Help me wake up in the morning!

When I had to wake up early the only thing that worked for me was putting the alarms on the radio, not the beep. And I would tune into the loudest static I could find. And yeah.. I meant alarms.

I used two and placed them on the other side of the room. I made sure that I had to get my lazy ass out of my toasty bed to shut them off.

I use the Pee Wee Herman technique. I have an elaborate alarm set up that involves bowling balls, robots, marbles, etc, and it not only wakes me up, but it prepares breakfast for me as well.

You can always borrow my youngest – he’s 5. He’ll wake you up – it never fails!

Snooze button. I set my alarm to go off early enough that I can hit the snooze button maybe three times, and by that third time I’m usually cognitive enough to realize it’s time to get up.

They have this new run away alarm clock. It seriously runs away off of your night stand. It has wheels and you have to find it while its beeping at you. It not not make you happy first thing in the morning but you will be awake :)

My bed is against one wall and my coffee maker is against the opposite wall. I put my alarm beside the coffee maker so that I have to get up to turn it off. By the time I get to my phone, I’m too far away from my bed so I put coffee on so that I won’t be tired anymore.

An alarm attached to increasing light may help.

My alarm clock is on a dresser which is about 2 feet higher than the bed and about 3 steps away. I have to physically get out of bed and turn it off and after going through all that effort, I’m already awake for the most part so there’s no possibility of going back to sleep.

Recommendation: put your alarm clock distant enough where you have to get up and out of bed to silence it.

I did what @johnpowell and @Bluefreedom suggest – My alarm was across the room by a good 9 feet. As I was walking toward it to silence it, I would repeat out loud, “keep moving, keep moving, keep moving, keep moving, keep moving…” and head straight for the bathroom.

lately (about a year) I’ve been waking up before the alarm by about an hour, so I no longer place my alarm across the room

i literally jump out of bed. Most of the time your body will be like “HOLY CRAP!! I’M UP!” and the other times I’ll fall flat on my face and be up because of the pain.

Yeah the idea is to use the alarm clock as a way to set your cardinal clock to wake you up in the morning. Always set to wake up at a fixed time in the morning. It could be hard at the beginning but an alarm clock will aid the process. Once you hav e been doing it for a week or so you will realise your body will adjust to the time and you will begin wake up before the alarm rings. Therefore, I would say adjust your body so that it will know a fix time to rise in the mornig and do it constantly.

Here ya go.

thanks for the link @syz
Aren’t these things so cool?

just give me your number and I’ll keep calling you until you wake up. I am several time zones ahead so it would be afternoon here :)

what I always did was get up at the last moment (thus getting as much sleep as possible), drink an extra strong tea that I had prepared the previous night (with 7–20 times more caffeine than a litre of coffee) and start waking up when I was already on my way to work. But I think it’s just the way some people are. It worked for me but I know it won’t work for others. The important thing is to somehow get enough sleep if you can.

I set my alarm 2hrs ahead of the reg time, looking at the clock half asleep gives you a good startle thinking your late.

The biggest problem I see with suggestion so far is that I live in a dorm room and thus do not have the ability to place my alarm very far away. I already put my alarm out of arm’s reach, but I find myself getting up, turning it off, and then going back to sleep…

I used to use the halfway-across-the-room trick, which was very effective, especially in winter when the linoleum floor was really cold in that old Cambridge apartment.

Before that, I had the alarm clock—a conventional small electric clock with no snooze button—on a shelf just above my head. To reach the clock, I’d pull the cord to yank it down from the shelf. It usually hit me on the head, but if it didn’t, groping about in the covers to find it and shut it off usually woke me up, except for those times when I shoved it beneath my pillow and went back to sleep.

Then I started setting my alarm 27 minutes fast. When it went off, it looked like I was late and scared me awake. I knew it was fast by some amount, but I was too sleepy to do the arithmetic, and by the time I figured it out I was up anyway.

Having kids, of course, or an aggressively hungry cat—we referred to these as organic alarm clocks—makes all worries about nodding off again moot.

These days I use a kitchen timer, not an alarm clock—really! It’s a little harder to operate, and the process stirs me awake. Also I sleep next to a loudly snoring husband who makes snoozing pretty hard after the initial jolt.

The dog needs walking, and if I don’t get up, she will loudly register a complaint.

I don’t have much of a problem getting up once the alarm sounds off, and with embarrassment I will tell you why. My Mother used the timer on our stove to potty train me when I was a child. she would set the timer for twenty minutes after I drank something, and when it went off she would say “time to go potty.” it worked very well.

Actually it worked too well. The timer broke soon after the potty training lessons, and I was never aware of how she used it. One night at the age of 18, I got up to use the bathroom, and found it buzzing away in the kitchen. The next morning I said to my mom, “Hey Mom, I thought that clock on the stove was broken.” She said “Yes it is, why?” I told her I noticed it buzzing when I got up to use the bathroom and she almost fell over laughing.

So ever since childhood, just like Pavlov’s dog, I have been conditioned to pee whenever I hear any type of buzzer or alarm. So when my alarm clock goes off in the morning, I have no choice but to get up!!

Lol@scamp: I MUST try that. :)

@Emdean1 & @syz – Clocky is adorable.

@shared3 Try what? Potty training with a timer? If so, just know it has very long lasting effects, ha ha!! I’m glad you got a kick out of my story. It makes me laugh too, but it’s pretty inconvienient because SO gets up 4 hours earlier than me and I want to sleep in a little. His alarm goes off, and I beat him into the bathroom every morning, ha ha!

A)Set two alarms at different times

B)Set one alarm out of arms reach

I need this question, too! I was in such a thread a while ago and people requested natural awakenings and do not stay near a sunlamp at night.

nothing says good morning quite like an angry raccoon :)

I purposefully set my alarm to go off 20 minutes earlier than I need to get ready so I can either jump up and sit at the bottom of my shower for some extra minutes or start petting on my bedmate for some nekid playtime, that’s the best way to wake up and start the day.