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When I was in college I slept through four or five meetings with my advisor. But only because those meetings were scheduled months in advance, and since they we

When I was in college I slept through four or five meetings with my advisor. But only because those meetings were scheduled months in advance, and since they were basically the only thing on my calendar, I'd just miss them unless I happened to look at my calendar the day before. But as soon as the iPhone came out I basically have never missed an appointment again, because now I can put things in the reminders app and can have events in there that are months or years in advance. I wasn't magically dominant before the iPhone came out or more submissive afterwards, there just wasn't a good tool that matched my workflow. I'm not sure what the point of this story is, other than that it's hard to generalize from university-related situations since people in academic settings aren't always well served by mainstream scheduling and calendaring tools.

dboreham 9y ago
Initially I read this as you slept in the meetings, but I suspect you mean you were sleeping in your bed at the time of the meetings. I was wondering why your advisor just didn’t wake you up!
scoggs 9y ago
I've noticed something similar with my phone being my primary alarm as opposed to a traditional clock or radio alarm. Having more dynamic control over my tools has allowed me to rapidly craft and change that alarm to ensure the desired results. It seems like every time I've relied on a traditional alarm to wake me up it slowly and subconsciously becomes less and less effective. Once I've built up a certain "tolerance" to the sound of said alarm I'll hit snooze or turn it off altogether while still mostly, if not fully, asleep. That said, the only sure fire method I've come up with to ensure a traditional alarm does the trick is to set the alarm across the room. This guarantees that I have to remove myself from bed, walk across the room, and then disable or snooze the alarm each time I choose not to wake up for good. In this "sure fire" case it's obvious to me that the tool itself is not sufficient and I've had to build extra steps into the process to ensure it helps me achieve my goals.

dboreham 9y ago

Initially I read this as you slept in the meetings, but I suspect you mean you were sleeping in your bed at the time of the meetings. I was wondering why your advisor just didn’t wake you up!

scoggs 9y ago

I've noticed something similar with my phone being my primary alarm as opposed to a traditional clock or radio alarm. Having more dynamic control over my tools has allowed me to rapidly craft and change that alarm to ensure the desired results. It seems like every time I've relied on a traditional alarm to wake me up it slowly and subconsciously becomes less and less effective. Once I've built up a certain "tolerance" to the sound of said alarm I'll hit snooze or turn it off altogether while still mostly, if not fully, asleep. That said, the only sure fire method I've come up with to ensure a traditional alarm does the trick is to set the alarm across the room. This guarantees that I have to remove myself from bed, walk across the room, and then disable or snooze the alarm each time I choose not to wake up for good. In this "sure fire" case it's obvious to me that the tool itself is not sufficient and I've had to build extra steps into the process to ensure it helps me achieve my goals.