If you snooze, you lose

Photo by Sam Bai

“BRINGGG BRINGGG!” 

At 7:30 a.m., the alarm on my phone goes off, startling me from my slumber. Half asleep, I pry open my eyes and pick up my phone, squinting at the snooze button. I press the big orange button and pull my warm blanket over my head. Just a few more minutes, I think to myself. 

After what feels like mere seconds, my alarm sounds once more. I hit snooze again, yanking my blanket over my head to block out all the sound and then shrinking back into a ball. A few more minutes pass, the alarm goes off and, still drowsy, I instinctively reach for the snooze button. This goes on six more times. Each time I hit snooze, I snuggle back under the covers and drift off, until my alarm blares once more.  

Exhausted from this routine, I finally open my eyes a tiny bit and read the clock near my bed.

It’s already 8:15? My eyes widen — I’m about to be late to school.

Repeatedly hitting snooze is an experience familiar to many of us — it’s all too tempting to try to squeeze in a few more minutes of precious sleep. Now that it’s getting close to winter, this is especially true: Getting out of bed can feel impossible when a blast of cold air bombards you as soon as you lift up your blanket, making you want to escape back under your covers.

Once, though, I woke up before my alarm on a sunny day, with the sun in my eyes and the birds chirping outside. To my surprise, my eyes weren’t heavy, I didn’t feel tired inside and my legs weren’t limp. If only I could wake up like this every day, I thought to myself. And so, I became determined to find a solution to my  problem.

First, I tried opening the blinds before heading to bed, intending to get as much light as I can into my room whenever my alarm went off and moving in touch with my circadian rhythms. This helped a bit, in that it blinded my eyes whenever I opened them, forcing myself to rub them a bit — and served as my daily  exercise.

Quickly, though, I adjusted to the bright light in the morning, so I tried harder to force myself to get out of bed as soon as my alarm blared. Maybe if I tried hard enough, I contemplated, I would be able to not crawl back into bed when my alarm goes off.

Surprise! This still didn’t work, so as a desperate attempt to force myself to wake up, I put my phone far away from arm’s reach. By having it several feet away on my desk, I forced myself to get up and deal with the annoying sound, making me much more likely to fully wake up and start my day after leaving the warmth and comfort of my bed.

This, at last, was the solution. I was finally able to wake up at the sound of my alarm, and as a result, my life has been indefinitely better ever since. Would definitely recommend!