Years ago I used to work morning and afternoon. In some occasions I had only ten minutes to sleep before leaving home for working in the afternoon. I used to fall sleep immediately, to have some dreams and to wake up without needing any alarm.

I have heard about an alarm clock which analyzes your sleep phases and cuts down your sleep when you’re not in a deep one. Anybody knows about this?

Here are two interesting addresses I’ve just found :

http://www.axbo.com
http://www.clubnseries.com/descargas-aplicaciones-5-edicion/35236-super-happy-wake-up-s60-v5.html

I have the problem with forgetting to turn it off and waking up when I really want to sleep in. This is particularly annoying when the last time I used it was something like 2am.

1. If I have forgotten to recharge the phone it lets me and everyone in the house know.

2. Sometimes somebody working late sends me a payment in the middle of the night and the bank sends me an SMS. My wife doesn’t like new technology of this kind.

3. If I have gotten too little sleep and I try to snooze the alarm (two clicks) I sometimes do something wrong… I think maybe click three times, and the phone calls the last number uses. Luckily for me it’s very often my daughter but she isn’t very pleased about this.

4. Holidays in the middle of the week… hate them. I usually forget to turn off the alarm.

But usually everything is fine.

By far, the most effective thing for getting me out of bed in the morning is the “I-gotta-go-now” dance of the beagle next to my bed. Just knowing that if I don’t get up and get her out, I will be scrubbing a carpet gets me motivated like no other means.

The “my bowl is empty and I’m hungry NOW” dance of the cats as they knock things off my dresser is also an effective (but truly annoying) means of getting up.

I use “Wouldn’t It Be Nice”, from The Beach Boys, because of how it starts. The first few seconds (small calm intro) I stretch, then there’s a single drumbeat (means yellow light to me – or open eyes), and finally the loud rallying “wouldn’t it be nice” chorus kicks in, and at that point I jump out of bed like a well trained dog (exactly like a well-trained dog in fact!)

In fact it works so well once you learn to respond to it without thinking, that sometimes if I wake up naturally before the alarm time, and I don’t feel like getting out of bed, I manually put the music to play (I use my iPod with a mini stereo bellow my pillow) so it gets me out

- Something for breakfast you really enjoy
- Think of the nice shower
- Think of the most pleasing thing awaiting you on that day
- etc.

What are you doing to actually get out of your bed?

I’ve also used alarms on my computer including a plugin for Winamp that allows you to wake up to your playlist.

Have a great day:)
Patrick.

Solution: I recorded my own alarm sound: I whispered: “Mark, get up!” (in German, as I don’t know if my sleeping ego will understand English ).

The effect is interesting: Although the volume is very, very low I still get up better than with any radio sound. I think it’s because I addressed myself. Perhaps it would have been even better (and sound less silly) if I would have recorded my wife’s voice.

Putting the computer in the other room sounds like a good idea, but I’m afraid I would sleep through it. I once slept through the apartment next to mine burning to the ground.

I set my Alarm Clock on my Macbook to wake me up, with “Easy Wake” set to 2 minutes so that it’s at least a little gradual. And it’s in the living room, so I have to get up to turn it off. Then I stumble my way to the coffeepot, make the coffee, and by the time I’m done with that, I’m usually awake enough to actually start the day.