Morning person | Christian Spanring

That’s what I’m not. Definitely!

It takes me at least 40 minutes to get out of bed, usually an hour or longer. Still worse are my ambitious intentions to get up early which make me set the alarm clock almost in the middle of the night. Worse because when the alarm goes on, I start repetitively turning it off for “another 10 minutes” instead of stepping out of bed. This stupid habit makes me even more tired than I’d be if I’d actually get up in the middle of the night.

So time has come to find another morning strategy and I started looking around for smart alarm clocks. That’s what I found so far:

Blow fly alarm clock: this alarm clock literally takes off. Seriously, it starts flying around in your sleeping room and you actually have to get up and catch it to stop the alarm signal. Very clever and a very ambitious alarm clock. Wouldn’t work in Texas though, I guess people there would just take out the Magnum 45 from under the pillow and bring the damn thing down.
SleepSmart from Axon Labs lets you wake up softly by respecting the phase of sleep you’re in. Based on an algorithm it calculates the best moment for triggering the alarm signal. Sounds scientific, surely it is, but I’m still wondering if there really exists any good moment for an alarm signal.
Chumby, ok, so that’s pretty geeky: features Internet via wifi and is extensible with all sorts of widgets. Well, this gadget would probably keep me from sleeping instead of waking me up. Anyways, it would be nice toy.

So far so good. Each of them would be worth a try to improve my morning situation. Strangely enough that none of those products is available for sale yet. Even though their concepts, prototypes or press releases are around since 2005.

How do you manage to get up in the morning within a reasonable time? Any tricks or hints of how to successfully conquer mornings are highly appreciated!!

http://www.helge.at helge

i have the same problem unfortunately. it’s less of a problem in summer though, when it isn’t dark outside in the morning. i’ve blogged about it more than two years ago as well: http://www.helge.at/2005/04/wake-me-up-at-the-right-time/ – and still have no such alarm clock
http://spanring.eu/ Christian

right, the press release is from 2005 and still no product launch. but the website does look promising though. maybe they’re still in closed beta and need some more guinea pigs. I’d happily offer myself for a project where the main requirement is a sound sleep…
http://www.comalab.at Connie

… got the same problem and call for hibernation – the only solution in this case
natalie

snooze-button-disease – that’s how i call it – hate those people who invented this button…
http://spanring.eu/ Christian

at lest now I realized what to do: disable the snooze button! that’s it! no snooze leaves me exactly with two options, either get up immediately or sleep till noon and miss every morning appointment.
simon

I also have the snooze button disease. Have so far found two solutions, one being a really really kind partner who does not have the problem, but is nice to you and helps you out of bed slowly, coffee made etc.
The other ruse, which I use when travelling or working on my own, is to carry two alarm clocks, a nice quiet one escalating to a really bad boy, and I just place the nasty alarm clock out of reach, so I actually have to get out of bed to stop it.
When you expect really bad mornings (late nights) place other things in the way so you have to do something else (like pick up the chair placed in the way) when you get up to kill the clock.
I have known myself to get up, walk/stagger to the other side of a hotel room, back to bed and wake up 3 hours later. So the chair idea works, breaks the moronic zombie state, it seems to me that multi-tasking in the zone is enough. I am a bad case though.
http://spanring.eu/ Christian

In my former apartment I had a loft bed and put the alarm clock somewhere down across the room. It used to happen that I stepped down the ladder from the bed, pushed the snooze button and went up to the bed again, for another 9 minutes…
Your trick with doing some exercise to break the zombie state sounds very clever!
http://www.posturepedicguide.com Gab

My wife and my son are simply not morning people, my son is just 2 years old and when he wakes up, the first thing he says is : No wake up daddy….
so cure
http://www.euphoriaperfume.com/ Mike

I think I’m like you… I can’t start the day until I have a decent coffee and I see the news…
http://www.mindfood.com/at-early-birds-night-owls-blame-genes.seo sleep deprived johnny

yeah mornings are the worst for me.