Snooze buttons are for wimps

December 8, 2015 • 12:15 pm

This cartoon, sent by reader jsp, got me thinking about snooze alarms. 10603321_10152701906455987_7485354927455930466_n

I use an alarm clock only when I have to get up very early for a flight; otherwise I have a theory (which is mine) that it’s not good for you to be abruptly awakened, and your sleep habits should allow you to arise naturally at the right time. But if you must use an alarm clock, why do you need the “snooze” button? Usually such things give you five or ten minutes of extra lying-in time, but some people press them repeatedly.

And this is what I don’t understand: if you have to be up by, say, 6:15 a.m., and set the alarm at six, knowing you’ll press the snooze button two or three times, why not set the alarm for 6:15 and just get up? Is there some extra benefit in getting your sleep in three alarm-interrupted five-minute increments (and that’s probably not good sleep anyway) rather than just extending your natural sleep by fifteen minutes? Plus SCIENCE has shown that hitting the snooze button makes you more tired and less productive during the day.

This has always baffled me, but perhaps readers can explain.

153 thoughts on “Snooze buttons are for wimps”

  1. My daughter used to have a hard time getting up while attending college. She developed a system with two alarms – one set for t and one on the other side of the room set for t + 15min. In order to stop the second one from ringing, she would have to get out of bed.
    I’ll have to ask her if she still does this method.

      2. My older son did the same thing (alarm across the room — only one alarm).

        But it only worked for a short while for him! He would eventually start sleep-walking across the room and shutting it off without really awakening. (This kid could sleep at any time under almost any conditions. He regularly slept through thunderstorms.)

        What eventually worked for (this text-addicted) him was using his phone and having the text notification chime as his alarm! He was so conditioned to look at texts … !

        1. I tried an app a year or two ago that makes you solve math problems to shut it off. Problem is, I’ve always been exceptional at mental math. I put it on the hardest level which gave me questions like 17 * 23 – 147 and I still managed to answer them all, shut the damn thing off and on occasion not remember even having awoken to do it.

      3. I just got an email from my daughter asking if she still uses two alarms:

        “Yep I still set three alarms on my phone and they keep repeating for at least 30 mins. I still hate mornings!”

    2. I work similarly. A mild alarm on the bunk-lamp, and a brain jarring terror on the other side of the room (for those who remember the film of Das Boot … the first crash dive). The first one I often wake before, but I need the threat of the big bastard to haul my fuddled state into facing the new day (or night, or toolstring, or whatever).
      Unfortunately, with bedspace being full, again, there’s a Noggin on 6-to-6 in the upper bunk so its got to be quiet electronic mutterings of “Wake up and inspect the gravel. Please wake up…” instead of Das Boot. Unless my minions shake a leg, again.

      1. Crash-dive alarm out in the middle of the North Sea might induce panic in the guy in the upper bunk! I can see he might object to that!

        1. If I’m sharing a cabin, I don’t need an alarm beyond the normal little beeps. Sleep isn’t deep. (Besides, inevitably we’ll be on intersecting shifts. normally both on 24×7 cover.)

  2. This has always baffled me, but perhaps readers can explain.

    In a word: laziness.

    There are days when getting into the office by a certain time is high priority. There are days when it is not. There are two ways to address this variability: I could change my alarm setting on a daily basis to account for this. Or I could use snooze on the days when being in the office by a certain time is not critical. The latter actually requires less button-pushing than the former. So I do the latter.

    What’s more, I currently use my phone rather than the standard bedside alarm. This has allowed me to do away with even more button-pushing, as my phone automatically turns the alarm off on weekends.

    Now, if I had a consistent pattern of ‘critical days’, then I would do as you suggest and I would change my alarm to match it (example: a new boss comes in and decides he’s going to hold a 7:30am group meeting every Monday). But until that happens, I’m content to minimize the energy expended fiddling with my alarm by setting a single, standard wakeup time for all weekdays, and just hitting snooze on the days when waking up at that exact time is not needed.

    1. I should also add that, like most if not all people, I have a seasonal variation in my sleep pattern. So while my alarm clock is always set to the same, day-in-day-out time I ‘should’ get up for work, it’s really only functioning to wake me up about half the year. The other half (late spring-early fall), I end up waking and getting up before it goes off because of the light.

    2. “laziness”

      I am not a morning person. I frequently work at the office until 9*pm, or even midnight, happily working away at a time when morning people are too tired to even watch a film. That is not laziness — it is attending to your natural circadian rhythms.

      When people with a different circadian rhythm from mine base accusations of laziness on my sleeping/waking cycle, that automatically lowers my opinion of them.

      1. But the question is not why some people rise late and work late (or rise early) but why they set the alarm for a time earlier than they actually rise and then keep pressing the snooze button. If I understand correctly, Eric’s laziness theory relates to him not bothering to re-set his alarm clock each day to reflect the time he actually needs to be at work because he finds it less trouble to just press snooze than to re-st the clock.

