Your phone’s wake-up alarm chimes. You chose the one called “Sunny” because you thought it would be the least annoying of the lot. But right now you may as well be listening to nails on a chalkboard or to the device’s default “Radar” tone which is code for “cruel reminder that your day has begun.” Your hand blindly feels around your night stand for the phone. It’s still dark out. How can it be time to get up already? You tell yourself, “Five more minutes. I just need five more minutes.” You hit snooze and close your eyes.
Five minutes later, (or is it 10 minutes?) the alarm goes off again. It’s a little more insistent and a bit louder this time. You knock the phone off the night stand while trying to shush it. Great. You open one eye to locate said phone which is now somewhere on the floor under your bed, and getting progressively louder still. You’re so tired your head feels like it’s full of lead. You press snooze ‘one last time’ and keep the phone in your hand and tell yourself, “Last time, promise.” You fall back into that state of utter exhaustion somewhere between deep sleep and sleep paralysis.
When you finally hoist yourself out of bed, you’re a good 20 to 30 minutes behind schedule, and run around with a cup of coffee while trying to get yourself dressed, the kid(s) ready for school and the dog out for its morning pee. You manage to get everyone out the door and show up for school/work/meeting just a few minutes late (that’s sort of like being on time, right?).
You feel groggy and dizzy and it’s going to take at least two to three cups of coffee to get rid of the fog. Sound familiar?
How Our Sleep Cycles Work
The average adult has about four to five sleep cycles a night. You may be thinking, “Ha! Not if you have little ones, are burning the candle at both ends, are married to your job, etc…” I get it. When you’re a parent, an insomniac, chronically anxious, in a new relationship, and so on, you’re lucky if you eek out 6 hours of sleep most nights. No matter. Whether you’re only getting four sleep cycles a night or are lucky enough to get five or more, a sleep cycle lasts about 90 minutes. Those cycles shift a bit as the night progresses so that your body typically gets more non-REM sleep in the first half of the night and a higher percentage of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep in the second half of the night.
The non-REM part is made up of three stages. Stage 1 generally only last a few minutes. It’s when you transition from wakefulness to sleep. This is the lightest stage of sleep and if you’re woken up during this stage, you likely didn’t even know you were asleep. During Stage 2, you can still be awakened fairly easily. But once you hit Stage 3, the deepest sleep stage, waking up is difficult.
Non-REM sleep is followed by 10 to 20 minutes of REM sleep. This is the stage during which eye movements become rapid, hence the name. It’s the stage when most dreaming happens and when your brain makes sense of new information and stores it in its long-term memory.
So, if, for instance, your alarm goes off at 6:30 a.m., and that you went to sleep at 11 p.m. you are three quarters of the way through, or just finishing your fifth sleep cycle. You’ll be in full REM sleep, and wake up fairly easily. That said, if you’re in a deep sleep stage, you’ll have a rough time waking up and feel disoriented for a few minutes.
Why Snoozing Makes You Feel Worse
Hitting the snooze button is like hitting reset. When you close your eyes again, you start over. Through the three non-REM stages, then onto REM. It’s the worst thing you can do. Your body is just re-entering deep sleep, it’s only part of the way through a cycle, and it’s brutally yanked out of that state by your alarm clock. Over and over again. That’s why you feel groggy and like your head is the weight of an anvil. This feeling is called sleep inertia. “Sleep inertia is the feeling of grogginess, disorientation, drowsiness, and cognitive impairment that immediately follows waking.” It usually lasts from 15 minutes to an hour BUT can last several hours when it’s caused by teasing your body with the promise of more sleep by giving it 10-minute snooze increments.
A 2019 study by the National Library of Medicine suggests that the effects of sleep inertia are exacerbated “if you’re awakened during deep sleep, also called REM sleep.” So, it stands to follow that if you keep hitting the snooze repeatedly, you’ll eventually be awakened during that stage, and it will leave you feeling even groggier than usual.
