getting out of bed in the morning - tips and tricks

i had to get up extra early this morning and dragged myself out of bed and ate 2 petit ecolier cookies and a glass of orange juice. this at least got me to the shower. but this is a daily struggle and it just gets worse and worse.

put alarm in other room

does that really work? or do you just get better at ignoring it?

coffeemaker with timer synced to alarm in other room.

Louis Theroux is quoted as saying that his foolproof way of getting up in the morning is to prepare a cup of coffee and two caffeine tablets next to his bedside table. Setting his alarm a half hour early, he'll wake up, down the tablets with the coffee before returning to slumber. Within half an hour one is said to leap up from bed with all the energy of a thirsty Siberian tiger.

I put my alarm on the other side of the room so I have to get out of bed to turn it off, but it only worked for a bit, now I just get up and turn off while in half-asleep zombie mode then just get back into bed again.

i don't drink coffee anymore. is there a such thing as a timed bacon cooker?

i set 2 alarms daily. today i hit them both for 2 hours. i need help with this.

This is not really advice, but I've found that the best way to do it, is to just do it. Sometimes I think I am sleepy because I've not rested enough and that I *need* more sleep, but when I just get up and go I feel OK.

Part of just doing it is getting in a habit and realizing that being rushed and late feels worse than getting up. You can just start by telling yourself - OK, Monday and Tuesday I promise I will get up 20 minutes before I need to, and then make it as important as if you had a plane to catch or an interview scheduled.

Putting the alarm across the room never worked for me.

Putting coffee on a timer is a great idea too.

i think someone would need to pour the coffee on my head cos i just do not like coffee more than sleeping

and coffee on an empty stomach is just ughhhhhhhh for me

I don't mean coffee as a reward for getting up, but as a convenience.

Other things that help me:

-Doing as much of my morning routine at night as I can
--setting out an entire outfit, right down to socks
--Shaving
--putting outgoing mail, trash by the front door
--preparing lunch, snacks

-Planning out my morning in my head as I lie down. I think, OK, I will do the usual (shower, etc) but tomorrow I want a sausage sandwich from Dunkin' Donuts, so I need to take a bus instead of train.

putting alarm in a different room only works if you have housemates, i should have said.

they'll get you up quick enough.

not to be a pill but you probably need to go to bed earlier the night before.

The planning in your head works well in lieu of the actual doing, if you happen not to actually do it. So if I'm going to the gym and my clothes are still drying, and I will think -- OK, get up, be sure to remember to pack work clothes in gym bag, fill water bottle, drink protein shake.

the nights when i've just said fuck it and dropped off around 10pm, surprise! the next day i got up early enough to shower, shave, have breakfast, check the news... somehow i can't do this consistently, tho.

i went to bed at 11 last night! and needed to get up at 7. it honestly doesn't matter, i'll always want to keep sleeping.

My problem isn't nec that I'm too tired to stir, it's that I resent having to get up on my employer's schedule and fight with other commuters to get around. I fear my day.

i always have a large glass of water before bed, then when i get up i'm not dehydrated, also the urge to pee is a good incentive to get up.

^yes what laurel said. i can get out of bed on the weekends, when it's not someone else's schedule i have to abide

(actually that is not really true either. i definitely slept in to 1:30 saturday and it was GLORIOUS)

Yeah, I have several tall glasses of herbal tea at night and I always have to get up to pee in the AM. That plus 45 mins of snooze is the best solution I've come up with so far. Besides getting a different life where I don't resent my day, of course.

the water thing works cept it makes me get up at 3 am to pee. then i get into a really good sleep and don't get up in the morning.

It kills me to get up at 8.30 on weekdays, but I don't have any problem getting up at 8.30 most weekends. Fucked up.

There's probably an optimal amount of water consumption for each of us based on our daily habits. We should experiment until we find out how many ounces of water, on average, wakes us up just before the alarm goes off.

i always seem to be mid dream when it's time to get up, and it wants to keep going. sometimes i'll have a dream that i'm paralyzed and CAN'T move, even though i can, but maybe it is my subconscious plotting to make me think i can't and need to go on sleeping.

i don't drink coffee anymore. is there a such thing as a timed bacon cooker?

http://l.yimg.com/img.tv.yahoo.com/tv/us/img/site/75/01/0000007501_20060920143802.jpg

jesse is right about preparing. since i now have to get up at what i consider an uncivilized time, i get my gym bag packed and lunch made the night before and check the weather so that i can plan an outfit. that's the easy part, though. the most important thing is mustering the brute willpower to force yourself out of bed. what helps me is not using snooze/sleep functions on the alarm. when it goes off, i quickly get up and proceed straight to the shower and by the time i'm fully conscious i'm well on the way to being ready.

Hmmmm actually bell that suggests to me that maybe you're trying to wake up in a bad part of yr sleep cycle...it could be that you're sleeping TOO LONG, not too little, if it puts you back into deep sleep and/or your body is still producing sleep hormones instead of alertness ones. I will try to read up on this stuff.

i went to bed at 11 last night! and needed to get up at 7. it honestly doesn't matter, i'll always want to keep sleeping.

11 isn't terribly early to some people (who aren't me). and you might need more than 8 hrs of sleep, like if you have an existing sleep deficit. and some people think we naturally sleep in 1.5 hr REM cycles, so if you go beyond 7.5 your body may naturally want to get to 9.

anyway, the actual answer here is to remember that your obligation to be somewhere/do something is more important than your comfort at that particular moment.

sigh. i really miss being able to show up at 11. it was my ideal, in that it gave me time to sleep off a late night but also allowed me to fit in gym and errands before getting to the office if i felt motivated. it was a great feeling to know that chores were out of the way and the rest of the day would be mine.

wake up everyday at seven for my office job, the horror of being on the dole and having to go and live with my parents again is usually enough to get me out of bed.

i am really good at getting all freaked and waking up 20 min before alarm and then getting into a really good sleep just as it starts to go off. i've also been having difficulty with the falling asleep at night lately, which has made the getting up way hard.

my sleep cycles are all messed up, i think. i won't have dreams if i drink before sleeping, or take a sleep aid, but if i don't they are always terrifying! but i still don't want to wake up from them. this morning when i pressed snooze i was dreaming i was a cockroach lady giving birth to thousand of larvae in a bank (?!) and i STILL wanted to keep sleeping.

It's much easier for me to get up at 6 or 7 to be at work at 8 or 9 than it ever was to get up at 9 to be at work at 10:45. Weird.

Things that have worked for me:

1) having an alarm clock w/ no snooze option, set for exactly the time I need to wake up w/ just enough stretching in bed time before must be in the shower time.

2) dawn machine, set for full dawn 5 minutes after the alarm time, w/ a full spectrum bulb in it, pointed so it's pretty bright on my face (but not directly in my eyes)

3) drinking enough water so have to pee first thing, also mild caffeine addiction so a cup of tea sounds really really good.

4) Cat which demands feeding by loud, persistent, plaintive meowing, starting about the time the dawn machine starts to creep the light up. Right now, we can't keep them away from the bed, so they are persistently meowing in my face while standing on my hair. This is hard to ignore.

There's probably an optimal amount of water consumption for each of us based on our daily habits.

