The Snooze Button.
Everybody can relate to this scenario: When your alarm goes off in the morning and you wake up still feeling extremely tired, 9 minutes of additional sleep are so tempting!
So you hit the snooze button, and doze off again... only to wake up tired again 9 minutes after.
Many people rely on the snooze button and even set their alarm earlier to make sure they can still snooze and relax for a little longer before actually having to get up.
But what does pressing the snooze button actually do to your body - and your state of sleepiness?
Sleep Stages and natural rhythm
When we sleep, our body enters different stages of light and deep sleep.
If we don't set an alarm, our body slowly prepares itself about 1 hour before waking up: the body temperature begins to rise, and hormones like dopamine and cortisol are being released to make you feel more awake and ready to start the day.
But if your alarm clock disturbs you, your body isn't ready yet - your sleep cycle is being interrupted, and you wake up feeling groggy, disoriented and like you're still half asleep.
This state is called sleep inertia, and its strength depends on the deepness of your interrupted sleep.
Snooze Button and fragmented sleep
If you woke up from your alarm but then hit the snooze button, you back to sleep only for a few minutes.
Your body starts a new sleep cycle, which then gets interrupted again -it's a vicious cycle!
The longer your snooze intervals are, the more you risk drifting back into deep sleep, which will have you wake up with worse sleep inertia.
Instead of hitting the snooze button 3 times, you should just set your alarm 30 minutes later and therefore get 30 extra minutes of proper rest.
3x 10 minutes of fragmented sleep are much lesss restorative than a regular 30 minutes of sleep, and they are actually even worse than going without those 30 minutes of sleep at all.
Finally getting up after hitting the snooze button multiple times result in trouble to concentrate, grogginess and other factors that can linger around for several hours after getting up.
What's a better way to get up?
Obviously, start by avoiding the snooze button alltogether and instead set your alarm clock at the time when you really need to get up - the time of the last snooze.
If you put your alarm clock far away from the bed, you'll have to actually get up and turn it off, which will prevent you from dozing off again.
And once you've gotten out of bed, resist the temptation to crawl back in! If you seriously need to be awake right away, head straight to the bathroom and refresh your face with some (cold) water.
A good tip to memorize is also to signal your body it's time to wake up: by exposing it to light.
The best way to do this would be to open the curtains and let the natural sunlight hit your face, but that's not always possible when you wake up early during winter. So immediately switching on the lights helps as well.
Apart from that, you should generally try to establish a schedule, which will help you naturally wake up around the same time everyday, and will reduce overall tiredness.
Images: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Sources: 1, 2, 3, 4
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Sirwinchester
I'm so guilty of this, I'm totally one of those people that sets their alarm earlier only to snooze longer ^^ Maybe I'll resist it tomorrow after reading this!
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You should really try, like I said above if you set your alarm later and take advantage of more actual sleeping time, you'll have a bigger benefit than to keep pressing snooze
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damn, I love the snooze function, I easily press snooze like 2-3 times in the morning -.- it's just IMPOSSIBLE for me to get out of bed straight away! I even tried an alarm app where you have to take a picture of something for the alarm to stop (in my case the bathroom sink, so I actually had to get up) but I just went back to bed again afterwards...
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Sounds like a great concept for an App, the only thing you have to work on now is your self discipline and not get into bed again - I know how tempting it is :D
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This morning my alarm goes off at 8:30 am and I smacked the snoooooze button, telling myself 10 more minutes. Before I knew it was 9:15am!!! How I hate when that happens. Thanks for your content.
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I know that too well, so annoying! Tomorrow you should set your alarm for 9am and then put it at the end of your bedroom, not close to the bed!
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I am one of those people who can wake up without the alarm, I have an idea of when I need to get up and usually that process of coming back in to a wake state is started already. Also i need a pleasant alarm on low volume as it's the first impression of the day, may as well make it a positive one. lol
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That's awesome, either you have a very regular schedule developed and your body fully developed to it, or you're just lucky :D
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I used one of the various android Sleep Timer apps for a while (I don't really need to get up so it was just a test).
What they do is listen to your sleeping and wake you up between cycles. You set it for the last possible minute, and for the first time you are willing to wake up, and when you are already rousing out of deeper sleep, during that window, it turns on the alarm sound.
It worked pretty well. I immediately noticed that I never was startled awake or dragged out of a dream. I never had any of that period of wondering what day it was or why I had set an alarm.
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That sounds quite interesting, might need to try that! Thanks or the input!
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Mon-Wed. I do great not hitting the snooze, but by Thursday and Friday, that extra 5 minutes (usually 15) of laying in bed feels amazing.
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