So, when the alarm goes off, it doesn’t matter how tired you feel, get up! As Mel Robbins, motivational speaker and author of The 5 Second Rule: Transform your Life, Work, and Confidence with Everyday Courage, would say, before you reach for that snooze button, just count backwards from five, 5-4-3-2-1, and get your *ss up. Sleeping for 2 or 3 more 10-minute increments won’t make you feel better, it’ll make you feel worse.
Top Ways to Make It Easier to Get Out of Bed in the Morning
Pressing the snooze button is a hard habit to break. I don’t know about you, but half the time I do it, I don’t even realize I have until I wake up 10, 20 minutes later in an anxiety-fueled rush of adrenalin. We have to be out the door in 20 minutes! No one is up, no one is dressed and the dog is looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.
So, if you, like me, press the snooze button out of pure reflex, here are the top things you can do break the snooze habit and to get out bed as soon as your alarm goes off.
1. Follow the cardinal rules of sleep hygiene
- Keep a consistent sleep schedule
- No napping after 3 p.m. and never for more than 30 minutes at a time (remember
- Exercise every day but not before bed
- No caffeine after 2 p.m.
- Avoid alcohol and heavy meals before bed
- Spend the last hour of the day winding down
- Limit your screen time and turn off all devices an hour before bed
- Turn your bedroom into a sleep oasis
- Try journaling to put your worries to rest
- Get up if you can’t sleep
Doing all those things will increase the likelihood of a good night’s sleep and it’s a lot easier to pull yourself out of bed in the morning when you’re feeling rested.
2. Set your alarm for a realistic time
Most of us go to bed at night exhausted and with the best of intentions – for tomorrow. “I’ll do it in the morning,” you tell yourself when you look at the mountain of dirty dishes, half-eaten lunches and your kids’ strewn about ‘almost done’ homework. Then, the next thing you know, it’s morning and you’re caught in a marathon of last-minute prepping, packing, and checking e-mail while you walk the dog and eat on the run.
Plan to do all the prep, set-up, lunches, homework, etc.. the night before. Then set your alarm clock for the actual time you usually crawl out of bed and get up.
3. Sit up as soon as you wake up
To resist pressing the snooze button, sit up in bed as soon as you hear your alarm go off. You’ll be one step closer to actually getting out of bed and the temptation to just roll over and go back to sleep won’t be as great. Next, turn a light on. Obviously, if you share a room with someone with a different schedule, that may not be an option. In any case, exposure to light will help you shake off the morning fuzzies so get out of bed before you change your mind and head into the brightest area of your home or to another room where you can turn a light on.
4. Move your alarm clock across the room
A good way to make sure you get out of bed as soon as your alarm goes off is to put your alarm clock or mobile at the other end of your bedroom. Now, when it goes off you’ll have no choice but to spring out of bed before it wakes everybody else up.
5. Spend 10 minutes meditating
Instead of pressing snooze, Headspace co-founder and former Buddhist monk, Andy Puddicombe, recommends using that extra 10 minutes to prepare your mind for the day. He says, “I think doing it (meditation) first thing in the morning, one, ensures that you do it. Two, you start the day fresh, and three, you lay down a foundation of mindfulness that means that you are more likely to make mindful decisions throughout the day, and are more likely to experience that quality of life throughout the day.”
Replace Snoozing with Meditation
So tomorrow morning, when your alarm clock starts chiming, turn it off and sit up. Cross your legs, sit still and pay attention to your breathing. Notice the temperature of the air entering your nose, your belly rising and falling as it fills with air as you inhale and exhale. If your mind wanders, and it will, notice and acknowledge your thoughts without judgement, then let them go and bring your attention back to your breathing. For the last few minutes, take time for self-compassion. On each in-breath, focus on the upcoming challenges of the day (deadline, exam, doctor’s appointment, commuting…) and on each out-breath, wish yourself the same happiness and wellness that you wish for your best friend.
Are you a snooze button morning person? If. you are, how many times do you hit snooze before you finally get out of bed every morning? What have you tried?
Related: Good Sleep Hygiene is Key for Better Sleep
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