I grew up before smartphones, so the alarm was a clock radio. I would hit the snooze button for about two hours, almost every day. I'd set my alarm early because I wanted some time before having to be anywhere, but then I'd hit the snooze button repeatedly until I had to get up. This made a vicious cycle where I set the alarm early because I knew I'd hit snooze repeatedly.
I tried moving my alarm clock to the foot of my bed. It worked for a couple days, then I could hit snooze there without waking up. Then I moved it across the room, and learned to walk across the room and hit snooze without waking up. I got as far as physically removing the snooze button from the clock, taping over the hole, and putting the clock on a high shelf where I had to stand on a chair and a desk to reach it. In about a week I could climb that desk, reset the alarm for nine minutes later, and go back to bed without waking up.
That led me to just not setting an alarm. I figured I would probably wake up later than the time I was setting my alarm for, but earlier than when I needed to be up. It worked; I was not late for anything that first week or so. As I got used to having no alarm, it made me pay way more attention to my bedtime routine. I went to bed earlier, because I knew I needed sleep in order to wake up. Instead of being jolted out of deep sleep, I woke up naturally during lighter sleep cycles when it's easier to get up.
That was 30 years ago now. With smartphones I set an alarm in order to be up in time to get my kid ready for school, but it rarely goes off; I now have a habit of getting up when I wake up before the alarm. I set alarms when I'm trying to make a 6am flight, but I have also chosen to not set an alarm for important events like exams and conferences and such.
Now, I only set alarms for early times, and only as a back-up. Unless I'm very sleep deprived, they're not needed.
To answer OP, over the past year, I've been on a quest to wake up earlier, and the answer has been a dull one. I've very slowly started going to sleep earlier. I started with an average "asleep" time of 1-2am, and am now at about 11pm. That's shifted my normal wake time from 7:30am to 6:30am. Those good at math will note that's actually more sleep, which has been great, too.
For me, a 2:30am to 7:30pm local time wake schedule allows direct daily communication in all important time zones; it has the added advantages of allowing for decent morning rituals and a solid 4 hours before anyone local is online, and eliminating the typical activities most people engage in after 8pm..
Along the same lines, I start my personal weekly schedule on Friday mornings with the aim of preemption of Friday afternoon crises and preparation for whatever looks likely to come along the following Monday.
My experience is that any schedule allowing for less than 8 hours sleep time needs vigilant protection of the time one actually goes to bed to avoid sleep deficit.
Over the last 9 months I've been focusing on health and losing weight. A large part of this is that I'm doing 5+K on the treadmill every week day. I prefer to do this in the morning, and if I'm not on the treadmill by 7 it is going to interfere with my work. Between getting ready and cooling down, it's a solid hour or hour and a bit to get 45 minutes of jog/walk time in. This morning I was on the treadmill by 6:30, got up at 5:15 and did some work first.
A few months ago an HN discussion mentioned An Algorithmic Solution to Insomnia, and I read that and tried some things in that. Largely it boiled down to: Taking a harder line on waking up early, getting a better bedtime routine. I go to bed usually around 9:30, but I've tried this last week to pushing it a little later to try to stay asleep. I have an all too frequent "wake up at 3am" problem.
I try to be in bed, not using my phone or computer, by 9:30. I take a 5mg melatonin, and read on a Kindle (because of the paper-like experience, dim front-light). I'm pretty much out within half an hour.
If I'm having problems getting to sleep or staying asleep, I use this trick where I go through each letter of the alphabet and think of 3 unrelated words that start with each letter. Probably >50% success rate on falling asleep when I do that. If I wake up at 3-ish, I'll try the letters, then I'll read some and try again.
I try to keep my hands off my damn phone. >50% success rate there, too. :-)
https://ilya.sukhar.com/blog/an-algorithmic-solution-to-inso...
I learned of this from the Huberman Lab Podcast, specifically the part where he touches on advancing your biological clock here:
#1 - 5-ish years ago I used an alarm clock app that would require me to get out of bed and take a picture of an object in my house away from the bedroom (I chose my microwave), then complete a puzzle, then review goals I had written down in order to turn the alarm off.
I probably used the app for 6 months and I have to say it absolutely and permanently changed my behavior.
#2 - I had an epiphany about how my diet affects my sleep. I still have a lot to learn about this but the casual observation that eating a big meal too close to bedtime, high salt meals, and anything that could lead to heartburn can wreck a night for me. It sounds obvious now but I was going through my life not having really acknowledged this.
All in all, I do think my difficulty was mostly that I was a little tired in the AM and prone to making excuses and hitting snooze… my sleep habits were otherwise ok to good.
