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YOUR FIGHT WITH the snooze button is won, not when you wake up in the morning, but in the work you do to prepare the night before.
Before you try to get up with your alarm here is your Snooze Academy homework to set you in the right direction.
Starting each morning on your own terms and in a relaxed manner can have a big impact on your general well-being, rather than spending each morning chasing your tail and rushing out the door. It’s important to work out why you want to stop snoozing. Is there an activity you could do instead of snoozing?
Action: Take some time to think what difference stopping snoozing would make in your life. Write down what you hope to achieve.
If you have snoozed for the last 5 years, at an average of 30 minutes per day, roughly 300 times a year, with the alarm going off every five minutes, you would have hit the snooze button 9,000 times. You have been training your body to snooze.
Action: Practice your ‘getting up routine’ during the day or early evening. Get into bed and practice getting up. This may sound like an odd thing to do, but it works. We are retraining our minds to get up when the alarm sounds.
Research into sleep fragmentation and sleep cycles carried out by Dr Edward Stepanski of the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago indicates that fragmented sleep like that carried out during snoozing does not provide any additional rest, and may in fact reduce your levels of rest. If you still feel tired when you wake and think that you need more sleep, then you can only fix it by going to bed earlier or setting your alarm later, but snoozing isn’t going to help you out here.
Action: Remind yourself before you go to bed that you won’t get any sleep benefits from snatches of 5 – 10 minute snoozes.
Make sure that the first thing you’re doing in the morning is something you actually want to do. This positive thing might take only 5 minutes, but will get you started and out of bed.
Action: Decide the night before what the first thing you’ll do in the morning is. For example: Write a few pages of diary, have a nice long shower or send an email to a friend overseas.
Your alarm, if used correctly can be a key component of your stop-snoozing arsenal.
Action: Put your alarm clock across the room so that you have to get out of bed to turn it off. Disable the snooze alarm on your phone or get an alarm clock without a snooze alarm. Get an alarm that lights up your room in the morning (we can’t overstate the importance of this, particularly in winter). Keep a glass of water beside the alarm and have a drink as you turn your alarm off.
It is cold. I still feel tired. It is raining outside. I feel like sleeping more. It has been a long week. I’m not a morning person. It is still dark outside. The alarm is really annoying.
Action: Choose which is more important to you, snoozing or getting up with your alarm.
You know why you want to stop snoozing and you’ve followed all the steps above. Now is the time for you to commit to your goal and declare it to the world.
Action: Find a friend who also wants to stop snoozing and text or call each other in the morning. Track your progress in a notebook and stick with it through the initial difficult period.
Darren Ryan is the Founder and ZzzEO of Snooze Academy. Snooze Academy provides support to people who want to stop snoozing, through workshops and online programmes. Find out more information and join the Academy by visiting www.snoozeacademy.com.
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Practice wetting the bed. That’ll shift ye.
ha ha ha .. :))))
Turn on the electric blanket and wet the bed….. That’ll definitely shift ya!! :-)
I set the alarm clock at least 10 minutes fast just so I get a bonus snooze!
good one Big Bird ..;)
My 5-year-old son is the best alarm I’ve ever had.
We’ve heard of worse reasons to have children. Anything to stop snoozing right? :)
I just turn off the alarm on my phone and go straight onto journal.ie to read for a few mins… it wakes me up enough to where I just roll out of bed and into the shower… its a nice routine.
Funny….thats exactly my morning routine as well!
Me too :)
Despise alarms!!!
So do I, I find they make it difficult to break into houses.
We forgot to include the 8th step: “If all else fails, have a child. There is no snooze button on a baby” AKA the nuclear option. :)
I think most snoozers just need extra time to just wake up hence 2/3 hits of the snooze button – anyone who jumps out of bed as soon as the alarm goes off were never properly asleep in the first place.
Yeah it can often feel like you need the extra time to wake up in the morning, but after a couple of weeks of actually getting up immediately with your alarm, this can change as your habits change.
* choose * which is more important to you….snoozing or getting up with your alarm. That ……is a no brainer
Ha…and what’s the choice?
@Darren….clearly snooze on. Even if it postpones the madness by fifteen minutes….totally worth it!
I like that. Choose one way or the other. Snooze Academy probably isn’t for you then. Unless you actually would prefer not to snooze and do other nice things with your time in the mornings.
Snoozing rates pretty high on my list, so it trumps all the other nice things I could do! #snoozeacademydropout
Two alarms set for the same time in opposite sides of the room always works.
I set my alarm most mornings and actually have yet to hear it go off.
Normally I am wide awake about half an hour before it goes off.
I tried do without it and damm well slept it out.
I have a serious hangup about being late and people that are late.
Me too.. I usually wake up completely 5 or so mins before the alarm goes off.
By contrast if I don’t actually have to be up I can sleep for my country..
Wake up at 7 alarm goes off at 8. No matter what I do I cant sleep past 8.30 on a week end as I’m wide awake. Try as I might I just cant sleep in.
There’s no defeating the dreaded alarm, you throw across the room, muffle it with a pillow, try to turn it off it ALWAYS buzzes ten minutes later
That’s not the off switch, that’s the snooze button..
Where can I find the snooze button on my 2 year old and my 5 week old???????
Congratulations Brian, but that snooze button will be permanently in the off setting, for at least two decades. Still, it’s mostly good, and in the long term, you wouldn’t change them for the world.
