Saturday 15 November 2008

Wake Up! My three minute alarm strategy

I've never been good at waking up in the morning; and as a night-owl it doesn't help that I seldom go to sleep before midnight. I'm also able to sleep for eight hours (or nine, or ten), get up, make a cup of tea, go back to bed, fall alseep within five minutes and wake up two hours later. Yes, enviable talent ;)

This why I usually set multiple alarms; and thus the evolution of my most recent strategy.

A second, back-up alarm set five minutes after the first gives me enough time to fall into another deep sleep, so waking up to the second alarm is as much a shock to my system as the first.

A three minute interval works much more effectively; it's enough time to enjoy a dash more slumber but not enough to be comatose again.

If you have to be up especially early for work or a race, set alarms (two or three of them) at three minute intervals. You may notice a significant difference in terms of the ease of waking up.

3 comments:

Unknown said...

Sheesh, I suck at waking up. I'm following the multiple alarm, 5 minute strategy and I still manage to kill all alarms without even noticing! I've been late for work a few times.

I'll give the 3min strategy a bash, hopefully it get me out of my nightly coma.

Anonymous said...

No...tried the alarm clock thing for years. Sorry, but it does not work. What does work is training yourself to wake at a set time ...regardless:

Check this link (it works for me)
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-early-riser/

adventurelisa said...

Heya Anon,

Yes, you're right about this too. Routine makes a big difference. I usually get up week days and weekends within 30-mins either side of a fixed wake up time. Although I could sleep in on weekends, I rarely do it.
I also sleep with curtains open so that the natural light coming through can help to stimulate all the wake-up chemicals... in theory ;) This does actually work too - if I'm in a darkened room I'll easily sleep until noon. Thanks for the link. I agree with him. - Lisa