  3. For me, the snooze button is a long developed habit that I don’t have the will power to overcome when I awaken in a groggy state. I’m also an offender of the no device in the bedroom policy. My alarm clock is on my phone and I often browse for a few minutes before I go to sleep and then put the phone next to the bed. Of course, then I’m too tired (or lazy) to go hide it somewhere when I’m ready to nod off.

    As for not using an alarm, I would do this if I could. But I’m one of those night people who will naturally sleep a bit longer each day if I don’t use the alarm. I’ve always envied those people who can naturally awake at 6 AM, jump out of bed and happily greet the world.

    1. Yeah, I think it’s a will power thing for most snooze-function users. Jerry is probably just a morning person. For those who aren’t, and for whom “conscious” is not an accurate descriptor of their morning state, just hopping out of bed on the first try is, well, impossible.

      I am not a morning person.

      1. I concur…even when I sleep until I naturally awake, which I often do on weekends, my first order of business is to shower, eat and have coffee. Only after a solid hour has surpassed do I have tolerance for a high level of activity or noise.

      3. I am also not a morning person. Had to be while I was teaching, but have reverted back to night-owlness since I’ve retired. Even when I’ve been under anaesthesia they’ve had to prod me to wake up:-( I contend that it has nothing to do with laziness. I can get a lot done in the late hours.

        1. Yeah, I was referring only to my laziness to get out of my warm bed and hide my phone somewhere. I don’t think being a morning or night person has to do with laziness either, as we night people could easily say morning people are lazy for falling asleep so early 😉

          Unfortunately, there is somewhat of a stigma against night people. I remember being told countless times as a child that I was lazy for sleeping in, but in the end it looks like we rule! And we have Churchill and Darwin as company!

          1. You forgot to mention Hitler!

            Now was that a classic Godwin or what? 😉

            I’m a night owl too, though not in the same class as my wife, who will happily watch TV till 4a.m. then sleep till midday. I can’t do that, 2a.m.’s quite OK, but by 4a.m. I start to worry about getting to sleep and that is a fatal trigger for insomnia.

            cr

          1. I’m basically fine once my feet hit the floor, though don’t like a lot of noise first thing. Used to hate when my mother would sing Good morning to youuuuuuuuu to us four kids.

          2. I don’t like noise & I don’t want to talk. Even after I get to work 30-60 mins later, I don’t want to talk.

      4. and for whom “conscious” is not an accurate descriptor of their morning state,

        Quoth I to Mr Mud most mornings : “wrong side of the first mug of coffee”.

        1. I do have one good excuse though — after breakfast and before I have to go to work is my practice time (music). Works great for me.

      6. I agree with MB. I too am NOT a ‘morning person’.

        So when I have to get up on time (not often now I’ve retired!) I set the alarm clock for 10 minutes before my actual get-up time, and another clock (my cheap clocks don’t have snooze buttons) for the actual time. I also put the second clock well out of reach.

        Usually, the first one wakes me and I lie there for 5-10 minutes gradually gathering consciousness before I stagger out of bed.

        The other reason for the second clock is a backup. I have been known to cancel the first alarm automatically without even regaining consciousness, as evidenced by its cancelled state when I do wake up an hour later.

        cr

    2. I tried to post a reply below but it didn’t seem to work. Here it goes again.

      Understand that I’m messaging this out of love chrisbuckley80. You may very well have insomnia. “Night Owl”s is about as illusory as people with “addictive personalities” when in fact both just describe problems people have, night owls are insomniacs and people with addictive personalities are addicts. If you want to be one of those people that wakes up regularly and when they want to I would recommend CBT. Therapy might be worth your time. It took me a long time to recognize that I had a problem but when I did it sure helped me.

      http://www.cbtforinsomnia.com

      1. If insomnia is my problem, it certainly isn’t of the severe kind. I’ve never stayed up all night unintentionally and whenever I do decide to go to bed, I’m usually asleep quickly. In fact, many nights I’ll fall asleep in my recliner in front of the TV. This is definitely a bad habit as at some point I’ll be jolted awake and once in awhile not be able to go immediately back to sleep in my bed. This never occurs if I actually go to my bedroom.

        It’s interesting you mention cognitive behavior therapy though. My wife is a behavior analyst and administers this therapy to special needs children. A few years ago, I had a work schedule that required I be in the office by 7 AM. I actually worked on getting up by conditioning my response to the alarm. I would do practice sessions during waking hours by setting the alarm and then hopping out of bed, beelining to the shower and turning it on. Wash, rinse, repeat. This actually worked as I was able to condition my body to do this at 5:30 AM without being fully awake. Now I have a more flexible schedule and let this behavioral conditioning go. I’m sure if I were to place the alarm across the room again though, I could easily slip back into this habit. That said, there’s never been a time when I’ve enjoyed waking up early and this goes back as far as I can remember. My wife is the same way and to some extent, my kids are too. We have friends who complain their children woke them up at 5 AM on a Saturday. We’re always puzzled and ask why they just don’t put them back to bed. We do that and our kids, 8 and 4, will often sleep in past 9:00 on weekends.

        1. Kids who aren’t morning people are the best.

          My 6yo daughter usually wakes up around 8; sometimes later (when school’s not in session). We’ve hosted a couple of sleep-overs, and I feel so bad for those parents.

