4 ms·

I tried this for one semester in college, and never went back to an alarm clock. I decided to face the risk of missing classes, exams, meetings, etc. The resu

by japhyr 15y ago

I tried this for one semester in college, and never went back to an alarm clock. I decided to face the risk of missing classes, exams, meetings, etc. The result? I got up 1-2 hours earlier most days than I did with an alarm clock. I have been living without an alarm clock for 20 years now; in that time I have overslept maybe 5 times, and on those occasions it was pretty clear that my body was fighting off sickness and really needed the sleep. The only time I use an alarm is if I need to get up at 3:45 am to catch a 6am flight. Alarm clocks are a terrible habit. They wake us up with no regard to where we are in our sleep cycles. When I used an alarm, I used to wake up and go back to sleep until the alarm went off. Then I would hit the snooze button forever. With no alarm, I just get up the first time I wake up in the morning. I almost always wake up at the end of a good sleep cycle. Getting rid of my alarm clock decreased my overall amount of sleep but greatly increased the quality of my sleep.

lucaspiller 15y ago
That sounds pretty cool, I'll give it a try!
freehunter 15y ago
I tried this, and I ran into a lot of difficulties. First, I assumed that I could go to bed whenever I wanted and I would wake up on time no matter what. This was not the case. Other times I would wake up on time but go back to sleep. And sometimes I just never woke up on time at all. This approach works for many (my grandfather used this his whole working life, but not for me, sadly.
- japhyr 15y ago
  Not setting an alarm made me more conscious of my decisions around sleep. If I had to get up at 5:15 for rowing practice, and I had an alarm set, I stayed up as long as I wanted and told myself the alarm would wake me up. When I got rid of the alarm clock, I could no longer fool myself, so I started keeping a more reasonable schedule. The other thing that helped at first was repeating in my mind, in a relaxed way, what time I wanted to wake up. I found I'd wake up within a few minutes of the time I wanted to wake up, consistently. Our brains keep track of time, and to some degree it seems we can tap into that.

by japhyr 15y ago

lucaspiller 15y ago

That sounds pretty cool, I'll give it a try!

freehunter 15y ago

I tried this, and I ran into a lot of difficulties. First, I assumed that I could go to bed whenever I wanted and I would wake up on time no matter what. This was not the case. Other times I would wake up on time but go back to sleep. And sometimes I just never woke up on time at all. This approach works for many (my grandfather used this his whole working life, but not for me, sadly.

japhyr 15y ago
Not setting an alarm made me more conscious of my decisions around sleep. If I had to get up at 5:15 for rowing practice, and I had an alarm set, I stayed up as long as I wanted and told myself the alarm would wake me up. When I got rid of the alarm clock, I could no longer fool myself, so I started keeping a more reasonable schedule. The other thing that helped at first was repeating in my mind, in a relaxed way, what time I wanted to wake up. I found I'd wake up within a few minutes of the time I wanted to wake up, consistently. Our brains keep track of time, and to some degree it seems we can tap into that.