On Saturday night I went to sleep holding my pint of water and woke up when I completely drenched myself and half the bed when it tipped over :(

dawn machine sounds rad.

i find that if i wake up within a half an hour of the alarm going off that it's much, much easier to just get up rather than doze off again. it kind of sucks to be up earlier than you need, but use the extra time on the other end to have your morning beverage in a cafe instead of gulping it on the train.

i'm thinking of putting the alarm clock in the the bathroom. that way, when i shut it off, i can put cold water on my face :D

my sleep cycles are all messed up, i think. i won't have dreams if i drink before sleeping, or take a sleep aid, but if i don't they are always terrifying! but i still don't want to wake up from them. this morning when i pressed snooze i was dreaming i was a cockroach lady giving birth to thousand of larvae in a bank (?!) and i STILL wanted to keep sleeping.

-- bell_labs, Monday, 1 October 2007 16:34

i used to have some really bizarre nightmares as a kid, usually after watching horror films, natch. don't really remember my dreams, or they are so vague as to be of no interest at all.

Apparently you can train youself to get up, by pretending to go to bed in the evening - brush teeth, put on pyjamas, set alarm to go off in 2 mins, get into bed and close eyes... then leap up when alarm goes off, get dressed, etc. Do this four or five times in a row, every day for a week or two.

I have yet to try this.

By the way, I absolutely adore my new alarm clock--it projects the time on the wall in a non-anoying brightness, and the buzzer slowly slowly fades in.

Has anyone tried the alarm clock that runs away from you? I personally think I'd stomp that thing dead the first morning.

There's also an alarm clock that has four puzzle pieces in the top. When the alarm goes off the pieces are fired into the air - you have to find the pieces and fit them back in the top before the alarm can be shut off.
I keep thinking this is a good idea because at the moment I'm able to get out of bed, switch off three separate alarm clocks, and then fall back into bed, all without actually waking up. On the other hand my room is full of crap so I'd never find the pieces, and also I'd probably jam the mechanism with a screwdriver just to shut it off.

Yeah, that sounds horrible.

On Saturday night I went to sleep holding my pint of water and woke up when I completely drenched myself and half the bed when it tipped over :(

I did the same thing with a can of Grolsh on friday when i fell asleep watching the sopranos. Momentarily I thought i'd had an accident and my housemates are still not convinced I didn't. Dampness is not a great waking up device.

I disagree, it worked a fucking treat for me - not only was I wide awake but I was instantly aware of what had happened, rather than the usual still-dreaming paranoia that takes several minutes to wear off when I'm unexpectedly woken up.

i also had a vivid dream last night that i was hearing someone trying to break into my house - or at least i hope it was a dream :/

The only thing that has ever worked for me is actually being interested in and optimistic about the coming day. Anything else is just a trick.

Yeah right, like that's going to happen.

Animals are very, very good for this. The latest I'm ever able to sleep is maybe 8. They have no snooze button.

xxpost I mean, even in my worst moods, I'm rarely late for work, so I guess fear is also a good motivator. But it's a nasty mood to start the day in.

THIS IS WHY I NEED A DOG. my cat just wants me to stay in bed and sleep all day.
xpost

though of course, then i'd have to get up a half hour earlier to go walk them.

don't leave any food down for your cat at night, and then it will be all "HEY! HEY LADY! I'M STARVING HERE!" at 7 am.

i hate my job and so i dont go to bed until late, because i know the sooner i go to bed the sooner i'll be at work again.

yeah my cat will bug me all night if i don't feed her and i won't get any sleep at all! if she runs out of food at three am or six am i am getting the tap on the nose with the one claw out.

The best alarm clock I've ever had is my (now 5 year old) daughter. She is an early riser and she's really persistent. Also, she thinks of weird ways to make waking up interesting, such as insisting that we sing "Simple Gifts" as she drags me out of bed.

gff otm

anytime i've gone to bed at a reasonable hour (10pm), I'm up easily and without complaint at like 6am, and it's wonderful. tough to manage if all your friends are night owls, and unwilling to socialize on that kind of schedule, tho

you need a device that rolls out one cat food pellet per minute until 6:55 am!

Once I elimnated late-night socializing on weekdays, sleep schedules became much more regular (as in not difficult to get up) and I felt much better. Now though I don't really like late-night socializing on the weekend either. I feel like shit if I don't go to bed by 10pm.

Alarm across the room = yes, just creates awesome zombie states. Plus the annoyance of waking up two hours after you were supposed to be at work and screaming "it's NOT MY FAULT! I don't even REMEMBER turning it off!" (This is especially embarrassing for me, since I rarely have to be at work before noon.)

Bell, you should try to figure out how your sleep cycles are timed! The one thing that actually worked for me was noticing that I'd wake up spontaneously about 5/6 hours after going to sleep -- so I adjusted everything so that I'd be trying to wake up at that point. For a while I was happily out of bed before my alarm even went off; it just required a little catch-up sleep on the weekends. I fell off the plan somehow, but I'm reinstigating it.

i do the alarm-on-the-other-side-of-the-room thing also (radio, highest volume - standard alarm noise doesn't do anything for me). my alarm is also on my computer table, so i sit down in front of my laptop and stare at the screen until i can bring myself to function normally

a little catch-up sleep on the weekends

oh, I do a LOT of this nowadays.

When I was younger I would tune the radio alarm to right-wing talk radio, which would wake me with a steaming youthful rage. Then I became elderly and whatnot, and would just sigh and go back to sleep.

timed bacon cooker

"...instead he felt the bed tilt up slowly on its side--he began to roll, startled at first, in the direction of the wall, but when he reached the wall its drapery gave way, and sliding two yards farther down a fleecy incline he plumped gently into water the same temperature as his body.

He looked about him. The runway or rollway on which he had arrived had folded gently back into place. He had been projected into another chamber and was sitting in a sunken bath with his head just above the level of the floor. All about him, lining the walls of the room and the sides and bottom of the bath itself, was a blue aquarium, and gazing through the crystal surface on which he sat, he could see fish swimming among amber lights and even gliding without curiosity past his outstretched toes, which were separated from them only by the thickness of the crystal. From overhead, sunlight came down through sea-green glass.

I suppose, sir, that you'd like hot rosewater and soapsuds this morning sir--and perhaps cold salt water to finish."

F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Diamond as Big as The Ritz

The only think I remember from my college psych class is that you can't catch up on sleep. You may feel more rested on the weekends, but you're not really catching up. (I do the same thing by the way.) Anyway, my professor studied sleep and he had lots of cool stuff to say about it, but that's the only thing I can remember.

also, gff and rw OTM, going to bed at a decent hour helps.

There is an alarm clock out there, somewhere, that attaches to the ceiling above your bed, and hangs down by a long cord. Every time you hit snooze, it retracts a bit up the cord, until eventually you'd have to stand up in bed to get at it.

(The only problem is that I get the feeling I'd enter into some kind of brinksmanship with this thing: you get me standing on my bed swatting at an alarm, and I'll find it very easy to just flop back down and go back to sleep. The only way it can win is if it gets so high up that I have to balance a stepladder on the mattress or something.)

http://i24.tinypic.com/1zzjl2c.jpg

LEARN TO ACT, KID

Louis Theroux is quoted as saying that his foolproof way of getting up in the morning is to prepare a cup of coffee and two caffeine tablets next to his bedside table. Setting his alarm a half hour early, he'll wake up, down the tablets with the coffee before returning to slumber. Within half an hour one is said to leap up from bed with all the energy of a thirsty Siberian tiger.

