I don't know what the best method is, but I do know this. . . when I hit the snooze button, it becomes increasingly difficult to wake up with each successive use of the snooze. and I actually have my alarm situated across the room so that I have to physically get up out of the bed, walk over to it to hit the snooze and then walk back to lie down. if I hit snooze 3 times, I will be sleeping much harder after that 3rd snooze than I was before the alarm ever went off. the snooze is my enemy. p.s. I have heard before the notion that you can pretty much set your own, internal alarm clock with alarming precision. I've heard that, as you go to sleep, you can just concentrate on a specific time, down to the minute, when you want to wake up. . . and oddly enough, your body will wake up at that time. I've tried it before, and it worked. that's trippy. then again, I'm an android, so what do I know. [hearty android chuckling ensues]
I've done that before also chievous, I just thought I was weird, I didn't realize that there's actually a theory about setting your own internal alarm clock...
I generally get up at 6am now, just about everyday, even If I don't have to get up for a few more hours - I get up, shower, and take care of all crap you have to in the morning, and if I don't have a class till 11 or so, I get back in bed - sleeping after you've gotten up and taken a shower is the ultimate defiance sleep.
One general annoyance of mine about sleeping is this: If I go to sleep at say Midnight, and my alarm wakes me up at 6 am, I feel terrible. But, if I go to sleep at midnight, and then wake up at 6:01 am without the help of an alarm clock, I feel like I just got the best sleep of my life. What the hell is up with that? Im thinking its more a mental thing then anything else. For example, when I drink even Caffeine free Diet Coke, it somehow convinces my brain its caffeine and I feel more awake! Ah, the power of the mind!
Definitely a snoozer. For school morning I always set it for 27 minutes (3 9 minute snoozes) before I wanna get up. When I actually get up is another matter. I go to sleep very late, which makes the alarm necessary, and so I love the snooze period to squeeze out the extra sleep. Now most of the time I have no recollection of the turning the alarm off (but somehow I do), but when I am actually conscious of turning it off, that next nine minutes is bliss. I could sleep 9 minutes at a time for eternity. I don't think I've ever gone quite 4.5 hours but I'm pretty sure on some weekends freshman year I got at least 3.5 hours snooze time. Me and my roommate would both have the alarms going off forever. Like I said, I usually don't even know I turned the alarm off which sometimes leads to waking up after 5 snoozes instead of 3, but I'm pretty sure I turn it off right away. I'm pretty sure because usually when I'm first conscious, I'm not laying in the bed with the alarm going off, but am sitting up with it off and the clock is always exactly some 9 minute multiple from the original alarm. I've never been able to wake myself up at some exact time w/o an alarm, but if its absolutely necessary (like yesterday), I can almost always get myself to wake up on the first alarm and just get up and go. And damn did waking up on time help yesterday cause I was actually early enough to my tech writing class (usually 30 minutes late) to complain about turning in a 10+ page report on friday and got it moved to monday. And oh my god would tonight have been a b**** if I hadn't gotten it moved.
I have the ultimate sleep-through-anything story courtesy of my father: One weekend when my parents were first married and living in a little apartment complex, my mother woke my father up at 10 a.m. and said, "Please remember, the electrician is coming at 3 p.m. to change the lightplate over the bed." She then packed me up (I was a baby) and the two of us headed off for a day at grandma's. When my mother returned at around 5 p.m. my father was in bed and the new lightplate was in place. She woke him up and asked if he had gone back to bed after the electrician left. Turns out my father never got out of bed that day. He had NO memory of the electrician letting himself in with the apartment's master key or drilling a hole in the wall about three feet above my father's head. My mother and I are both morning people, but my dad's sleep habits have been passed on to my younger sister who could sleep through two alarms, a dog licking her face, and me jumping on her bed and singing.
I've never been a big snoozer. I usually don't allow myself the time to snooze. I'll usually give myself just enough time to get up, get ready, and get where I'm going on time. Snoozing generally isn't an option. I have a friend who was having a really strange dream one night that he was Elvis. Not young Elvis. Old, fat Elvis. The alarm went off, and there was only one thought in his head: The King would hit snooze. And he did. True story.
