I have always had a lot of trouble getting up in the morning, and when I started working at a company where I'm expected to put in normal hours, I changed my wa

I have always had a lot of trouble getting up in the morning, and when I started working at a company where I'm expected to put in normal hours, I changed my wake-up routine quite drastically. I use my computer as an alarm clock. This has a few benefits: (1) It's on the other side of the room. After 10 years of having a clock/phone by my head and hitting snooze (I'm capable of snoozing easily for 1 hour) or, worse, off, having to actually get out of bed to turn off the alarm is enough to wake me up past the point of getting back into bed. (2) I have a different alarm noise every day. I found myself getting conditioned to whatever sound my clock/phone was using, and especially with snooze, after hearing that 30-odd times a week, I'd just sleep through alarms. A different sound each day is excellent. Highly recommended. (3) I keep a small bottle of water on my desk, which I drink right after turning off the alarm. I once (and only once) tried this when my alarm was by my bed and soaked an iPod in a groggy swat to snooze my alarm. I find that the water makes me feel much better. The first week or so without this, I walked around like a zombie until I got to work, but simply drinking the water makes me feel better. There's probably some logical biological explanation to this. I'm still not really a morning person--I miss my sleep schedule from college--but it's the most effective solution I've found to waking up at 7am. The easy solution is obviously just sleeping early, but I find myself unable to sleep before midnight at the earliest.