Wake Up!:Part II

I tried all of the solutions that I mentioned in my previous Wake Up! post blow. Here are the results.

Solution 1: Laptop next to bed.

This worked once, out of about 5 tries. A 20% success rate is not good enough for me. If I thought I did not have any major pending emails or issues I would just simple not even turn on my computer.


Solution 2: Timer on coffee pot in room.

Why this will work: I am a coffee lover and there is not many things I enjoy more than a good cup of coffee, so moving the coffee pot into my room and setting the timer to start making coffee at the same time as my alarm this should help get me out of bed right? Picture Folgers commercial.


Solution 3: Drink lots of water the night before.

This also worked once out of about 5 tries. I will say that this actually got me to get up 3-4 times but just not out of bed. I would happily wake up to the sounds of fresh brewed Dunkin Donuts coffee brewing but I would simply just turn over and drift back to sleep or snuggle under that covers with the aroma of coffee in the air.


Solution 4: Set alarm clock across the room.

This did not really work at all, yes I would have to get out of bed but I would just hit my alarm as fast as I could then jump back into bed.


All in all none of my proposed solutions worked, but that has not deterred. I figured that if I can avoid hitting the snooze that average of 3 times a day, which equals roughly 30 minutes a day, time 7 days a week and 52 weeks a year would be 10,920 minutes a year or 182 hours 7.5 days or just over a week per year. In short its worth another try, especially since I have been know to hit the snooze for over an hour at times.

It is well to be up before daybreak, for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.
- Aristotle

Here is my next plan of attack:
It is a whole new approach it is based off of a blog post that I recently read about the very problem of waking up right away after your alarm goes off. The author states that most people have great intentions to get up at the alarm when they go to bed, however, you often have quite the different idea when that alarm goes off at 5:30am. He is suggesting that you 11pm brain is not always on the same page as your 5:30am brain, which is definitely true for me.

He suggests taking the thinking portion out of the equation. Don't mess around with some of the less than effective strategies that I just used, rather make getting up automatic. How does one do this? Well he suggests practice. Yes just like practicing the guitar or free throws practice makes perfect and then the action becomes automatic. Here's the catch don't practice at 5:30am practice in the daytime when your 5:30am brain is not so persuasive.

The author suggests recreated the your sleeping conditions, as best as possible, and then simple setting your alarm clock for a few minutes ahead and then when it goes off simple, take a big deep breath and stretch your limbs and get up and do what you would normally do in the morning. He suggest 1-2 set of 5-10 reps per day for a few days until it become automatic, he also suggests that for the first 30 days you sick to the same wake up time weekdays and weekends until you get into a rhythm, then even if you have interuptions or want to sleep in you will have a good base, think of it as muscle memory.

Here is his full blog post that I would highly recommend you read if this is a problem for you. I just did my first set of 10 reps this evening and I will report back on how things are going and if this actually works.

Enjoy: Steven Pavlina: How to getup right away when your alarm goes off