        2. I’m pretty darned sure that some people really are “night owls” and some are “morning people”.

          I’ve seen it too frequently and consistently through life.

          I am grateful that my wife and I are aligned on this (morning people).

          I know several friend couples where they are misaligned and it’s just bad all the way around.

  5. I happen to enjoy falling asleep again, especially alongside my partner. I wasn’t aware of that research you cited. It makes sense that starting, then interrupting, a sleep cycle is a bad idea. I’ll have to think about that.

  6. Our alarm clock broke shortly after we had our first kid and it hasn’t been needed in the seven years since. Kids have no snooze buttons. No matter what you do or say, they only get louder.

    1. Children become teenagers, and then the early rise feature disappears. However by that stage the parents are conditioned to awakening at some god-forsaken hour and going to bed in the middle of the afternoon to compensate.

      My real question is how someone with no kids or alarm gets the Hili post up so early in the morning!

      1. Well, the comments here are useful to me scientifically. In addition to actigraphy data, I have data on chronotype (preference for activity in the morning or evening). Do evening types (“Owls”) hit their alarms more in the mornings than morning types (“Larks”)? I’m not asking this question of my data, but I wonder whether the predisposition to arise later influences the tendency to hit the snooze button.

        Jerry does seem like a Lark based on the consistency with which he posts early in the morning.

        Chronotype varies over the lifespan, as Simon Hayward noted about teenagers.

        1. Well, the exigencies of getting to work usually dictate what time one rises – which will be almost the same regardless of chronotype.

          And as a night owl, I can testify that waking up early in the morning is traumatic, mitigated slightly by the more gradual awakening permitted by the snooze button.

          So I’d hypothesise that night owls do use the snooze button a lot more.

          cr

          1. Hey infiniteinprobabilit,

            Re your first paragraph: Actually 20% of the developed world works nonstandard hours, hours outside of the typical 9am-5pm schedule, and many work during their biological night. If you are White or middle class, the odds of you arriving at work during standard hours are higher than if you are a minority or poor. Thus, time of arrival at work follows the social gradient, society segregates by diurnal time, and the burden of working at night falls on those whose lives may already be impacted by the stresses and disadvantages of poverty and racial inequity.

            Those who happen to be night owls and who self-select into working nonstandard hours may be somewhat protected from some of the adverse health effects that come with working nonstandard hours. But there is sill the question of whether those who sleep when the rest of society is bustling with noise get the type of sleep quality that is experienced by those whose sleep-wake activity pattern is in synch with the light-dark cycle.

          2. Here in NY I remember there was a movement to shift high school kids start time later. It was supposed to allow the kids to be better rested during their growing years. What I figured would happen was the kids would just stay up later at night and the benefit would be lost. I don’t think anything was done to change the start time.

          3. @rickflick, ya, Seattle recently voted to delay start times for its high schoolers. In the 2016/17 year, they’ll start at 0845. I, too, wonder whether the kids will just stay up later and how they’ll measure whether the extra hour improves teen health. Do they think they’ll see an improvement in test scores? Fewer absences? Better grades? It looks like the move to start later has come from the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) recommendation that schools start at 0830 to encourage teens to get 8.5-9 hours of sleep a night and the CDC’s report that fewer than a third of teens currently do.

            Establishing steady sleep patterns early on doesn’t seem anything but wise. We don’t value rest enough. The AAP’s social zeitgeiber (translation=time-giver) is needed to counteract all the other messages we get to ignore sleep. As far as circadian biology goes, light, exercise, and when we eat entrain our rhythms, but the social signal is the uber entrainer.

            Looks like the average time of arrival at school in NY is 0800.

            http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/seattle-school-start-times_564d57f8e4b00b7997f941d5

          4. Charleen:
            Yes, it is unfortunate if they don’t have a way to measure effects of the change. Maybe parents will notice a difference.

          5. Hi Charleen

            I realise my first paragraph was a generalisation, not applicable to everybody.

            I’d just make this point – many work hours (even white middle-class) are 8am – 5 pm. And given travelling time and commuting, most workers will still be getting up quite early in the morning. This might suit early birds, certainly not night owls.

            On the other hand, true night shifts don’t suit night owls either.

            cr

          6. I’m a night owl. I’d so love to work night hours but it would mean I’d never see family or friends. I’d probably get really vampire-y too since I’m already pale I’m sure some over zealous person would stick a stake in me.

          9. “I’d so love to work night hours but it would mean I’d never see family or friends”.

            And if you became entirely nocturnal, Diana, we wouldn’t get to see your chipmunks and chickadees!

  7. Actually I love snooz buttons. I don’t need to be fully awake when I hit the button, but it gives me a chance to gradually get focused.

    As a side point, when Microsoft Outlook advises you that you have a meeting starting, it offers you a ‘Snooze’ button. Maybe that is a good option.

  8. I agree with Jerry on both points: I use an alarm clock only when I have to wake up very early, and using the snooze button is intrinsically silly. If you have to use an alarm clock to get up, just set it for the time you need to get up!

