If you are a chronic snooze button hitter in the morning, I want to propose an idea to you about why you keep sleeping in, even though you want to get out of bed at a particular time: It’s because you might have formed a habit of hitting the snooze button multiple times. So now, your body has just developed a particular wake up routine, which is a good thing! Routines when it comes to sleep are important in maintaining quality in said sleep. But if you’re serious about getting up when you say you want to get up, I recently discovered a quick and easy trick that can help your sleepy brain go through the same morning sleep routine, and allow your awake brain to kick in when you need it to.
I am naturally a morning person and if I’m not sick, I’ll wake up around 7am without and alarm clock. But my favourite time of the morning is actually in the pre-sunrise part fo the morning when it feels like the world is still asleep, and I am in a little cocooned head bubble of quiet time. This means that if I need to wake up around 6 am in order to get at least a solid hour of “I feel like I’m the only person in the world right now” time. Unfortunately, my snooze habit usually pushes my actual wakeup time to around 7am. So I just set my clock 15 minutes a head, and shortened the time of my snooze button to 5 minutes.
This trick works in 2 ways. Firstly, setting my actual clock 15 minutes a head, and not my actual alarm 15 minutes a head means that when I wake up and look at my alarm clock, my sleepy brain thinks it’s the same time, so I can still feel like I have the same wake-up time, as opposed to feeling deprived of anything. It’s one of those mind over matter things. Secondly, setting my snooze time to only 5 minutes means I still go through the process of pressing snooze and waking up, and pressing snooze, and waking up, and pressing snooze and waking up. But after a while, I go through the motions enough time that I fulfil the physical acts of the habit, and I feel psychologically fulfilled. And then I get out of bed! On time! And then I get to go to the cafeteria in time for hot breakfast! Yay!
If you’ve been trying to figure out a way to get up when you want to, try this and see if it works. If this doesn’t, try Stefan K.’s tips and see if they help. And if you’re still stuck, e-mail me and tell me about your gripes. I’ve recently become quite fascinated with the idea of changing habits by working with yourself, as opposed to against yourself. We can talk!