-- the next grozart, Monday, 1 October 2007 14:48 (2 hours ago)

there's NO WAY this is healthy.

max r OTM ... get a job you actually like!!

get a job you actually like!! starts at noon

fixed!

jobs that start at noon exist! maybe you just can't do mornings.

i also found it was a lot easier once i came up with morning routines i actually enjoyed. like i get to drive through a state park on the way to work and i like making coffee ... so i bought an awesome coffee maker and figured out how much time it takes to get through the state park, so now i find myself getting up just to make that awesome coffee and drive calmly through the state park with my coffee

if i don't have anything to do in the morning (days off when i don't have plans) i totally sleep in

get a job you actually like!! starts at noon

In my case, that would be the same thing. There's a Pet Shop Boys' song called "Left To My Own Devices", which basically maps out my ideal workday, starting with "I get out of bed at half past ten".

they exist, but they usually aren't the kind that give you health insurance

you could always pay for health insurance, and whenever you feel poor, just remind yourself that you're paying for the beauty of sleeping in until noon!

like, i wonder what's your motivation for getting up one hour earlier? kenan is right, if there's no *reason* for you to get up, no authentic motivation, like if you're just doing it because you "think you should do it because it's more responsible / healthier / etc" then you're never going to be able to do it, and tricks like making yourself need to pee or whatever are just going to make you more miserable.

therapists charge $100/hr for this kind of advice, btw

Alarm call: http://www.wakerupper.com/ (US only)

at least outside the cold season, it's usually nicer outside earlier in the morning than later. sometimes even in the cold season too.

I don't want a job that starts at noon. I used to think that I wasn't a "morning person," because I like to stay up late, but in all honesty I get way more done before noon than I ever do after. I like to come in and plug away at shit all morning, and chill a little in the last couple-three hours of the day.

i have a job that starts at noon. i used to wake up at 7am when mrs F wakes up, drift back to sleep, wake up again when she leaves at 8, drift back to sleep, wake up at 8.30 and think, hmm, should get up, drift back to sleep ... repeat this for a bit until, say, 10am, at which point i'd go FUCK FUCK FUCK if only i'd got up earlier i could have done vaguely useful stuff, or listened to music, or read a bloody book or something that wasn't just lying there giving it unnecessary Zs.

every night i'd go to bed thinking, MUST GET UP TOMORROW MORNING. i didn't often manage it, because i am naturally a bed-happy dude.

however: now i'm back at university part-time, with 9am lectures (and still the noon start at work), i have to be up at 7am. and somehow -- as jesse says above -- i'm JUST DOING IT. even with a FAP-induced mild hangover this morning ... okay, it was 7.15 when i finally hauled myself from under the duvet, but i was still at the bus stop by five to eight. and you know what? i'm absolutely loving it. mornings ROCK. i've always known this. it's just that without a reason to get up, i ... well, won't.

mrs fiendish is working away during the week right now; i'm not sure how well it's all going to work when she's back, because i don't think two of us will be able to get ready in the same not-massive space in an hour. hmm. still: one to worry about anon.

jesse really spectacularly OTM, though, about a) preparation and b) just biting the bullet.

oh yeh: and leaving the flat at 8am and not getting back till 9pm means i'm happily knackered, so want to get to bed reasonably early (which, for me, is midnight). the novelty of this new routine might wear off, but i sincerely hope not ...

even though it was abject misery sometimes, getting up at 5am for ski patrolling was actually sort of great. esp for driving up into the mountains.

being up before the rest of the world means you can do things at precisely the pace you want to do them, which is v v important for things like reading or coffee-ing.

Umm yeah dudes I have a job that usually starts at noon; it makes zero difference; you just do all the exact same stuff 3 hours later than you normally would.

A job that started at noon and ended at five, then maybe we'd get somewhere.

sleep with someone so dire that you feel compelled to get the hell out of bed

it makes zero difference

For me, it always DID make a difference... I can't say why, exactly. Maybe something to do with what RW said, about your hours in relation to the rest of the world. Getting up at 10 doesn't FEEL the same as getting up at 6 or 7. It doesn't feel like morning.

Except on Sunday, in which case getting up at 10 means HOORAY you finally got some serious sleep.

i like getting up early b/c i am so so slow in the morning, it takes me until 10-11 am to feel fully awake

kenan's right.

if i get up at 10am, it's very obvious to me that the rest of the world has been up and at 'em for a few hours. i know it's psychological, but i immediately feel put upon and behind schedule. like, shiiiiit, i've blown three productive hours already! but if i'm up at 5am, then slowly making breakfast and leisurely reading seems like no big deal. you can do loads of stuff and it's like 6.30am, which is still earlier than most of the world.

this applies to long drives as well: if you're out and on the road by 7am, you're golden. regardless of when you leave, the hours before lunch are basically free.

(i woke up at 11am today, btw, and feel like i've wasted the day because of it....like Mr Que, it takes me a while to get going, so right now it's 1pm and i'm just leaving to get a coffee)

Weird: I think I find it easier to get out of bed when it feels like 6 or 7, probably because I associate it with important things like flight-catching and critical meetings. There's no glory or interest in getting up at 10.

This possibly depends on how much you have to do with your evenings: for me, starting work at noon means getting home after 8, so by the time I've had dinner and run errands and stuff it's 10:30, and then I'll wind up working or reading until 3 or 4. (Efforts to switch things up so that my errand / working / reading time sits BEFORE work have failed, because, umm, I have trouble getting up in the morning.)

I think anything that becomes the "norm" for me is going to pall eventually -- I love getting up at like 4.30am to leave on a trip, but resent the 7.30 alarm every single time it goes off.

nabisco lives in the city that never sleeps, tho. Maybe 10 a.m. does feel like 5 a.m. there.

i do like when it's dark when you get up, though--makes it feel like something special's going on

"Ride on time" on the radio helped this morning, unfortunately I can't arrange for Clyde 1 to play it at quarter to seven every weekday morning.

Classic FM played "Also sprach Zarathustra" a few weeks ago, that was a triumphant amble to the bathroom.

haha

my sister used to hit snooze for like 2.5 hrs every day
i don't understand this practice

nabisco otm re: that kid, wau

Mind over Mattress is a waking-up mantra that used to work for me. Once I got to be 16 it kind of wore off.

my sister used to hit snooze for like 2.5 hrs every day

oh, I hate myself when I do this, and I'm not alone in bed, two people hate me. Never for more than three snoozes, though. And then only if I'm near comatose.

and IF I'm not alone etc.

I have learned from my boyfriend (who slept in until 2:30 pm the other day!!! (and has slept through classes 4-5 times)) that the Nintendo DS alarm is not an effective waking system. I got him a For Real atomic alarm clock yesterday and I am hoping he wakes up in a decent fashion today (I get up at 7:13 a.m. and he gets up at around 11 a.m. usually so I can't be like, 'JOhn, get up! Maybe I should start giving him wake-up calls from work).

I also find it easier somehow if I set the clock for like 7:13 or 8:22 instead of just 7:30 or 8:30. It's like, I had this theory that drivers would be more likely to follow the speed limit if it was 73 mph instead of 75: it's a more specific number and therefore maybe more demanding. If I set it at 7:30, it's like, "oh I got a half an hour, maybe I'll drift off a bit" (and never wake up for 2 hours). IF it is 7:23, it's such a nebulous and weird time I feel more need to obey it (also lets in a few more minutes for stretching and staring at my ceiling and/or dog (dog is not on ceiling btw)).

It goes without saying, but these things are pretty effective:

http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/5732/pnuemoniabeatsiu4.jpg

beeps alarm

Those things have a lot more demands than an alarm clock, and they don't play Coast to Coast AM while you drift to sleep.

Oh hey, she's pretty cute, huh.