  9. Well, as someone who is often exhausted and right now anaemic (and having a hard time getting out of it this time though I see my skin isn’t as pale as it was last week), every night I fully intend to get up but when I’m awoken I’m still exhausted so I just hit snooze. Even 10 minutes feels like it is forever when I do that. Last night I went to bed at 8:30 and I was still completely exhausted when I woke up this morning. Last week, I couldn’t get out of bed and had to call in sick. I had already slept most of the weekend and by Monday, I was so tired, I couldn’t wake up and barely remember shutting off the alarm. I slept all day that day.

    I wish I could just get up naturally but that never happens — on the weekend, my dog wakes me up. She starts by licking me, then jumping on the bed & licking me then whining then full on barking….she’s basically an alarm clock with an escalating ringer.

    1. Perhaps you should try a light clock. I use one and find it very helpful to regulate circadian rhythms.

      I program mine to take 30 min. to go from dark to full illumination but, except when I am very tired, I am generally awake in less than 5 min. So I have 25 min. to hit the snooze when I’m ready.

      1. I forgot to add before I posted, that is a condition that I have. Two years ago I finally got a c-pap machine. I am not fond of it, but the difference it makes has been astonishing. When I wake up naturally I am alert</i.

      2. I was just tested for sleep apnia. The test device consists of a line around the chest for breathing, a nasal cannula, an O2 meter on the finger and a sensor tape on the jaw for teeth grinding. A recorder monitors all this. In my case I stopped breathing twice for about a minute each time, and my blood O2 dropped to 74. So, that’s a positive diagnosis.

        1. Up to you, but if you just do it twice over a nights’ sleep, I would just leave it at that. Mine is much more frequent.

          1. Yes I was wondering where my numbers fit in the overall apnea population. I usually have bouts of drowsiness during the day, which I suppose could have other causes. But the treatment looks like it will be free through the dentist’s office so I will probably be fitted for an oral insert. I’ll have to see how it goes.

      3. I hope if I have sleep apnea I just die in my sleep and get it the hell over with instead of dying slow over decades like we normally do.

          1. Yeah me too but who cares, when you’re dead you don’t know what you’re missing. All the sleepiness and other physical BS is just over and the living have to deal with your stinky, stiff corpse and all your books.

          2. You’re right of course. But this book I’m reading is a real page turner. I’ll decide what to do when I finish. Oh, and I’m going out to a concert on the weekend. It should be good. No, not this week. I’ll decide after the holidays. Get back to me in February. No wait, make it June, I don’t want to miss the spring rowing season. Ah, what the hell, I guess I’ll be here for quite some time. So many things, so little time.

      1. I’ve fracked my sleep for a while and I don’t wake up during the night though. Iron deficiency also stops oxygen circulating very well. I feel breathless with little effort amd dizzy sometimes.

        1. @Diana:

          Seeing this and the pale, vampire references makes me want to send you a hug. I hope the anemia resolves, and if it’s a side effect of treatment, I also hope you have a full recovery from whatever the treatment is for.

          1. Thanks. It’s really from nothing more then I changed the iron supplement I take and the pharmacist told me to take less. A month or so later, here I am. It’s stupid because I was supplementing with iron but became anemic anyway. I am naturally pale so didn’t notice that I’d lost all colour in my lips and my finger nails were white.

          2. Okay, glad it’s not more complicated. I hope you feel better soon.

            (I think about iron from time to time, as I found out I’m a carrier for hemochromatosis. Carriers aren’t usually symptomatic, but if were, I’d have trouble with too much of it.)

  10. Other then ensuring that I get up in time to go to the airport early ( and I almost always get up before that alarm anyway), I have not used an alarm clock since 1968.

  11. I have a theory (which is mine) that it’s not good for you to be abruptly awakened, and your sleep habits should allow you to arise naturally at the right time.

    You may have to fight someone for it. I have an app on my phone called Sleep Cycle Alarm Clock that is based on this principle. From their blurb:

    As you sleep you go through different phases, ranging from deep sleep to light sleep. The phase you are in when your alarm goes off is critical for how tired you will feel when you wake up.

    Since you move differently in bed during the different phases, Sleep Cycle can use the microphone or accelerometer in your iPhone to monitor your movements and determine which sleep phase you are in.

    Sleep Cycle wakes you when you are in your lightest sleep phase.

    I was skeptical but it’s a free app and I usually feel SO awful when I wake up that I gave it a try out of desperation. I do think it works when I have used it. I don’t always use it, though, because I find having the phone on my bed next to me, as required, kind of bothersome. The alarm also fades in slowly which probably helps too.

    1. I was looking to see if somebody else would mention Sleep Cycle. It’s not perfect, but it’s the least-worst alarm clock I’ve ever had in any form.

      b&

    2. That is a very valid phenomenon. In my case the cycle has a frequency of about two hours. That is, I may wake up naturally at, say, 7-30am, if I allow myself to doze off again I’ll wake again at about 9-30. But if I had the alarm set to 8-30, it’s hell trying to struggle back to consciousness.

