wondering if anyone knows some, perhaps more “unorthodox” wake up tips?
All will be appreciated.
We have a talking clock. If I absolutely know I have to get up for a certain time, the talking clock will do it: “Alarm, it’s seven o’clock A.M.” Especially if it’s across the room.
However, I am not looking forward to ‘Alarm, it’s five o’clock A.M.’ in a few weeks when I have to catch an 8:30 flight with 2 small children in tow.
What always worked for my in college was:
an alarm clock across the room, set on the local country station
a hard-to-reach timer on my electric blanket, set to cut power 30 minutes before the alarm goes off.
There is little incentive to stay in a cold bed, and I loathe country music. So, I was up, no problem. A quick stagger to a cold shower, massive amounts of coffee, and I was ready for whatever hell my Biology prof had in store for me that day.
YMMV. 
Not very unorthodox, but – as a news junkie – I’ve found waking up to a news radio station helps me get started in the morning. As with a regular alarm clock, I often wake up a few minutes before it goes off – but instead of dreading a loud, ungodly buzzing sound, I kind of look forward to it.
Honestly, I’ve found that the best way to get up in the morning is to actually have something to look FORWARD to in the morning! Something that makes you WANT to get out of bed, instead of HAVE to get out of bed.
Of course, finding this thing is the hard part. School certainly doesn’t fit that description. But find something to do in the morning that you like, and that will work.
My method: I have a radio alarm set on the highest volume to a station I despise. It has a snooze alarm that I can hit without ever really regaining consciousness. Right next to it I have a wind-up alarm clock with metal bells. That sucker is LOUD, and it is set to go off as I’m hitting the snooze alarm the third time. The idea is that the radio has started me on the journey towards wakefulness, and the bells come in once I’ve been pre-roused a little bit.
Also, I long ago realized that the stress of waking up and scurrying through the morning drill is ameliorated greatly if I give myself just 10 minutes to have a cup of coffee and read the headlines. I spent years in the just-in-time mode, and this one little change has had a huge positive effect.
Works for me.
Cats, or siblings, but the problem with both is that they are unreliable, most of the time, I have to pry my bros and sis out of bed with a crowbar, but on weekends, they run up and down the halls making enough noise to ‘wake’ the dead. So if you need to get up on weekends, get some siblings.
Cats work good too, in the morning, they like to run up and down the hall. My one cat will come running to my door (always closed because cats make poor bed mates) when ever my alarm goes off (a god awful thing that I should have tested in the store but didn’t).
Or if you wanna be While E Coyote about it (assumeing you live someplace other than sask) and the sun rises before you do, you could tie an anvle with a rope overtop of a teeter totter in your room, the anvel to land on one side of the teether totter, and the other side will fling a pan of filleted fish in your general diection. Now run the rope you used to tie the Anvel up with through a pulley, and to the side of the house that gets the sun during the morning. Aim a magnifying glass on the rope, and go to sleep.
When it is time to get up, the magnifying glass will burn a hole in a rope, causing the anvel to fall, and cold fish to land on you and your bed. I think this should be enough to wake you up!!! 
You said you wanted unorthodox.
Really thou, one of my friends set a timer device to turn on a lamp in his room 30 min before he got up. He said it works, I don’t know how.
I know exactly what you mean, Beastal. I have huge problems with this myself.
Asked the same question about a week ago and got some interesting replies:
but am watching your thread for any more helpful hints. The thing in previous thread that worked best for me was the “do not snooze” advice. I still don’t manage to get up early all the time, but when I do it’s when I get up immediately, in one go. If I put it off once for five minutes they inevitably turn into an hour or more. You snooze, you loose. 
This may be taken wrong, but did you ever try going to bed earlier? You said you’re heading back to classes, and I’m sure you spend a good amount of time studying. But you didn’t tell us about the “extra” time you spend. For instance, when I was in college a lot of time was spent at the frat house and bars. I realized, too late, that there are only 24 hours in a day and my profs didn’t care much how I spent them. I was on their schedule.