Cheeks actually wider than forehead = high road to adorability.

i'm realistic enough about the fact that i'm not a morning person to just set my alarm as late as possible while leaving time for the absolute essentials:
1. showering
2. getting to work on time

i know my day will suck if either of those conditions aren't met, so that's motivation enough to get up. i use two alarms but i've never used snooze (early advice from my dad, i think).

Ah, Pleasant Plains, but one of those has started sleeping later and playing with my clock radio during the day so that some mornings it is tuned to soothing static instead of rousing morning music.

omg beeps!
is there ebay auction for this item?

i wake up each morning b/c i live in a quarry patrolled by rock-eating monsters with whips

Oh I take showers the night before, too, so I don't have to take so long between waking up and heading wherever I need to go at a certain time.

i made that kid! xxxxposts

There's also an alarm clock that has four puzzle pieces in the top. When the alarm goes off the pieces are fired into the air - you have to find the pieces and fit them back in the top before the alarm can be shut off.
I keep thinking this is

god i loved that game
but would die stress-related death if it were my alarm clock

Again, in my house, a beeps-like device would put the puzzle back the night before with a piece missing, making disarming the alarm impossible.

K, put it in one of these:

http://www.havahart.com/store/Assets/product_images/9730.jpg

I don't know about that, Laurel, but we now have the cats going in one of these
http://www.thegreenhead.com/imgs/litter-robot-1.jpg

that looks like some kind of cat centrifuge.

omg

Those things are pretty sweet! And no reports yet of their starting to move with the cat inside and breaking its little leg in the clump depository. We can trust robots to handle our cats = we are one step closer to trusting them with our children.

I tried to work up a Flight of The Conchords number about the catbox being dead, but failed miserably.

DANGER, WILL ROBINSON DANGER, WILL ROBINSON

Well that takes care of Christmas for mom.

ohman wtf space shuttles n shit, the litter robot is the technology we really need to put our cash resources into
i wonder if they make it in large size b/c it seems i can only own giagantor cats

I don't know about that, Laurel, but we now have the cats going in one of these

I could see our cats using that litter pod, except their asses would be sticking out of the portal.

Yeah, so far they haven't totally got the orientation right- one cat goes in well-presented, but the other goes in breech.

hah my old roomie's cat used to perch on the litter box the wrong way and shit onto the floor. i was convinced he did it on purpose to be annoying.

i have tried setting alarm early to accommodate for snooze-hitting. this ends disastrously most days. kind of setting yourself up for failure, i guess. meanwhile, i'm still up at 12:48 am. it's funny, grimly said long days put him to bed early, but i am the opposite. i leave at 830 or 930 most days and get home around 1015 or 1030. i am usually exhausted by the time i leave to go home but somewhere on the walk from the train to my house i perk up and then my brain is in overdrive and i really need to spend a while winding down (or doing work!).

jesse and deej really otm here. max r, too. the only time i can really wake up is when i'm excited for a football game at noon or if i wanna listen to a new cd or something.
i have no tips, tho, as i'm 7 minutes late to my 10 AM nearly every single day.

The thing that works for me is to actually get up earlier and do something I want to do before I have to get ready for work. I have so much more motivation to get up and read or work on my writing than I do to work my shit job.

god i loved that game
but would die stress-related death if it were my alarm clock

When I was a kid I had that game as well. I didn't think they were still available, what with the prospect of eye injury. Maybe that's how the puzzle alarm clock works? A jigsaw piece in eye means that last thing you're thinking about is going back to sleep.

xpost x 15

JUST GET AS FAR AWAY FROM THE BED AS YOU POSSIBLY CAN

GET RIGHT OUT OF THE BED

1. set clock incorrectly (later than accurate is key). do not look, that would be cheating.
2. set alarm way too early
3. hit snooze button until panic moment occurs
4. repeat process every night.

my daily routine for many years. no joke.

well apparently jackhammers seem to work

My mum, as a teenager, destroyed one alarm clock a week by throwing it against a wall and then returning to blissful sleep. I have the problem of waking up two minutes before any alarm I do set, which for you narcoleptics is probably not a problem...

I have developed amazing powers of alarm ignoring over the years.

Also if I'm tired enough, my subconscious will take over completely to prevent having to wake up. In high school, when mom came up to wake my brother and I up, I, on more than one occasion, sat up, opened my eyes, told her there was a teacher's institute, made small talk, and went back to sleep. I have no recollection of these events.

Nick Drake's Bryter Later is the very, very best alarm album in my experience, but only usable for a week at a time at most. An awesome week, though.

I once fell asleep to Suicide's first album and Frankie Teardrop woke me up somewhat abruptly, maybe I should try that as an alarm clock.

i once fell asleep listening to "closer". woke up towards the end of the first side, absolutely fucking terrified and feeling totally dislocated, like i was the last man on earth. wouldn't recommend it.

I have the problem of waking up two minutes before any alarm I do set

ha, i do this. and then lie there going TWO MORE MINUTES! TWO MORE MINUTES! QUICK, BRAIN, GO BACK TO SLEEP SO YOU CAN ENJOY ... <click> ... "and coming up after the news, james naughtie being a dick, as usual."

i've been recently trying to learn more about the phases of sleep to try and see if i can help myself sleep better

loads of stuff about REM and slow-wave sleep and Radiohead

apparently there's this UBERMAN sleep pattern which is supposed to enable one to function perfectly on 3 hours of sleep a day.

Yes, well, Harold Bloom is one of those fellows that needs very little sleep, apparently.
But, I don't know, he doesn't make it look very appealing:
http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/features/bloom040223_4_175.jpg

I'm pretty rubbish at getting up, mostly because I keep going to bed too late. I often set the alarm too early so I can hit snooze a few times, but it's just a thoroughly terrible idea. This thread was timely, actually, as I overslept for work for the first time yesterday (got in 15 mins too late.)
Tried the alarm in the other room trick this morning, and it worked like a charm! I haven't had a nice, calm morning like today's in too long, so it really hit the spot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uberman%27s_sleep_schedule

This guy's blog about it is pretty good:
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/

Said it gave him a whole new perspective on the constant passing of time, instead of the kind of stop-start experience that we all have.

Uberman's sleep schedule is a form of polyphasic sleeping, in which sleepers take 20 minute naps every 4 hours throughout the day

I can totally do this, just supplement it with an eight hour sleep at night and that would be my ideal schedule right there.

:)

have a child

i'd have one if someone would let me make one with them

i kind of want to try this uberman thing

The problem with this Uberman schedule is that you have to take naps when everyone else is awake - so you lose productive collaborative work time, but the extra time you gain is in the middle of the night when everyone else is asleep. Also you can't do anything that takes more that four hours to do, otherwise you'd miss a scheduled nap. The guy with the blog linked upthread notes that this makes things like going out for dinner and a movie awkward.
I sleep eight hours a night, often more, and in the past I'd often thought about and experimented with ways of sleeping less, but in the end they didn't worked for me. What changed my mind was when I stopped thinking of sleep as "wasted time" - things happen during REM and NREM sleep that are essential and can't happen at any other time, particularly related to sorting memories.

"didn't worked" = "didn't work" obviously I need some sleep...

I am so terrible at getting up. I got a dawn simulation alarm clock in the hope of gentler wakeups and less "oh god, no sunlight yet, what cruel deity would make me wake up to this cold, dark world? zzz" but I cd sleep through all the light in the universe. Often my alarm beeps at me, I persuade myself I feel too ill to get up and put it on snooze, repeat several times and eventually turn it off, all without waking up enough to remember doing so later on.

time it took after many months of being unemployed and getting up at 11 every day to get used to getting up at 7:30am = abt a week
time it took after 2 months of 7:30 wakeup to get used to new work hours + getting up at 6:40am = several months and counting

I've been going to bed early (and hating it, because it's always the first time all day I'm starting to feel awake, plus it would be nice to think that I could go out in the evenings, though I can't for other reasons anyway) and so far no improvement.