      ‘Sleepiness’ during the waking hours goes in about the same cycle. I might get hit by a wave of drowsiness at my desk at 2-30, but if I can resist it for a quarter hour or so then I’m okay for the next couple of hours.

      cr

    3. I’m going to try it. Hopefully, I don’t screw it up and accidentally make myself into a vampire or something by messing with sleep cycles when I feed it the wrong information.

      1. Very interesting, Charleen. Kittehs must sleep really inefficiently, seeing as they seem to snooze about 23 hours a day.

  12. The alarm gets more annoying with each snooze interval and is an effective way to start the day in an agitated state. I agree the solution is to set the alarm for when you need to get up.

    Interesting to learn why mechanical alarm clocks were set with nine minute snooze intervals.

  13. Never use alarms (except for travel). If you need to habitually wake early, go to bed early. If you cannot sleep well, exercise. If that does not work, exercise harder and work harder.

    1. What time do you get up? (I get up at 04:55. SOMEtimes I do automatically. But not always. And I do exercise, every day, and I go to bed early (usually by 8:15).

      Sometimes isn’t consistent enough for me.

      1. 5:30. With kids this it is ±:30. Weekends suck because ritual is fried. Humans are evolved for ritual…good for sleep patterns, but shitty as religion hijacks those same cravings for familiar habits.

        1. Ha! Yeah, our weekends totally mess up our schedules as well! I always tell everyone I’m jet-lagged Monday mornings – because it’s true!

  14. I am like you…don’t use snooze. I do have to close the door to keep Ms kitty out of the bed and room. Otherwise there would be no sleep.

    She is right there when I open it about 6 am. and must feed her before doing anything.

  15. I like to luxuriate in the time between the first alarm and the second. If the time is around at least 10 minutes and I am quite relaxed- every so often I have a lucid dream which I delight in.and which often is either hilarious or insightful.

  16. I slept the worst when I had two young kids plus a family physician husband who delivered lots of babies and we would get the blow-by-blow phone calls all night. He often slept through the phone calls, (and crying kids) but I always was startled awake by the first ring. Not playing victim here, just remember craving a full night’s uninterrupted sleep;-)

  17. Sleep. I’m exploring sleep in my methylation among shift workers study. I have actigraphy data (measure of sleep quality). But alas, we didn’t have the foresight to ask about snooze-button behavior! That could have been interesting 🙂 Really. Does snooze-button behavior differ depending on whether one works the night versus the day shift? Does it correlate with the quantitative measure of sleep quality?

    My sleep rhythms synch up with whomever I’m living with (should I have a partner) and also depend on when I have social obligations in the mornings. Sadly, left to my own accord, I rarely get up before I have to, except when I’ve given myself an arbitrary goal involving others. For instance, I can happily make myself arise at 5:45 to bike to the gym if I have other humans to meet there. But getting up to go for a 6:00AM run by myself? Forget it. On many occasions, I have set the alarm with just that intention, only to hit the snooze button until going for that run was no longer possible. The snooze-button is the get-out-of-jail free card for activities I think are a good idea in the evening but actually have little intrinsic interest in doing alone.

  18. For wimps, all right. Ya gotta get up before seven, pull an all-nighter. That’ll put hair on your chest.

    1. Once while in grad school I stayed up for 72 straight hours without so much as a nap to get a poster ready for a scientific meeting. I was nearly hallucinating toward the end.

  19. I sort of get the explanation given in comment #2 where the time that you have to get up varies. However I have to get up at the same time every day. I start work at 08:00 every week day, I also go in about half an hour early because the traffic is much lighter then. As stated in the OP, I set the alarm for the time that I need to get up and then, when it goes off, I get up. I see it as a matter of self discipline. I often wake up before the alarm goes off but I can’t be sure that I will so I need the alarm to make sure that I’m up on time. To set the alarm half an hour early so that I can spend half an hour procrastinating seems like insanity to me.

  20. The practice only makes sense if the wakeup sound is a relatively soothing and gentle one.

    But then in makes more sense if the wakeup sound is a continuous soothing sound that will endure for several minutes.

  21. I’m with Ken Pidcock–I simply love going back to sleep.

    In addition, I am concerned that if I didn’t have a snooze button I would simply turn the alarm clock off and go back to sleep. Snoozing at least means the alarm will go off again, rather than me just being late.

  23. Call me a whimp but at 4am in the morning sometimes (on rare occasions) I need back up. Snooze is my anti ‘your fired’ ‘serious ribbing’ button…. used, but a rarity. Otherwise I’m ready to go. I use my phone as the alarms are less evasive and rise in volume as you ignore.

  24. It’s great that Jerry can get up without a clock – I used to be able to do that, and even simply will myself to wake up at the time of my choosing. However, now days that no longer works, and I’m groggy when I wake up. A snooze button is sometimes vital because otherwise I’ll just hit the “off” button in my stupor and go back to sleep, with no chance of waking up in a timely manner.

  25. Especially in winter, there’s no better feeling than relaxing in a nice warm bed… The problem is you can’t feel that when you’re asleep! That’s where the snooze button comes I to play for me

  26. I am TOTALLY with you Jerry.

    I NEVER hit the (expletive deleted) snooze button.