For years now I’ve always had an alarm clock at the other side of the room. Really does the trick to get me out of the bed on time. Just make sure the alarm is obnoxious enough so you can’t sleep through it comfortably.
Brilliant article, nice to see other people share my inability to get out of bed in the morning! Great tips…I must by an alarm that brightens the room. Also a great idea to do something that’s positive in the morning. Thanks for sharing this article with us Snooze Academy! Keep up the great work….would love to read more tips like this from you. I’m your latest recruit!
I have lie ins every morning :)
Great tips to help get back on my 2013 health buzz!!
Snoozing is an integral part of my working day. Might try some of this….beats setting my alarm 15 minutes early to allow for snooze time.
I always set my alarm for 30 mins before I’m due to get up. So if I have to get up at 7 I’ll have an alarm go off at 6.30 and 6.45 – then I’ll get up when the 7am one goes off – I find I love the idea of knowing I have an extra 30 mins in bed and it eases me into the morning!
Ahh the beloved snooze button..why would I part with thee?
just wish i could set a alarm for someting to get up to these days
Snooze Academy :) Amazing idea! Especially at this time of year when feeling the motivation to get out of bed is slim to none! More top tips please Mr Ryan!*
I’m a hardcore snuuzer!! And a daytime napper! I refuse to loose the snuuze, purely because of the smug feeling I get tormenting my other half by having a minimum 5x 5min alarms going off!! Am I a bad person?!! :-)
I used to feck my alarm across my room but I realised if I wanna get up early, just go to bed early! Only real way to do it
My boyfriend has four alarm clocks all set to go off two minutes apart.
He sets them for an hour before he is due to get up,it’s a nightmare. He never hears them at all.
When am not there I’ve also to ring him to get him up.
Wish someone invented an alarm that gives you a punch !
Love this! In need of some serious help to battle the snooze button!
So true about snoozing not being real sleep. Will be trying ALL of these things this week – any help to battle the buzzer always appreciated
Great article. I so bad getting up snooze snooze snooze then o crap the children have school.
Pity we can’t press the snooze button again in 40 years time when the bondholders payment is due..
How in god’s earth did you think that you could jump from Alarm’s to bloody bondholders?!?!
Having the phone at the other end of the room helped me snooze easily 50% less. Another good one is about setting the right alarm time: when I enter a good hour before having to leave that means 30-40mins snoozing time guaranteed.
Loved the ZzzeEO position xD
Darren Ryan is the Tony Robbins of our generation. Great teeth too.
hahaha – it’s photoshopped! ;)
Airbrushed you mean ! :))
Both. ;)
:))
Yeah just get up lazy shi*es !
“Action… Send an email to a friend overseas”. Who wrote this drivel?
Good luck for tomorrow morning folks! :) let us know how you get on!
Set your alarm to talk radio instead of ‘Beep…Beeep…Beeep’…. I find listening to the latest state sponsored mess via morning Ireland will make you so furious you won’t be able to go back to sleep.
I have not set my alarm in years. I go to bed early and wake up early and naturally. If you wake up tired you ain’t getting enough sleep.
Posted at 00.30
Good one, tell us another.
Bren, I’m five hours behind in the US. :)
Years ago I had an old fashioned wind up alarm clock with bells when that thing went off you had no choice but to wake up.
why bother? keep curtains open. one eye , winter, rain.. roll over!!
I tend to snooze for like 1 and a half hours, No wonder I’m always rect tired in work!
“No.2 practice waking up”,
Snooze Academy is for me. I’m terrible at waking up in the morning and cherish my beloved snooooze button. One thing that has helped me is meditating the night before, but I need som serious help here. Great idea!
Practice waking up? What for? In case I forget how to wake up? What a load of cr@p
Oooo not a morning person!!
Not a 5.30 Monday morning alarm call person – maybe I need to practice more :)
That’s a load of me bollocks.!
Any tips on how to actually get to sleep on a Sunday night? Dread it every week, then cant sleep and hence needing a snooze on Monday morning.
Maybe try some Mindfulness Mark. Great for helping to relax before bed.
The Association for Chronic Insomniacs is not amused by all this flippancy !!
“Sleep cycle alarm ” avail from app store u put your phone under your pillow and half an hour before your alarm is set to go off it activates and if it thinks you are close to waking at any stage in that half hour it sets the alarm off !! Sounds crazy but it actually does work
No snoozing for me this morning (despite the horrible rain and cold outside which would normally be ideal snoozing conditions)… Great article!
I’ve got a tip! It’s called harden the f**k up!
Zzzzzzzz …..
Piss all over the bed and I meet my ‘son’.
Great article – a good start to the morning definitely helps set a positive attitude for the rest of the day and I often feel I’m already a round behind when I eventually get out of bed after hitting the snooze button and turning over. Will definitely be applying the advice here, cheers
Until Snooze Academy opens up in Paris… more tips please! I am a passionate snoozer.
Just get well facking pished.
Lately I’ve been getting pretty good at getting up when the alarm sounds. But disabling the snooze altogether would be a disaster. On the groggy morns where I try to hit snooze, I would end up turning it off, none the wiser.
So I can forget waking up on time at all without snooze.
This should be an app. Is there one already, yet me know?
The 9 at 9, the 5 at 5, 10 best… , 7 steps, 20 most… you know it’s possible to write an article without having to do it as a numbered list
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