I wd really, really like to cope on less sleep. I got 6h max every school night through my teenage years but these days I'm a wreck on less than 7 and would ideally like 8+. Sometimes I wonder if I burnt myself out (I remember a friend did a "how much sleep do you get" survey for maths homework when we were 14 or so, and almost everyone got more than me) but then I remember that most of the world seems perfectly happy on way less sleep than me still.

Can you permanently mong yourself in later life if your sleep pattern is bad enough? I feel like I never quite recovered from the erratic lifestyle I led at university.

I have it! I have the answer, and it is...CALLING IN SICK.

------------------------------------------------
Written from home

Problem solved. LOCK THREAD.

I feel like I never quite recovered from the erratic lifestyle I led at university

hmm. lack of sleep would be the least of my concerns on that front.

It wasn't really erratic in an interesting way.

mine wasn't really health-threatening in an interesting way, come to think of it.

:(

mine's just not sleeping with different people every night amirite.

You all need work from home jobs. My job lets me work from home 2 days a week and those mornings are glorious. I still have to get up early with the kid but knowing I dont have to rush to get ready and out the door makes getting up so much easier.

Also, one thing I've learned from years of insomnia and this recent bout of kid induced sleep deprivation is that if you go to bed streesing out about not getting enough sleep you're going to wake up badly. If you go to bed thinking "Its not much sleep but I'll be fine" then you wake up feeling okay.

You all need work from home jobs

hell, no, that'd be a sure-fire way to get NOTHING done. or, rather, to find myself trying to do everything in the very last hour of the day.

Optimal amount of sleep?

hell, no, that'd be a sure-fire way to get NOTHING done. or, rather, to find myself trying to do everything in the very last hour of the day.

and that's different from an office job how? :D

in the office, i'm not doing it in my pants.

except on fridays.

hell, no, that'd be a sure-fire way to get NOTHING done.

Srsly. Not having an obligation to get up and GO is a recipe for laziness for me. I lack that kind of discipline.

1. set clock incorrectly (later than accurate is key).

very very important^^^^

eh. That never works for me, either. I always know.

Good job.

I always set my clock fast and then the alarm early. I know it sounds irrational but it works for me.

ken c, I luv you.

That never works for me, either. I always know.

same

you guys are too smart for me

i am smarter than a clock

Surprised that nobody's mentioned clocky yet:

http://www.gadgetreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/03/clocky.jpg

jaq mentioned it upthread

clocky would get a kicking once he was caught, that's the problem.

One would hope Clocky to be built to withstand a certain amount of abuse. After all, he's running around all helter-skelter in the first place. Who knows what stairs he's gonna fall down or whatevs?

The dawn-simulation alarm/lamp worked really well for my wife when she was working.

The only thing that works for me is setting my clock 15 minutes fast, then setting my alarm half an hour before I actually need to get up - that way I can hit the snooze button a few times, and then I'll actually look at the clock and my sleep fogged brain thinks it's actually on time, and go wtf, I need to get up now! and then I'm still ahead of myself, and have plenty of time to do everything.

which I see is the same thing Ms. Misery said, but that's what I get for not reading the whole thread.

Alternately, get an alarm gorilla who will pick you up and throw you out of bed when it's time to get up.

I've just trained myslef to get up when the alarm goes off; tired, groggy, hungover, well rested...

By the time I turn on the shower and get in and the horror starts to dawn on my waking brain, it's too late.

i always end up walking into walls and stuff when i make myself get up all groggy. right now i am having the debate: go to bed now (midnight) and get up at 6 (ideal time, realistically would probably get up later) to write crap for class or stay up til 2 writing and then probably sleep way too late in the morning.

yeah i think i need that gorilla to inflict pain the longer i stay in bed.

I only really need my alarm clock on days when I have to get up earlier than usual. Most days I wake up on my own at around 6 and either lie there awake and comfortable or I just get up. The alarm will go off in about 20 minutes, but I've been up for 30.

You know what? It was much harder for me to get out of bed and into work on time when I had to be up at 9 AM to get to my waitering job at 10:45. Probably for 3 reasons

-Living the waiter lifestyle. I may have been out till 4.
-I was not into the job anymore at all.
-I naturally wake up at 6, so sleeping till 9 put me into sleeping-in mode.

Probably a big factor too was the fact that I had no regular schedule, so some days I had to be up at 9, sometimes I was off, sometimes I was up at 6.

On my days off I would sometimes sleep till 12 or 2. Or 4.

This is the most strangest thing ever. For a while now I've been getting out of bed on a Saturday at precisely 10:08am

I don't have a clock next to me in bed, I check the time the moment I slip out of my pit. The past 5 weeks!! It has been exactly either 10:08 or 10:09

I don't even try and time it, I'd forgotten all about it this morning but sure enough checked the time at the same time as climbing out of bed - 10:08

weird

It has just struck me that a good way to make yourself get up as soon as you wake up would be going to bed with someone you don't like and can't stand being close to.

Yeah, great idea. Do that every night.

being rushed and late feels worse than getting up

I'm surprised no one has argued with this yet. Being rushed and late feels like you are ALIVE and HUMAN and IN THIS WORLD. Getting up is the painful birth of that feeling. It's no so much apples and oranges as apple blossoms and apples.

I've found the type of alarm can help. My system is now to set the clock radio to Radio 2 - Wogan, can't really stand it but his tone of voice is exactly right for slowly and calmly wakening me from my slumber without being able to pinpoint any of the actual stupid words he's saying. This is for about half an hour before I actually need to get up. I then set the beepy alarm for 5 mins later so if I'm sleeping heavily and the voice doesn't wake me then that will. The beepy one has a 10 min snooze so if I'm tired enough I can do a few actual snoozes before I need to get up while the radio's still on. If Wogan keeps me awake enough for me to realise what he's saying then I get annoyed and get up.

This does come with the risk of waking up to Toploader and being in a foul mood all day.
Anyway I think this helps because a couple of times I've been so dozy when setting the alarms I put them the wrong way round and woke up to the beepy mobile phone alarm which I did NOT LIKE.

i have sometimes been setting my alarm (i use cell phone) for 4:00 and 6:00 thinking i would be at the end of my sleep cycle and ready to get up at 6. it doesn't work at all but i just like the feeling of having 2 more hours to sleep so i keep doing it and then i am less motivated to keep sleeping after it goes off at 6 because i just got that bonus 2 hours. also you can remember your dreams better so you can ask dr. freud about them if you need.

i also go to bed at 9:30 occasionally because i don't like doing homework and i like sleeping and i am bored. that helps a lot.

have a 2 year old. you won't ever sleep past 6:15 again

a friend of mine was telling me about an alarm clock that, in order to shut it off, requires that you solve a simple math problem (like, multiplying two two-digit numbers) before the noise stops, to help wake up your brain as well as your body. in theory i love this idea but i would probably end up just unplugging it in the long run

Or learning how to do two digit math problems in your sleep?

Set your alarm two hours before you have to do anything, then eat apples and raspberries. You can wake up slowly and enjoy yourself.

math alarm sounds bad

Wait what is this about apples and raspberries?

Work for clients who are all at least two time zones west of you.