    I want to SLEEP as long as possible. Once the alarm has gone off, it’s no longer possible.

    My wife on the other hand …. (I’m in charge of the alarm.)

  27. why snooze buttons? To provide fodder for cartoonists of course.

    Or, to give people times to resent being woken up. Ridiculous parts of the get up part of life!

  28. One aspect is that it feels really really good. Being jarred awake by an alarm is not pleasant, but hitting the snooze button and drifting easily back into la-la-land? Mahvelous.

  29. I am naturally a night owl and unless I force myself to get on a morning schedule, generally awaking early has been hell for me. I’m part of my own problem though. I enjoy falling asleep with the television on for back round noise and a fan on. I get uncomfortably warm and also have some breathing problems, and the fan seems to increase my comfort at night. I also happen to be a rather deep sleeper. I tend to not wake up from alarms or someone ringing the doorbell, etc.. and certainly the fan and television noise does not help anything but to drown out alarms and other noise. The only time alarms work is when I make sure I get a full, natural night of sleep (maybe at least 8 hours?). Unless someone is around to wake me, I’d never be able to wake on my own after 4 hours of sleep or less, so on nights where insomnia kicks in, I end up just pulling an all nighter and staying up until it’s time for my obligation.

    (Not true insomnia necessarily, I’ve never been diagnosed, but just wanted to clarify that I am using the term in a general way, the same as the way laypeople use the word “theory”.)

  30. This reminds me of people who set their watches or clocks 5 or 10 minutes fast so that they’ll get to appointments on time. This baffles me. If you know the clock is set fast, then consistently leaving or arriving 5 or 10 minutes “late” requires the same skill set as just being on time in the first place.

    But then again, frightening numbers of people can’t find where they live on an unlabelled map, think the earth is 6000 years old, and would vote for Trump. Sigh.

    1. Yes I’ve known people who do that with the clocks. It irritates me to no end. If I know a clock is wrong, I do the mental calculation to figure out the right time. How is this in any way tricking anyone with math skills beyond that of an elementary school child?

  31. Let me try and bring some insight to this discussion as one of the estimated third of Americans that suffered from chronic insomnia. Until recently I was someone who was so tired I could shut an alarm off every single morning without realizing I was shutting it off. I just flat out would not remember. I had to set alarms way in advance in order to properly wake up. I would imagine that anyone who chronically relies on a snooze alarm is someone who has very poor sleep patterns. Never did I set an alarm early to snooze because I wanted to, it was because I had to otherwise I would risk failing at work and school. Snooze alarms are very stressful, the only way to move past it for me was online Cognitive Behavioral Therapy.

  32. Understand that I’m messaging this out of love chrisbuckley80. You may very well have insomnia. “Night Owl”s is about as illusory as people with “addictive personalities” when in fact both just describe problems people have, night owls are insomniacs and people with addictive personalities are addicts. If you want to be one of those people that wakes up regularly and when they want to I would recommend CBT. Therapy might be worth your time. It took me a long time to recognize that I had a problem but when I did it sure helped me.

    http://www.cbtforinsomnia.com

    1. @Marcus: perhaps I am not a typical night owl, but I always assumed I am. The problems described at the site you are linking seem entirely unrelated – it looks like it is for people who have trouble falling or staying asleep, and then have difficulty in the morning after not having had a good night’s rest.

      The night owl problem (mine, at least, but I assume its widespread) is very different. I’ve always assumed its just the result of a longer natural cycle: after 8 hours of good solid sleep we’re not rested yet, and after 16 hours of being awake we’re not tired yet. We don’t have particular problems falling asleep if we go to bed at this point, but it feels awfully inefficient to do that at a point in the day when you finally feel alert, especially after having felt groggy for much of the day. Left to our own devices we tend to go to bed later and later every night.

      As far as I’m aware the only fix would be to move to a more slowly rotating planet. I suspect a 27-hour day (9 asleep, 18 awake) would do wonders for me.

      1. As a Star Trek: Deep Space 9 fan, I have always been envious of the station’s 26-hour day. If I could sleep for 8 hours and then be up 18, I think that would be just about perfect. Else, for me it is much as you describe – I tend to feel the most “awake” in the last hours of my night, though unlike you I do often have trouble forcing myself to sleep at that point and end up laying awake in bed for a considerable amount of time (the other day I tried to go to sleep an hour early due to not feeling well, still spent 45 minutes staring at my eyelids). I wind up going most of my work week on 6ish hours of sleep, and then on my weekends I get 7 or 8 (ideally – often I end up staying up too late and have to set an alarm so that I don’t sleep in too late).

        So…. Yeah. 26 hour days would be wonderful.

      2. This is exactly what happens to me. Last year I flew to Hawaii, 5 hours west. The first night I was there, I stayed up until 11 local time, woke up at 8:30 and felt fully refeshed. By the end of the trip I was sleeping 2 AM to 10:30 AM. Left to my own circadian rythems, I might hit gold every 5 weeks or so when it comes to getting up early.

