Waking Up.

[Terry V]

Biggest issue I have with myself is my inability to get up in the morning. Whether it's the weekend or weekday.  Whether I have something to do or not.  I just lay in bed to the last possible minute.  I'm not saying it's causing problems with my marriage but my wife does get frustrated when she has to take care of the morning routine.  With a baby coming in January I'm figuring that is something that will force me out of bed but I want to make sure of it because that is an area I do not want to slack in.

 

Now, I'm sure, especially you guys who are all about just doing it, are thinking..."just get the fuck up".  Well, I wish it was that easy.  Right now, before bed, or any other time I'm all for getting up early.  I would love to get up and have an extra hour in the morning to catch up on sports from the night before and get a start on my day while enjoying a nice breakfast.  I would love not to walk into work 10-15 minutes late every day...hell, even get here early some days.  However, my half asleep personality doesn't agree with that.  He would rather sit in bed till the last possible moment and then rush around.  

 

So , with that said...any tips? I tried some annoying alarm clock for my phone that required me to scan a UPC to turn it off but it was buggy and didn't always work which sorta defeated the purpose.  I try to go to bed early, go to bed later.  Set my alarm earlier, set it later.  I read all this other crap about getting up right away and sleep cycles but my half asleep self doesn't care.  Help!

[MissMormie]

Suppose you had a job interview for your absolute dream job at 7 am. Would you be able to be on time for that? My guess is yes. If not you need to go talk to your doctor because that would mean there is somwthing wrong. Otherwise it's a lack of motivation. For you it's not important enough to get up early so you stay in bed. Rather than fighting with your alarm find something that motivates you to get up early.

What that is is up to you. Maybe you need to promise your wife you'll make her breakfast for the next week. Maybe you need to plan important early morning meeting. Or perhaps you need to put some money on the line. Like paying a 10 dollar fine into your kids study account for every time you're up too late.

[Starstuff]

Here are the things that work for me:

• light therapy alarm clock - Mine slowly goes from dim to daylight-bright over the course of 20-30 minutes before my set alarm time. I'm quite sensitive to light levels, and trying to get up before sunrise (which is necessary during the winter if I want to get to work) made me feel physically ill (groggy, heavy limbs, nauseous) until I got this thing.
• breakfast - There is evidence that circadian rhythms are affected by the time at which someone eats after a 16-ish hour fast, so eating an early dinner and then not eating again until lunch can screw with your ability to feel rested in the morning. I'm not really a fan of food in the morning, but I make sure to have something small in the mornings now, and it seems to have helped
• music - I have a playlist I use for mornings that starts very chill and gradually gets more peppy. When my alarm goes off, my rule is that I don't have to get out of bed, but I have to put in my headphones and start my music. By the third or fourth song, I'm usually thinking about things I'm excited to do that day and don't really want to be in bed anymore.

[Suited hippy]

If you have Android I'd recommend  Alarm clock xtreme. It has a great setting where you can set it where it will not turn off till you answer Math Questions. Better yet you can set it so it requires you to answer 10 questions at a varying level of difficulty.... Answer 10 questions like (32x7) + 766-21 and your brain is pretty awake, the rest is up to you.

[Irishrages]

If you have Android I'd recommend  Alarm clock xtreme. It has a great setting where you can set it where it will not turn off till you answer Math Questions. Better yet you can set it so it requires you to answer 10 questions at a varying level of difficulty.... Answer 10 questions like (32x7) + 766-21 and your brain is pretty awake, the rest is up to you.

 

This is a genius idea. There is an iOS app as well (I downloaded it long ago) but the name escapes me.

[Machete]

There's a good article at Precision Nutrition on Hacking Sleep.

 

I personally hate waking up. It usually takes me 75 minutes to get ready for work, and I don't even shower. I crawl out of my bed into the kitchen, grind coffee as I boild the water while leaning up against the counter, and press my coffee. I turn on all the lights, and by the time I sip I'm awake. I think it's mostly the routine that wakes me.

[Mogwai]

I used to have a roommate who had this same problem, and one really simple change made all the difference for him.  He moved his alarm clock from his nightstand to the far side of his bedroom, so that he couldn't turn it off without physically getting up and walking across the room.  By the time he shut the thing up, he had already done the hard part. 

[obax]

I also found some success with putting my alarm clock on the far side of the room. The act of getting out of bed and walking across the room is enough to wake me up enough that, even if I hit the snooze (which I usually do), I'm awake enough to become aware of things like thirst or hunger or the need to pee, and becoming aware of those things is enough to get me up and out of bed to take care of them, sometimes even before my snooze alarm goes off. I've gotten into a routine where I hit the snooze twice, and by the second time I'm more or less awake. Routine is as important to waking up as it is to getting to sleep, in my opinion. Setting a new routine isn't always easy, but if it's something you really want to change, then you'll find a way.

[YayForMorgan]

I use a combination of the Sleep Cycle app, the sunrise alarm clock, and a loud annoying alarm.

 

The sleep cycle app uses some type of magic to determine when you're in your lightest sleep cycle and it wakes up up with vibrations and gentle noise then. You can snooze by smacking it really hard, but the time between snoozes decreases until there are no snoozes left and you have to properly turn it off. 

 

The sunrise alarm clock gets gradually brighter over the course of like 20 minutes. This does not wake me up on its own, but once my eyes are open it really keeps me awake, especially in the dark winter. The downside to the one I have is it automatically turns off 30 minutes after reaching full brightness. 

 

Finally I have two alarms on my phone set 4 minutes apart (because a snooze cycle is 9 minutes so I doom myself to an alarm going off every 4-5 minutes FOREVER), that go off about 5 minutes after the Sleep Cycle and sunrise alarms happen. All of these things combined will USUALLY get me out of bed. Getting 7 hours consistently helps a lot too. But the fact of the matter is, mornings are hard and some people are natural night owls whose bodies don't want to wake up until it's absolutely necessary. You're fighting against nature, dude

[j-squared]

Someone shared this recently, thought it might fit in:

[I-Jo]

None of those things work for me... I tried the math one to... And it was still going off two hours later while I was at work. I busted it a calculator to do the math and even after I answered the questions... It still was going off. Wildly annoying.

My bf tries to call me in the morning (sometimes he doesn't make it either lol) and I remember yesterday... Answered... talked to him while I walked to the kitchen... Started my coffee. Still talking and Walked back to my room...hung up- Crawled back in bed and woke up thirty minutes later.

I'm seriously the world's worst waker upper.

Things that have worked for me:

Push ups

Water on the face

Light (turning on lights immediately)

ultimately of you can get up for important events I feel like it's a lack of sleep and a lack of self discipline.

I also keep clocks in every room. If I can't tell what time it is I'm going to be late. I also set an alarm about ten minutes to go off before I'm supposed to leave.

And i try to have everything I want to wear/eat laid out in advance. The less I have to do the better.