Sometimes us just have to wake up gradually in stages. . . I usually use the radio to work my way back in to reality Rocket river
Wow this will be a fun post for me. I will be able to enlighten the smartest poster on the BBS(well in most everyones opinion that is). When I was in 8th grade a psycologist came and spole to my english class for career day. One of the things discussed was your bodies internal clock. I know this will sound wierd but I have tried it and it works. Your body is able to subconciuosly keep time. A way she told us to test it was this way. Before you go to bed one nite look at a clock and say the time over in your head about 4-5 times. Decide when you want to wake up in the morning. Say this also in your head 4-5 times sorta like this "It is 11:00, I want to wake up at 6:45". Your mind will set itself to wake you at the specified time(I know this sounds wierd but hear me out). I have tried this many times and it always has worked. I always wake up within 10 minutes one way or the other from the time i tell myself to get up. Subconciously your body knows when to wake up. That may be what your wife is doing without actually knowing how she does it. ***Disclaimer*** If you want to try my idea please set an alarm clock the first nite you choose to do it. Or try it on a day when you don't have to get up at a specific time. I have told many people this story and they have all had success with this method. However, I would feel bad if someone tried it and it did not work for them and they were late for work, school, etc. I don't use an alarm clock myself(my wife wakes me up) But when she is not around or I am away from home I use the body clock method. CK
Not to get too off-topic, but when I was in the Army last month waiting to come home, we were all in the barracks waiting for the next moment the drill sergeant(s) would come in and yell at us and make us go and sweep the dirt or something. I laid down on an unused bunk that wasn't in the direct site of the door so I could jump up when the drill sergeant(s) came in. (The way this works is when a DS enters, someone calls "At ease!" and everyone jumps up into parade rest). Anyway, I was having one of "those" dreams about my girlfriend. We were just starting to fool around when, in my dream, I heard someone call "At ease!" I looked at my girlfriend and said, "Hang on. I'll be right back." I then jumped up to parade rest before I was fully awake. It was really weird....I was incredibly confused, and I tried to go back to sleep to find her, but I couldn't get to sleep again. Weird. --- Just to stay on-topic now: In college, I could (and did) sleep through anything: alarms, phone calls, you name it. At one point, had four alarms all set to go off in 10 minute intervals: the alarm clock, a clock on my phone that would make the phone ring, my stereo, and the alarm on my TV. I would also have someone call me in the morning. Every morning without fail, I'd turn off all of my alarms as they went off and have a telephone conversation where the person on the other end would later swear that I'd sounded fully awake, and I wouldn't remember a bit of it. It got to be nerve-racking. To this day I don't trust myself to wake up to an alarm.
They had alarm clocks back then? I thought you used sundials. Sorry, R03 wasn't around, so I filled in for him
I sometimes use the snooze button, but usually I just get up when I'm ready to get up. I don't have a set work schedule. My wife, however, does--and she uses that snooze button, let me tell you. To tell you the truth, it doesn't always bother me; but it did this morning. I woke up at about 4:30 a.m. We have a twelve-week-old puppy, and it "has to go" a lot. I couldn't get back to sleep though. Then the alarm started about 5:30. Every nine minutes (why not 10?) for about an hour. I was tired, my sinuses were bothering me, and so was that alarm--even though I was out on the couch by this time. I don't know if you can wake the dead or not, but the volume on our alarm may get the job done. My wife and I are the only ones in the house, but it could serve as the household alarm.
i used to try and wake up at 5:30 a.m. but... HA i found out that just wasnt going to work out. i set my alarm for around 6:15 a.m. i have enough time to take a shower and get dressed before i run out the door at 6:30 a.m.
Sorry to disappoint you, but I already know about the powers of the internal clock - I use it often. Even if I set an alarm, I generally wake up on my own 15-5 minutes before it goes off. I do, however, find that I need to set the alarm (if something will be pressing when I get up) to emphasize the time to wake up (and if the internal clock thing fails). My wife confuses me because: a. The alarm often wakes me up and screws up my sleeping so that i usually cannot go back to sleep (or will fall back to sleep and then oversleep). b. I don't understand the hour and a half ahead concept. c. I don't know how/why it became part of her ritual.
Thanks Behad. Now die old man... Something I've noticed is that I rarely oversleep anymore. I used to miss the alarm as a kid or hit snooze and then oversleep by 1 or 2 hours. Now I only get about 4 hours of sleep per night, but even if I forget to set my alarm, I'll wake up within 20 minutes of when I was supposed to wake up. Maybe that whole internal clock stuff is true... but I'm not willing to trust it over my Timex Indiglo clock.
