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.

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.