      3. konrad, there’s a lot in what you say. I always tend to lag behind the time of day too.

        It’s NOT insomnia, I know what that’s like and – on the occasions when I get it – it’s no fun at all.

        cr

  33. When I wake up by alarm, I never remember any of my dreams. If I slap 20 minutes of snooze time on top, I remember dreams. That little bit if head cinema is worth setting the snooze.

  34. I like to come into the day slowly. Thus first snooze. Then I plan the day on the second snooze then up. Never have ben at sharpest for morning.

  36. This is one of those issues that for me shows my just how hard it is to change ourselves – at least in my case.

    Probably every night…EVERY NIGHT…I promise myself I’ll get to bed on time, or even go to bed early. But I don’t. I get to bed far too late, wake up in the morning tired, get the kids off to school, and since I work out of home, I grab a bit more sleep then wake up and begin work. Which often means I also catch up on work after the kids have gone to bed. And the cycle repeats.

    Literally every day I want to change this behavior, week after week, year after year.
    And yet, I can’t seem to make it happen more than once here or there. It blows me away how much you can want yourself to do something and still not be able to do it!

    It reminds me of a number of years ago now, I got into a similar cycle with not exercising and eating poorly for a couple of years. And it was “tomorrow FOR SURE I’ll do it differently.”

    Every day I’d say that, yet every time fail the next day. Finally I had a hit bottom moment, something clicked, and I managed to finally change, lose the weight and have stayed that course for the last 5 years.

    I keep waiting for that same moment regarding sleeping times. But this getting to bed earlier thing, I just can’t seem to lick.

  37. Since I’m retired (yay!!), I don’t have to get up at any certain time except for flights & such. After years of habit of rising early for work (4:30 am), I can’t sleep late – it’s impossible. I have extended my rising time to 5 or 5:30 most of the time, but that is still pretty early! I think it might be genetic – most of my female ancestors (but not the males) were up by 4 or 4:30. It’s a family affliction apparently.

    1. Genetic makes sense, though the genetic component of chronotype isn’t fully understood. There are some association studies linking variation in circadian (“Clock”) genes with chronotype.

    2. I think it’s habit. In the summer I wake up around 4am and get up when I wake. I feel bright eyed and bushy tailed at this point and usually head out for a hour or two with the dog. Were I to force myself back to sleep I would feel groggy and tired when I did get up later. In Winter it’s different, I wake later and it’s a bigger chore to get going. I never use an alarm, so no snooze button, but darkness clearly affects me.
      I also think people go to bed WAY too late and that’s why they feel so tired in the morning.

      1. “I also think people go to bed WAY too late and that’s why they feel so tired in the morning.”

        Agreed. It’s often hard for people to shut off whatever it is that they are doing.

  38. … 64 years after she was presumed to have been born …

    So just about ready to make her nest at a condo in Florida?

  39. I have never been a morning person, and I need a good 9 hours sleep a night or else getting up in the morning will be exquisitely painful, but I don’t require an alarm clock. I tell myself what time I need to wake up, and I wake up. Occasionally if something is really critical (such as a plane to catch) I set an alarm just in case, but I always wake up before it goes off.

    Anyone who needs an alarm clock to awaken, is not getting enough sleep to function optimally, and should re-evaluate their priorities.

    1. Oh okay I guess cancer and iron deficiency is a mark of my poor character. I’ll get right on fixing that.

      1. What? Where did I say anything about character? I’m sorry for your bad health, that must make life very difficult and if you can’t get enough sleep then that makes things worse. You have my sympathy.

        1. You said that anyone who needs an alarm clock to wake up isn’t getting enough sleep and needs to reevaluate their priorities. That suggests it is always in the person’s control to feel refreshed upon waking and it often isn’t.

          1. I certainly did not intend to make that implication, regardless of my determination to get plenty of sleep I often fail and I don’t see how that can be interpreted as lack of moral fibre. On the contrary, most people I know who get by with little sleep, seem to thing that I suffer from a lack of character because I can’t. I had no idea this topic was so fraught! Accept my best wishes for a good night’s sleep.

          2. No worries, Marella. I’ve been a pissy mood all week because of exhaustion, migraines and a really awful work environment so I probably over reacted.

    2. If we’re into rash lifestyle advice, how about:
      ‘Anyone who doesn’t need an alarm clock to wake up is getting far more sleep than they really need and wasting hours of their day.’

      I like that wording much better. 😉

      And yes, I just re-evaluated my priorities and confirmed that doing interesting stuff vastly outweighs sleep. I’m certainly not about to lose four additional hours to sleeping…

      cr

      1. A related piece of clichéd advice: I’ll sleep when I’m dead.

        I agree with you though, sometimes I just get too immersed in an activity and stay quite alert and focused late into the night. Inevitably if I have a night with four hours sleep because I have to wake up early rhe next day, within a few days, my body makes up for it. I wish I had the ability to just wake up when I need to, it would make for an interesting study to figure out how people seem to be aware of the time while sleeping and wake up when they need to. When I let myself go without an alarm, I’m all over the map. I may wake up at 8 or I may wake up at 11.