I NEED TO UNDERSTAND THE ROLE OF SPECIFIC FRUIT HERE

haha well, for one, they're both sweet and full of sugar and stuff, so they wake you up well. Plus, they've got that sharpness (crisp green apples are the ones to use), which is kind of jolting. And like, you're sitting in bed, relaxing (because you've got some time), eating delicious things, so you're like "Aw, life isn't so bad. Check out this fruit!" Being stressed the instant you wake up defeats all the points of sleep. If I wake up half an hour before I've got to be at work or school, I just want to cry and kill.

(I dunno, I'm just avoiding writing a paper right now.)

there is so much fruit nonsense in the world.

One trick I've used that worked for me was simply to not close the blinds at night. The light of dawn would wake me more gently and persuasively than the borderline-traumatic startle of an alarm clock. I realized that it was the shift from total darkness to electrified brightness that was so difficult to deal with. I understand, however, that not everyone would be comfortable with leaving their blinds open all night.

Also, I don't normally buy into this sort of thing but autosuggestion seriously worked mind-bogglingly well when I was a kid. As I was falling asleep, I'd repeat ceaselessly "Wake up by [x time]". I'd literally wake up at [x time], whatever it was. The thing is, doing this on a regular basis sucks.

kenan probably OTM though. I only became a quasi-morning person (or at least a don't-want-to-sleep-till-11-every-day person) once I realized that I could get a lot more done (of things I wanted to do), and more satisfyingly, between 8 and 10 than between 2 and 5.

the blair witch made me pee my pants...with anger. it sucked.

horror movies are kind of lame aren't they? kind of like heavy metal music, they only appeal to brain-dead teenagers and immature adults.

name me one good horror movie. one.

surreal

if i set my alarm 2 hours before i have to get up i just hit snooze for 2 hours. i have this goal of getting up at 7 every day but so far it is not happening.

i haven't yet succeed in doing this yet, but i think the best way to wake up would be to embrace being a morning person - getting my ass up early enough to sit down at my pc with a cup of coffee, read the news/this site, basically do what i do on Saturday and Sunday mornings for a while before going off to work.

The math alarm sounds like the best idea yet, though I think within a couple of weeks I'd get better at doing math problems in my head while mostly asleep than at waking up to the alarm.

What has been useful for me is to wake up to NPR, rather than music or a beeping alarm. It does get a bit depressing to wake up every morning to news about a car bomb in Basra or the stock market taking another beating, but it seems to "engage my brain" in a way that makes it harder to go right back asleep.

I don't mind waking up - would happily eat berries and listen to Wogan -but I hate getting OUT of warm bed into ICY room. Getting the room warmed up with an electric heater on a timer pre-alarm actually gets me out the door by 7, er, most of the time.

REVIVE because it is getting cold here in the northern hemisphere!

Put the alarm in a different place each time. Better yet, TWO alarms in different places.

Oh, and find a way to make coffee or some other morning treat that you really enjoy so you'll look forward to it.

just get up

go to bed at like 8 or 9 once or twice a week. you'll wake up groggy at 2 am to use the bathroom and realize you still have four more hours to sleep. it's just like sleeping in!

The snooze button is a terrible, terrible thing, but I am having a hard time quitting it!

Find some music you really really hate, set it up as an automated playlist, make sure you have to get out of bed to turn it off, set volume on 11.

If my coffee machine had a timer I could fix all the worlds woes. I used to set it up the night before and get the missus to flick it on (as she got up earlier to do girly things) and the smell was enough to rouse me from the pursuit of the dead.

I was such a snooze abuser I finally had to get an alarm clock without one. The combination of knowing there's no 9 minute nap after the alarm and having a dawn machine works for me. The alarm is set for the must-get-up time and the light starts dawning about 15 minutes before and just keeps getting brighter and brighter.

oooh dawn machine sounds awesome. Expensive?

Exercise the night before, switch to decaf if you drink coffee before bed -- these help with getting a full night's sleep.

if you drink coffee before bed

Who drinks coffee before bed??? I can't even have a cola after 6pm!

I do -- usually a couple of hours before bed.

I have no trouble with falling and staying asleep; it is the getting out of bed part that I struggle with, particularly when it is cold and dark at 7 a.m.

Jaq, could you link to your alarm thingie?

oooh dawn machine sounds awesome. Expensive?

I've got a basic one you plug your own light into (sunrizr? something like that) - less than $100 and has lasted for over 10 years now.

It's this thing: http://www.lighttherapyproducts.com/sunrizr.aspx
I can't tell if they still sell it!

This is my terribly twee single-shot alarm clock.

Caffeine doesn't affect me at all that way.

i go in cycles, sometimes i have to stop at like 2pm (w/tea, also), othertimes i can just down coffee until i hit the pillow.

getting out of bed is probably the most difficult thing i do all day, i think, not that other stuff is easy but i just find it brutal. it's so disappointing to be denied something so easy to do + have to get up.

just get up

― conrad, Tuesday, September 20, 2011 12:30 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

awesome,

just learn japanese
just lose half of your bodyweight
just stop sneezing

it is hard, man. my sleepy mind's cost:reward balance calculations never come up in favour of 'wake up, walk the cold-ass streets for a half hour to the bus, & then take the bus to work!' as being preferable to 'just stay right here, you don't need to expend any effort & you still get what you want, also you don't have to deal with the breakfast of preparation that you should've done last night to make this easier'

have people who say it is hard tried going to bed earlier?

after 10 pm there is no point imo

have people who say it is hard tried going to bed earlier?

ha ha, this is a brutally correct diagnosis of the problem, i am just unable to accept the sacrifice that has to be made in favour of work, at expense of my evening. i feel like part of hating having to go to work is embracing the still flickering flame of fuck-you that means that you stay up past the point of tiredness just to spite your working self & to make you feel like you had some sense of agency over your evening, controlling when it started and ended rather than having even your free time dictated by work. but i am making this about me, this kind of juvenile behaviour maybe doesn't apply to others who can't get up for whatever reason.

Exceptions allowed, the body really does need at least six hours of sleep.

it doesn't matter whether you go to bed early or late.

yeah i think that is true; i had a year of living on five but it was pretty evidently deficient. i dropped a lot of stuff, and had weird manifestations of just not-having-enough-sleep, back & breathing problems.

I think it does matter and that six hours is not really enough and that caffeine or anything stimulating near bedtime or having wound down enough or not having a dark enough room or enough quiet all impact upon sleep quality

xpost

big realization for me lately is that life is not worth living without 8 hours of sleep a night. i hate work too but i'm pretty good at not working while i'm here so i might as well be fully awake to enjoy it.

ha ha, this is a brutally correct diagnosis of the problem, i am just unable to accept the sacrifice that has to be made in favour of work, at expense of my evening. i feel like part of hating having to go to work is embracing the still flickering flame of fuck-you that means that you stay up past the point of tiredness just to spite your working self & to make you feel like you had some sense of agency over your evening, controlling when it started and ended rather than having even your free time dictated by work. but i am making this about me, this kind of juvenile behaviour maybe doesn't apply to others who can't get up for whatever reason.

OTM for me too. In a freudian way I think this is down to having really strict bedtimes as a child and being forced to made to go to bed before adults even though my bedroom was a hallway that adults/siblings would have to pass through before getting to their bedrooms thus disturbing my sleep.

