October 24th, 2005 in Lifehack, Lifestyle

Alarm clocks are bad: How to wake up and feel better

Recently we have a wave of resources and posts about sleeping, we introduced some posts on polyphasic sleep, the sleep cycle, and an extensive sleeping reference. I highlighted in the sleep reference that alarm maybe harmful for your sleeping cycle. Here is another experience from Vincent Cheung on alarm clock. He suggested that the alarm clock may wake you up even when you are in deep sleep. He suggested a system that can help this situation:

* Set an alarm to go off before you want to wake up.
* Make the alarm really quiet radio or music.
* Set a second alarm to go off at the latest time you want to wake up.
* Make the alarm the usual loudness.

The whole point is that the first alarm should be so quiet that it will only wake you up if you’re in “light” sleep. The second alarm is the back up to make sure that you wake up in time :).

Quite a smart suggestion. He even used this system for 7 years so I am sure it is quite effective.

Alarm clocks are bad. How to wake up and feel better. - [Vincent Cheung. Hat tips to Venki for the link!]

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Leon Ho

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The Barrister says on October 25th, 2005 at 12:53 am

Alarm clocks may be harmful to the sleeping cycle, but not as harmful as not using alarm clocks is to the working cycle . For some reason, my boss likes it better when I show up for work - on time.
Michele says on March 13th, 2008 at 5:59 pm

I don’t know if everyone can do this, but I can almost always wake up when I want just by telling myself to wake up at that time before bed. I usually tell myself to wake before the alarm clock so that my brain can pick the best time and I usually am awake 2-10 minutes before the alarm. I do still use an alarm so I don’t ruin my sleep worrying about not waking up.