      2. Well, you’ve re-evaluated your priorities and decided they are appropriate, that is entirely up to you. I gather you survive on five hours sleep a night? I am very envious, I’d just get sick if I did that.

        1. Yep, I used to survive on 5 hours or less a night. Alarm clock set to 6-15, and I usually tried to be in bed by 1am, or 2am at the latest (and it was usually 2am rather than 1am). Later than that I’d start to worry.

          I should admit that, since last June when I retired, I now sleep in much later. One of the best things about retirement is, I don’t have to worry what time I get to bed since I don’t have to get up early in the morning. (Why do the only TV programs worth watching start at 1 or 2 am?)

          cr

      1. That is approximately correct. It’s more likely a reply will be posted when comments are being made to respond to.

        But varying timezones also come into it. Right here it’s 7-50p.m. (New Zealand).

        From here, it seems PCC is likely to start posting new threads just before I head for bed.

        But I think the oddly quiet at the moment is just random fluctuations.

        cr

        1. Well I’m off to bed. 1 a.m. Having an early night as I had a late night (3am) last night & got up early (8-30am) this morning.
          Hey I’m retired, I can do that!

          cr

    3. I’m here…2:30 AM Eastern time. Heading off to get 5 or 5.5 hours of sleep in. This is later than usual, my latest is usually around 1 AM on weeknights but I got drawn into a FB battle about Trump’s fascist proposals regarding Muslims and, well, you know how those things go.

      I’m perfectly ready for long drawn out threads now, but no way in hell I’d want to wake up at six and think that hard, nevermind type.

  41. Humans seem to run on a cycle that makes everyone more or less awake and focused around the clock. At night it’s the aforementioned sleep cycle, but it’s continuing during the day. One cycle is said to be around 90 mintutes long, and I found it helpful to be mindful about it when problems with sleep or focus arise. A well placed tea break can make a difference.

    The trick is to be aware when one hits a “low” and then also be ready to bed, but never at other times — then it is suggested to get up and even change rooms to not condition oneself into laying awake for long (reading would work, too, but beware of bright screens). The same works in the other direction, but here the standard 8 hours sleep look like a bad idea (8/1.5), 7.5 or 9 might be better for not snoozing. Another factor is routine, which isn’t an option for everyone.

    I believe the snooze is there for people who need a few minutes to collect their conciousness. Alarm across the room, or brutal bomb scare siren might work too, as does a bucket of icy water, but why resort to such uncivilized methods?

  42. I don’t bother with snooze alarms. Multiple alarms set beforehand to go off at intervals in order to wake me up or encourage me to start waking up, yes, but not snooze alarms.

    If I’m in an energetic mood, I wake up on an early alarm and disable all the later ones. If I’m in a slow mood, I simply resist alarm after alarm until I feel capable of getting up. On a workday where I’m needed early, I adjust the times by setting them all earlier. On a Sunday, I disable all the alarms and get up whenever I feel like it. I don’t think I’d be half as obliging if I had to rely on a snooze button for any of this.

    I would like to explain what the difference is, but I honestly couldn’t say. My pet hypothesis is that setting up multiple independent alarms is like asking a squad of sharpshooters to shoot at you: even if some miss, sheer numbers will ensure I get hit. By contrast, setting up one alarm and relying on the snooze button is like hiring only one sharpshooter who can’t reload unless he hits me on the first try.

    My other pet hypothesis is the consistent script idea: that “morning-me” – who’s lazy and inclined to take lots of time doing anything – feels better when the alarms are “beyond control” rather than when it’s a result of immediate intervention, while “evening-me” – who’s more conscientious and forward-looking – feels better thinking of future-me as some lazy animal that needs prodding rather than as a cooperating agent who has to chip in to set more than one alarm. Maybe it’s a form of subconscious acting informed by mood or context.

    All I know is, I’m happy to face a barrage of pre-set alarms in the morning, but not a snooze button.

    1. OK, you are the first commenter I’ve noticed who admitted to multiple alarms. My daughter uses 3 alarms set on her smart-phone. It sounds to me like you go in for a higher count. Care to divulge the maximum number of alarms? (not a competition).

      1. Seven is the most I’ve ever tried, and even I thought that was going too far. Anything more than five is basically useless to me, and those extra alarms would just get disabled every morning anyway.

        Normally, it goes up to five, with six starting to feel excessive (though I have done it at times). I space them out at intervals no lower than 15 minutes but no higher than 30, which together covers roughly all the major stages of a 2-hour sleep cycle.

        Of course, these days I also try to get to bed at a decent time and not stare at a screen until the last minute, but baby steps…

  43. I think that the psychology of, and rationale for, the popularity of snooze buttons is simple and clear. It is a very appealing thing to know that after your sleep is shattered by an alarm, you can once again drift off into that blissful state, if only for a short time. Aoiding the inevidable, even briefly, can be intoxicating.

  45. I have nothing to say about snooze buttons (I don’t use one normally) but I can say I have noticed it is sometimes better (less exhausting) to get up too early (in my case, often by unexpected light) then to fall asleep again and get woken up “wrongly” by an alarm.

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