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Alarm clocks are bad, yet everybody I know uses one. The reason is very simple, we all have jobs and need to get up in the morning! The point of sleeping is to feel refreshed and get rid of the tiredness that made us go to sleep in the first place. Do you ever wonder why a lot of people, when they wake up, feel worst than they did before they went to bed? Do people actually look forward to hitting the snooze button every morning after they almost had a heart attack from the nerve racking sound coming out of that little box? Why do we keep doing this? Understanding how sleep works can help you get up early and feel great, even if you use an alarm.
A Few Things to Know About Sleep
There are different sleep phases. The phase that most people have heard of is called REM (rapid-eye movement). It’s the phase that takes us to the land of dreams. The rest of the phases can be divided in two other kinds of sleep. There is light sleep from which we can easily be woken and then there’s deep sleep during which we are not aware of our physical environment and it takes a lot more to make us conscious again.
A typical cycle usually lasts 90 minutes and follows this pattern: light sleep, deep sleep, REM, start over or wake up. Alarm clocks are bad because they can wake us up during an undesirable sleep stage. Waking up feeling sleepy is often caused by waking up during a deep sleep phase. It doesn’t matter if you’ve been sleeping for two or for ten hours, if the alarm wakes you up during that stage you will feel tired and groggy. This is why you might feel better after sleeping 4.5 hours compared to 8.
At What Time Should I Go to Bed?
Armed with this knowledge we can try to minimize the bad side effects of using an alarm clock. By figuring out at what time our natural cycle ends we can estimate an appropriate time to go to bed. The first step is to use a little tool called math. Don’t get scared, it’s nothing complicated. Take the time you want to get up at and subtract multiples of 90 minutes to figure out at what time the sleep cycles should start. Let’s take 6:30 am as an example:
- 6:30 am –>please wake up here feeling good and refreshed!
- 5:00 am
- 3:30 am
- 2:00 am
- 12:30 am
- 11:00 pm
- 9:30 pm
- 8:00 pm
By falling asleep at any of these times the last sleep cycle should end at 6:30 am and put you in a state where you can easily wake up. There are two more things to consider. The first is that those are times to fall asleep at, not times to go to bed at. If it usually takes 30 minutes to fall asleep, then get into bed 30 minutes prior to the calculated time. Second, the 90 minute cycle is an average. It will vary for everybody and can be affected by things like caffeine or alcohol consumption and physical activity during the day. I am actually trying to figure out how long my sleep cycle is by keeping a sleep log.
How To Use an Alarm Clock
Getting back to the alarm clock. The trick is to use two alarms, one that will wake you up from the light sleep phase and one to take care of you if you are still passed out in the deep sleep phase. The first alarm should be set 30-45 minutes before your desired wake up time and be a very soft alarm, like your favorite morning radio show but keep the volume very low. The second alarm should be at the time you must be out of bed (6:30 am in our example) and be the annoying beeping sound you just love to hear every morning.
If everything goes well, your last sleep cycle will end when the first alarm is playing. Since you go into light sleep at that point, this alarm should be enough to wake you up. Make sure you get up right away and enjoy the extra minutes you have. If you go back to sleep, chances are you won’t feel as good when you get up a few minutes later. The second alarm is just a fail safe and will wake you up in case the first alarm fails to do so. If the first alarm never wakes you up, adjust it to be a little louder. If that still doesn’t work you can set the first alarm earlier, up to 90 minutes before the second alarm. Note at what time you wake up to figure out how long your sleep cycle is and adjust accordingly.
Since a number of factors can influence when your last sleep cycle ends, it’s better to start looking at the waking time as a time period instead of a single point in time. Using your alarm clock to define a period of time will increase the chances of waking up at the right stage in your sleep cycle and should make that little snooze button a thing of the past!