How to Wake up If You Keep Sleeping on Your Alarm
The life of a “lark” sounds so peaceful and organized. Imagine waking up on time—even early—to make breakfast, do yoga, plan an outfit, or otherwise calmly prepare for the day ahead. Should be nice. The reality is that many of us wake up in a panic after oversleeping, completely shutting down our alarm clocks until the last second, and then rushing into the day in a frenzy.
So, how can you wake up on time if you keep sleeping on an alarm clock?
Make sure you get enough sleep
Dr. Guy Meadows, co-founder and clinical director of the Sleep School , explained: “People often don’t get enough sleep at night when they wake up to an alarm in the morning. Whether it’s one night or multiple nights, not getting eight hours of sleep creates a sleep debt that needs to be paid off.”
Long naps on the weekends don’t make up for the lack of sleep during the week. Your body will struggle to regain its rest time if you don’t make enough time for it, so make sure you set and stick to a real sleep time.
For example, make a plan to go to bed every night around 10 pm. Starting at 9pm, get ready for bed. Relax. To read a book. Drink decaffeinated tea. Follow your skin care routine . Get out the most comfortable pajamas you have. Put down your phone .
Promise, most importantly, to actually go to bed when you say you will. Stay up to finish an exciting chapter in your novel or endlessly scroll through TikTok. Making a schedule and sticking to it will help you form better sleep habits.
Know yourself and your sleep schedule
You are definitely not a “lark” in practice, but you may not be a morning person by nature either.
Meadows said: “In addition, some people may sleep on alarms because they sleep at the wrong time for their chronotype or natural tendency to sleep. Those who are naturally “night owls” tend to stay up late and therefore stay up later in the morning. When their alarm goes off in the morning, especially in the early hours of the morning, they are in a deeper phase of sleep than those who go to bed earlier in the evening.”
It’s hard. The world does not work according to your personal needs. Your chronotype may be productive late into the night, but the boss at a job that you have to show up at 8 a.m. doesn’t give a damn about your body’s natural rhythms. Your kids’ teachers don’t care, and neither does the friend you promised to meet for a morning run or coffee. The point is that you should wake up and be in the world at the generally accepted time of productivity, whether it coincides with your body cycles or not.
However, knowing yourself is good practice. Understanding your body can at least partially alleviate the frustration you feel on those days when you don’t get out of bed on time. Give yourself grace and try to do better tomorrow.
Consider Other Factors
You may have “more sleep spindles” than so-called light sleepers, meaning you sleep deeper and don’t hear as much noise, Meadows said. However, there may be other factors affecting your ability to hear and acknowledge this alarm each morning.
“One of the common symptoms of depression is excessive sleepiness,” Meadows said. “Therefore, if someone sleeps through an alarm clock, they may have signs of depression. In addition, depression and sleep have a bi-directional relationship, meaning that poor sleep habits can contribute to the development of depression, and the presence of depression makes it more likely that a person will suffer from sleep-related problems. These sleep problems can affect the function of serotonin, which is a mood-regulating hormone.”
You should consider whether your mental health is affecting your sleep, and if you think you may have depression or have another medical problem, consult a specialist.
So what can you do tonight to wake up on time tomorrow?
In addition to setting up and following our recommended schedule, there are several other ways to wake up on time:
- Create a morning routine. Whether you need a shower, caffeine, exercise, or breakfast, start pampering yourself every morning on a regular basis. Give yourself something fun to wake up to.
- Wake up to the light. You can leave your curtains open or use a solar lamp, but you need the brightness to get up and stay awake. It should be pleasant and natural, like sunlight. Remember when your parents turned on the overhead lights to wake you up before school when you were a kid? This is not the way.
- Have a responsible partner. Plan with someone else so you have someone you can’t let down. Sign up for PE with a friend, take the kids to school with a neighbor parent, or visit a new breakfast spot with your partner. The embarrassment that they might lash out at them only to let them know you’re dreaming might just be a motivator for you. You can also ask an early riser friend to call you or convince your partner to get you up in the morning.
- Change the sound of the alarm. Switch the alarm to a different sound every night you set it. Surprise at an unfamiliar sound can get you out of bed. Think also of an alarm clock. WakeUpDialer.com is a free wake up call option that can wake you up with the sound of your ringtone.
- Use the app. Meadows’ Sleep School has a 30-Day Sleep Essentials course that will teach you how to set up a regular wake up routine. There are also apps that beep until you complete a task. For example, Alarmy has a number of settings. You can type complex sentences, solve a puzzle, or scan a given barcode (like the one on toothpaste) to make him shut up. This kind of brain involvement should wake you up from hibernation, even if it’s a little annoying.
“Finally, if all else fails and you really can’t wake up to your current alarm, I recommend setting some very loud alarms and putting your watch or phone out of reach,” Meadows said. “That means you have to physically get up to turn on the alarm, making it impossible to ignore it or hit snooze and get you out of bed.”