If you’re in a similar situation, I’d try paying attention to the link between your diet and sleep (even if you don’t think the link is there!) and finding something that forces you over that hump of initial work of getting out of bed. Once you’ve had to run to your kitchen to shut your alarm clock off and jumped through a few mental hoops, you’ve already gone through much of the trouble of getting out of bed.
The main factors are schedule and quality.
1. Schedule- figure out how many hours you need. For me, it's about 8. Maybe you need 9, 10, or 6. Decide what time you want to get up, and start trying to go to bed at the appropriate time. Don't deviate or give up. This is where discipline matters.
2. Quality- don't sabotage yourself. Don't consume caffeine late in the day. Caffeine has a half life and chemistry doesn't lie. Just because you think you can sleep with caffeine in your system doesn't mean it isn't harming quality. Try to wind down your mind with reading or stretching. I'm not entirely sold on the effect of blue light, but to each their own. Alcohol should be avoided too, if you're serious about good sleep.
Finally, the most impactful motivator for me is how much my life improved once I started treating my sleep with respect. As I've gotten older, I noticed that the quality of my daytime cognition is far better with good sleep patterns (go figure). In the long run this will pay dividends. My colleagues still believe they can function just like they did as college students. They don't.
Emotional balance: giving yourself some personal time instead of waking up and immediately going to work will improve your mental health. All of this provides a positive feedback loop which will motivate good sleep habits.
I'm in bed at 9, asleep by 930, and up by 530 without an alarm. I leave for work at 730, so there is literally no stress to wake up by a certain time.
What I found out worked for me was a bus. At some point a few years ago I decided it is good for my day routine to have a desk outside of my flat. I found reasonably priced desks 10 minutes on the bus from where I live (this was 10 minutes before rush hours so I had to catch early bus, otherwise this trip was taking 30 minutes). I wanted to start early so I could finish early - and so I wanted to catch early bus which was going every 15 minutes. First few times I was literally 30 seconds too late and had to wait 15 minutes for another bus to come, this made me to avoid hitting snooze because I did not want to waste 15 minutes standing on the bus stop.
In the summer often it is bright at 5:30am and I can't help but drive to
https://www.dec.ny.gov/lands/8204.html
hike 6 miles then go to work.
Routine gets me up. If I screw with my routine I just take it and get as fast as possible back to routine.
Except for deadlines. than I sleep when my body take over, I can take it up to 36 hours.
* Drug yourself if needed (benadryl or melatonin work pretty well for a lot of people - if you use melatonin, https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-th... is of interest)
* Stay away from alcohol. It can help you get to sleep, but the quality of your sleep is materially worse. For me, as little as half of a beer can absolutely wreck a night of sleep.
* Get away from bright screens before bed. No TV, no computers, no phone, etc. If you really must, try an eink ebook reader (kindle, remarkable, etc). Read a book. Write (on paper). Practice a musical instrument. Listen to an audiobook. Literally anything other than staring at a screen.
* No caffeine intake after ~3pm ish (if this doesn't help, try earlier cutoff times).
* If you snore a lot (and especially if a partner tells you you stop breathing or sound like you're choking or something), get tested for sleep apnea. Sleeping with a CPAP changed my life. I genuinely can't remember a single day in my life where I woke up feeling rested until I was 28 years old, which is when I got my CPAP.
* Lower the temperature in your home about an hour before bed if possible. A few degrees (Fahrenheit) will do. For extra effect: take a really hot shower right before going to bed. The temperature swing from hot to cold can help you get to sleep faster.
* If you don't already do so, try taking a short walk during the day (15-20 min or so). A tiny amount of exercise during the day really changes how I sleep.
* Go to bed and get up at the same time every day (even weekends). If you feel the need to sleep in on the weekends, you're probably not sleeping enough.
* Gradually darken your environment at night, brighten it in the morning around the time you want to wake up. Smart light bulbs (Phillips Hue and the like) are great tools for this, especially when paired with something like home assistant. I shift all of my lights a bit warmer/more red toward the end of my day, then ~30 minutes before I want to wake up, I start fading up the lights in my bedroom to full brightness (over the course of 20 minutes so that the lights reach full brightness ~10 minutes before I want to wake up). Most days, I am awake before my alarm goes off. As an added bonus, waking up this way feels much better -- I am always slightly startled by my alarm, so I start the day mildly grumpy if that's how I wake up.
* If you silence your alarm and then go back to sleep in the mornings, I find it helpful to move the alarm across the room so that you have to physically get out of bed to turn it off. Once you're up, stay up. Don't let yourself learn that it's okay to wake up and then immediately go back to sleep.
YMMV, I'm not a doctor, etc, etc.