The only really fail-safe method is to put a loaded mouse-trap beside the alarm clock. Fumble into that sucker once and you’ll never do it again.
Guaranteed.
Drink a lot of water before you go to bed. You would have to be very lazy to stay in bed with a full bladder.
Russell
I have a loud, obnoxious alarm clock with no snooze. It goes on and it can be turned off. The button to turn it off doesn’t work so well. It requires three to four presses (and swearing helps, I’ve found). And if you don’t get it turned off after about a minute, the alarm gets louder and more annoying.
And I keep the alarm across the room, which requires me to get up and hunt for it.
I second the idea about going to bed earlier. I realize it’s difficult for some people who may be in a temporary situation where they’re so busy that 24 hours in a day simply does not give them time to get enough sleep, but torturing yourself with elaborate alarm clocks should be a last resort. If you haven’t yet done everything in your power to get enough sleep, try that first.
It was very helpful for me to finally accept my own limitations; namely, that if the alarm goes off when I have had less than 8 hours of sleep, I will absolutely NOT get out of bed (no matter what I tried to tell myself the night before) unless it’s an emergency (i.e., I’m going to be late for work.) I’ve wanted to start running before work for a long while now, and I finally learned how to do it: go to bed at 9:30. If getting up at 5:45 truly is a priority, I will make going to bed at 9:30 a priority. That means making sacrifices: not having as much time time to surf the internet, watch TV, or read as I would like. Conversely, if I wind up staying up until 11 to do those things, I accept the fact that I am not going to get out of bed until 7.
Acknowledging all this makes life much easier.
I have a 75-watt fluorescent reading light plugged into an electric timer. At 06:00 the light switches on and I’m awake almost instantly. That has been my only alarm since I sold my stereo system and traded my computer speakers for headphones, yet I have never slept later than 07:00 with the lightbulb alarm.
I am very bad at getting up early, which has had a lot of disadvantages both at university and in my job.
For the last three months i have hit on a routine that works very well for me; everyone who knows me has been surprised:
5:30 am wake up by telephone wake-up call. Bathroom call, shave, dress (don’t shower)
5:50 am leave apartment, pick up newspaper
6:00 am take train to city center
6:02 am arrive main station. Walk to public swimming baths.
6:20 am Change, shower
6:35 am Begin swimming (I’ve been astonished how many other regulars, half of them in retirement age, turn up)
7:10 am Shower, change
7:30 am Walk to self-service café
7:45-8:30 am Ample breakfast, with bread rolls, croissants, large cup of coffee, freshly squeezed orange juice, newspaper
8:33 am take bus to work.
8:38 am Arrive at work.
Result: I arrive at work in time, awake, clean, exercised, fed, well-informed and feeling virtuous. 
Circumstances that I ascribe the success of this are:
Thanks for all of the advice guys, I truly appreciate it.
No more “snooze” button, you say? The risk there is, if I just kill the alarm, and don’t hit “snooze”, and I fall back to sleep… I could wake up an hour or two later, revived, refreshed - and having missed my morning lecture.
When I wake up in the morning, I tend to “enjoy” the luxury of snuggling in to my quilt, with my eyes closed, because I feel sleepy. I’ve never done the whole alarm-goes-off-get-straight-up deal. Straight up? I don’t get to enjoy my nice warm bed for even a minute or two?
shudder.
I’ll implement some of these techniques over the coming week, and shall report back.
I like the water idea.
going to bed early is not as important as having a regular schedule IMHO.
you might also try the nutritional supplement melatonin. I wake up a minute before my alarm clock does since I took some of that stuff.
Decide on some invigorating or motivating smell. For a few weeks, once you have woken up fully, take a big sniff and try your best to feel good about being awake. Then, keep a container of the smell by your clock or bed, but make sure you can’t smell it as you sleep. Start taking a big sniff as soon as you are awoken. Hopefull the smell will help get you through that horrible “I would do anything just to go back to sleep” period.
Last week at Gowings (what an Aussie icon that is) I found alarm clocks that are encased in padding so you can throw them across the room when they ring…how cool is that?