In a freudian way I think this is down to having really strict bedtimes as a child and being forced to made to go to bed before adults

yeah, for reals. i am sorta weary about turning this (& other) threads into dirt bag style part ii, but i feel like the parts of it that i can understand as 'indulgence' are probably marked out by being the opposites of/being smallscale rebellions against what came before; like i have always liked the decadence of occasionally falling asleep on a couch in your house because it, firstly, requires no effort, but secondly reiterates the fact that you have a couch, can fall asleep on it, are no longer, compared to your salad days, beholden to any couch owners or bedtime administrators. it is a small celebration/reiteration of adulthood, or domesticity. & the part of me that will get home late, when i've already done something fun with my evening & should totally just go to bed, but stubbornly insists on doing just one other thing (like it used to be making toast and watching the late showing of the colbert report) before sleep, because it feels like coming home and sensibly going to bed would be a kind of obedience, rather than a kind of prudence - i think that is maybe conditioned by that having been not my decision at some point, or at least serves as a kinda ingrained contrast that represents now rather than then.

protip: just stay in bed

Get over your adolescent problem with authority.

"why do i find this so difficult? how do i stop myself from hitting the snooze button for an hour and just get out of bed when the alarm goes off? it is getting colder and my bed is warm and has my cat in it."

― bell_labs, Monday, October 1, 2007 7:41 AM (3 years ago)

This is my problem exactly. oh gawd maybe we can either get married, or at the leasst hire someone (like my ex-husband) to appear bedside throw all the lights on and present us with a hot cup of coffee and extract the cat from the bed making it less comfy and warm to remain ensconced. Also they will put heaters on in the bathroom and start the shower to warm/steam the bathroom to make it less of a jarring & horrid adjustment from comfy warm bed to wet shower.

anyway, the actual answer here is to remember that your obligation to be somewhere/do something is more important than your comfort at that particular moment.

― gabbneb, Monday, October 1, 2007 8:24 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark

I have horrible sleep patterns; go to bed at 1030 and am awake at midnight then awake until 5a, then could sleep til 11a. (Do Sleep til 11a on wknds usually.) Stay up late til mid or 1am then sleep til alarm at 730a then hit snooze and curse until 830 when I am late and s/b at work at 9a. Boss is semi-cool when I arrive at 930a, but I guilt myself from 9a to 11a. ARRGGHH! weekends are golden, I stay up til I am sleepy and then sleep til I awaken normally. (11A) but how the heck do I reset it for work weekdays to awaken and get up at 730a???? It only seems to get worse as I get older. Have espresso machine cocked and ready so all i have to do is hit brew; but every day I am dragging azz to get up. ARRRRgggHHH! I hate my life. I am SO thankful for my job the duties and the obligation but I still struggle with the waking thing.

Recent exercise levels and alcohol consumption are factors that affect my rising abilities.

I MUST TELL YOU ALL THIS:

i just got this iphone app that's totally doing the trick. i'm not a morning person, and i hate how alarms pull me right out of my dreams and leave me feeling all disoriented and stuff. also, even if i have to get up and walk across the room to hit snooze i still do it for like half an hour every time. however:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/progressive-alarm-clock-dream/id362389803?mt=8

i am not a cheesy new age person at all, but that progressive alarm, combined with the reasonably nice alarm sound... well, it's crazy, but i don't even hear the alarm. i just sort of find myself pleasantly wide awake, somewhere in the 20 minute time window of the alarm progression, usually about a minute before i hear the actual alarm. it's crazy how well it works. sometimes i'll laze about till the bell starts repeating at it's not-very-loud-loudest to drag myself out of bed, but generally i'm so completely awake by that point that there's no particular desire to hit snooze.

btw if you don't have an iphone, i don't know if there's an android app or anything, but there *is* the original $200 analog version - if i had the dosh i'd consider buying it. i could totally see this being worth 200 bucks to the right hard-to-awaken person

http://www.now-zen.com/graphics/zt/bamboo.gif

http://www.now-zen.com/Zen_Time_Piece.html

ps. * full disclosure: iphone app only works when attached to my stereo system across the room

Get over your adolescent problem with authority.

cool thanks man good post

i have always liked the decadence of occasionally falling asleep on a couch in your house because it, firstly, requires no effort, but secondly reiterates the fact that you have a couch, can fall asleep on it, are no longer, compared to your salad days, beholden to any couch owners or bedtime administrators

i had never thought of it this way! i am not sure how much of this applies to me but there's definitely a "i am an adult now and can eat cake for breakfast IF I WANT" aspect to it.

bcz falling asleep on the couch is the best but it's even better when it's YOUR couch

it's not good to eat cake for breakfast btw

"i am an adult now and can eat cake for breakfast IF I WANT"

it was a defining moment in adulthood for me when i realised that i felt like snacking on breakfast cereal one night at 3am - and that i could, because who was there to stop me??? it's my all-night deadline crisis snack of choice now. i have also had cake and champagne for breakfast. (separate breakfasts.)

i have worried lately that i seem to be turning into a morning person: i had to work in an office for a fortnight, then for the past few days get up for 7.30am meetings, and on every one of those days i woke up before my alarm :o :o :o

today, the first day in weeks on which i don't have to get up for anything at any point, i awoke at QUARTER PAST SIX IN THE MORNING WTF. forced myself to stay in bed for another 20 minutes on principle but was so awake i ended up reading the whole guardian on my bberry anyway.

that said it's 11am now and i haven't strictly accomplished anything, so adulthood can thankfully be postponed some more.

I used to go to bed at 2 at weekends and wake up at 11. Now I am self-employed I go to bed at 10.30 every night and still wake up at 11. Totally not what I was promised!

clearly plenty of people here who don't understand what having trouble getting up means!

anyway, the actual answer here is to remember that your obligation to be somewhere/do something is more important than your comfort at that particular moment.

― gabbneb, Monday, October 1, 2007 8:24 AM (3 years ago) Bookmark

― symsymsym, Wednesday, 21 September 2011 06:30 (3 hours ago)

this, for example, is all well and good in theory, but the me (and i assume the same applies to others) who refuses to get out of bed when the alarm goes off isn't the same me who sets that alarm with the best of intentions for an early rise and a busy day. i don't have trouble getting out of bed when i have concrete obligations which involve other people, but when i just want to get up early for my own sake, no amount of persuading myself of its importance will do the trick.

Oh, and find a way to make coffee or some other morning treat that you really enjoy so you'll look forward to it.

― Jews Did Irene (Hurting 2), Tuesday, September 20, 2011 3:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

this! my morning coffee is the reason I live

I've always wanted to get this

http://www.wakeup.philips.com/

but it's expensive and the reviews say it sucks. o well

i have worried lately that i seem to be turning into a morning person: i had to work in an office for a fortnight, then for the past few days get up for 7.30am meetings, and on every one of those days i woke up before my alarm :o :o :o

ha that happens. the actual mechanics of how it happens, considering changing light/varying times at which you went to bed, etc, freaks me out, but you can get it down to clockwork, cf about schmidt. i've had jobs where i've had to get up super early, & kinda appreciated it after the fact - because you walk to work seeing the sunrise or just through that crazy, hushed, secret part of the day, or because you have such a pronounced sense of awakening over the first couple of hours of your day. but i think part of the deal that allows me to, in spite of resistance, wake up when necessary, is that if i don't have to get up i will just sleep.

Apparently you can train youself to get up, by pretending to go to bed in the evening - brush teeth, put on pyjamas, set alarm to go off in 2 mins, get into bed and close eyes... then leap up when alarm goes off, get dressed, etc. Do this four or five times in a row, every day for a week or two.

― ledge, Monday, 1 October 2007 15:42 (3 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I have yet to try this.

