It’s been a tread that hitting the snooze button once, twice, ten times in the course of a morning has become, for many, part of the wake-up ritual, as having that daily cup of black coffee. As research has repeatedly shown, hitting the snooze button is becoming something of a common occurrence, as we all try to hold back the beginning of another hectic day and perhaps make up for the lost sleep. One way to break the circle is to go to bed earlier. Sleeping 5, 20, or 40 minutes more after the alarm goes off for the first time does not, in any way, compensate for the sleep we’ve been losing. Neither does it make us feel less tired or more willing to get out of bed and go to work. The easiest and most common-sense way to break this bad habit and get a resting sleep is to go to bed earlier.* Instead of going to bed at our usually-designated hour, we should do it half an hour. We should also set our body to “wake up” at the first ring by repeating it to ourselves a couple of times before falling asleep.
* Breaking the hitting-the-snooze-button circle is to avoid any unwanted distraction before bedtime. This means no TV, no computer, and no last-minute work papers, of course, because they might distract us to such an extent that we either go to bed filled with anxiety, or we fall asleep in the middle of things. If bedtime has arrived, we must put everything else aside and prepare for sleep – not for work or watching some mindless show we don’t like either way.
So, even if we’re not fully aware of it, sleeping after the alarm goes off actually does us more harm than good. It’s about time we tried a different approach to it then.
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