Snooze you lose

A few weeks ago I was inspired by this post on a friends blog, Alex over at MakeDrumWork.com has a terrible affliction, sleeping in.

I too suffer this dreadful curse. Don’t get me wrong, this is not about sleeping in for work or school and turning up late, I actually have no problem getting up in time for appointments. The problem is I stay in bed until the very last moment, I know I can be showered and out the door 15 minutes after I get out of bed. Which leads to me not getting up until 15 minutes before I have to leave, no matter what time that is. This can result in me not getting up until 11 or 12 o clock, which in turn means I don’t get to sleep that night until a little bit later and thus starts the vicious cycle of later nights, followed by longer lies.

Oh I’ve tried to fix this in the past, I’ve tried having 3 different alarm clocks in different places around my room forcing me to get out of bed to turn them off. Which I would dutifully get out of bed to turn off before heading straight back to sleep, often with no recollection of leaving my bed at all. I’ve tried music that slowly increases in volume to wake me up gently. Which would play for hours while I lay in bed snoozing and listening. Even convincing myself not to turn off my alarm clock until after I had showered didn’t work, I could hit the snooze button for 3 hours before finally getting out of bed. I even considered spending a ridiculous amount of money on a fancy alarm clock that promises to wake you up when you are in the lightest stage of sleep.

I needed a new approach. What Alex’s post helped me realize was that I just needed to practice. I needed to retrain my brain to understand that when the alarm clock goes of, you get up not hit the snooze button. Years of hitting snooze 20 times before getting up has led my brain to believe that is just what happens. So I fought the feeling of being a total twat, got undressed and got into bed at 7pm and set my alarm for 7:02pm. Waited. Then when the alarm went off, I turned on the light got up and put my dressing gown on.

I repeated this 20 times. Seriously, 20 times. I really wanted to get it through to my brain that alarm=out of bed.

A week it’s been now, and every day I have gotten out of bed at 7:15am, as soon as my alarm went off.

Time will tell if this sticks, but so far I’m impressed. Well done Alex, I guess that psychology degree paid off!