― ledge, Monday, 1 October 2007 15:42 (3 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the actual answer here is to remember that your obligation to be somewhere/do something is more important than your comfort at that particular moment.

seriously who is a person on whom this works? waking up i am a selfish baby, all my cunning is maximised towards staying in this warm safe obligation-free part of the world. all my life i have attempted to do that thing where it's past your bedtime so you stop doing [piece of work that needs doing] and you go to bed so you can get up early to finish it. this has NEVER WORKED.

(on the plus side, once i'm up it turns out i don't ever want cake for breakfast, i want muesli instead)

muesli's better yes

one thing I have found is that if your room is warm or hot you need less sleep and feel more inclined to get up when you do wake up

i suggest just not going to work in the morning

god i'm looking forward to grad school

I spent most of my time in bed, trying to get out of bed.

When I was in college my roommate had to have a talk with me about how long I would hit the snooze button for each morning. I am better about this now but admittedly not great on work days. On weekends, however, I'm wide awake at around seven. Figures.

lately i've discovered that putting the alarm on for six and then eight means i get up reliably in between those two times and don't use the snooze button! also it seems to annoy my girlfriend less than having an alarm at seven and hitting snooze 5-10 times, however i may wake up at six one day this week being strangled to death, we'll see how it goes

Have a baby. Get woken up regularly anywhere from 2 hours to 45 minutes before you're supposed to be awake. Spend 20 minutes slinging diapers and bottles. Find that it is not worth it to even try to get back to sleep. Now you're awake and you have "found time". Life is rad.

i tend to fall asleep about 2 or 3am then get up at 8. always wake up a few mins before my alarm goes off.

if i go to bed any earlier i find i wake up tired. if i sleep more in the morning i'll be tired all day.

i dunno, for me, sleeping makes me sleepy. gf always does this: wakes up, feeling great, full of energy, it's not time to get up tho, so she goes back to sleep. half an hour later she'll wake up groggy and pissed off and has to drag herself out of bed. pfff

if i sleep more in the morning i'll be tired all day.

i totally believe in 'sleep cycles' & that whole multiples of 90 minutes thing, though i have never done anything to investigate it/try to incorporate it into my sleep thing. i don't know that bumps it into the homoeopathic remedies area of self-diagnosis, but i totally think waking up at the right stage is a big part of how easy it is.

have you tried the sleep cycle app? WDYSCLL? (search for: SleepCycle)

i tend to know immediately on waking up whether i've had enough sleep. you can just tell. combination of deepness and length. awful when i wake up and i haven't slept well enough: i find it impossible to go back to sleep until it's actual bedtime. completely incapable of napping: i'll be so tired i can barely speak or stand, lie down for a nap and then suddenly feel REALLY REALLY AWAKE.

if i stay awake after 3am, or push through whatever time i start nodding off at, my body refuses to let me have enough sleep. so many times i've stayed up til 5am finishing a piece, and then gone to bed with all the time in the world to sleep in, and then HELLO it's 7am and my body. just. won't. let. me. sleep. ever.

(if i go to sleep at the time i naturally start nodding off, i almost certainly will have no trouble sleeping during the night.)

I need to learn how to get up at about 4:30 am. Also I don't like to go to bed.

Having clothes I want to wear is probably the single MOST powerful motivator for my getting up, ever. Good reason to do laundry on Sundays, it lessens the Monday blow, by offering a wide array of clean, well-fitting, comfortable clothes to choose from.

have you tried the sleep cycle app? WDYSCLL? (search for: SleepCycle)

aw yeah, thanks for that, no i haven't tried, though was awed when i heard it existed. i don't entirely understand what i heard about its alarm function -- because i assume that if the time you go to sleep is naturally fluid, similarly the alarm you set would have to be flexible in response to that & so not so much use as a 'wake up for that thing you have to do' alarm. but yeah i really ought to sometime. compelling reason to get an iphone :/

well you give it a half hour window for the alarm to go off in, basically. tbh i'm not sure it really worked for me, either i woke up before anyway or i still felt like i was being unceremoniously dragged up from a full fathom five stupor.

I go to bed by 10:30 p.m. and would like to wake up and gtfo of bed at 7:00 a.m., which seems reasonable. I don't think I need more sleep--my problem is all about leaving the comforts of a warm bed + snuggly person in that bed.

Oh well obviously the answer is: The other person in your bed should get up earlier than you do. I can't believe it took us so long to stumble upon that simple solution.

well you give it a half hour window for the alarm to go off in, basically.

right, okay. that works. it is the waking up feeling reasonable at like seven thirty, then happily falling back to sleep because you can, before waking up feeling submerged when you have to that is so annoying.

tbh i'm not sure it really worked for me, either i woke up before anyway or i still felt like i was being unceremoniously dragged up from a full fathom five stupor.

ha, i loved this:

rouse me from the pursuit of the dead.

― owenf, Tuesday, 20 September 2011 21:23 (Yesterday) Bookmark

I would love for other person in the bed to gtfo of bed before me, but that is So Not Gonna Happen.

Hmmmm now rethinking marriage to said person.

Need to marry teacher or nurse or something instead of IT dude. IT dudes never go to work before 9, do they?

Oh well obviously the answer is: The other person in your bed should get up earlier than you do. I can't believe it took us so long to stumble upon that simple solution.

― Octavia Butler's gonna be piiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiised (Laurel), Wednesday, September 21, 2011 9:24 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, see, my gf did NOT appreciate this when i was getting up at 0500 and pushing off to the hospital....we weren't living together, and she had class early enough that basically she had to leave the house, too.

that singing bowl alarm app linked above is great -- thanks, messiahwannabe

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Apparently you can train youself to get up, by pretending to go to bed in the evening - brush teeth, put on pyjamas, set alarm to go off in 2 mins, get into bed and close eyes... then leap up when alarm goes off, get dressed, etc. Do this four or five times in a row, every day for a week or two.

― ledge, Monday, 1 October 2007 15:42 (3 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I have yet to try this.

― ledge, Monday, 1 October 2007 15:42 (3 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Noone in the world has tried this

Imagine getting caught doing it.

Theophilus Carter was allegedly the model for the Mad Hatter, and invented the "The Alarm Clock Bed, exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851, and which tipped out the sleeper at waking-up time into a tub of cold water".

IT dudes never go to work before 9, do they?

I wish. IT Support people have to be at work at the same unholy hour as most other office workers.

Programmers might get to set their own hours, but only if they are shit hot and/or have an in-demand skill.

shit hot - well 4 out of 7 ain't bad. I leave the house at 9 btw.

that singing bowl alarm app linked above is great -- thanks, messiahwannabe

:)

- borrow someone's child to sleep at your house every weeknight

i have a feeling most cases of compulsive late night internet use "insomnia" would fall by the wayside by employing that one, weird old trick

weird old trick discovered by a suburban mom to bleach your teeth white!

Tried the moving alarm clock thing...didn't work, went back to bed for 2 and a half hours :(

The obvious answer to this problem is a) get a job as a test pilot for a bed manufacturing company, b) telecommute.

<phone rings>
boss: "Are you sleeping on the job again?"
snoball: "Yes."
boss: "Good work, keep it up!"

my crassest technique yet seems to be working pretty well - set a series of alarms for e.g. first 8:45, then 8:50, then 8:55, 8:56, 8:57, 8:58, 8:59, 9:00. so a couple of warning shots and the knowledge that i'll have to get up or be very annoyed by the onslaught of alarms, and then once i've turned each alarm off individually (as my phone demands of me) i'm alert enough to stay awake.

mine is: hit snooze 4 times til the official 'getting up' time so that I'm slowly dragged into a kind of readiness for the day. it's not ideal.