Picture this: You're asleep in bed. You're warm, comfortable, and completely peaceful. Then your alarm goes off and ruins your day before it even started. Alarm clocks are necessary, but the most dreaded device in existence.
We always have good intentions about waking up on time but the next thing we know, we've hit snooze seven times and have to be in the car in 10 minutes.
Waking up in the morning is horrible, but there are ways to make it a little more bearable.
1. Prepare the night before
Waking up will definitely be better if you get to sleep in a little more than expected. To do this, prepare anything you can before you go to bed, to save you time in the morning. This could be things such as making your lunch or laying out what you're going to wear.
2. Set your coffee maker on a timer
Waking up is a lot easier if you know you have a freshly brewed cup of coffee waiting for you in the kitchen.
3. Look forward to waking up
We often dislike waking up because we have nothing to look forward to. We usually wake up with the only thought; that we immediately have to start getting ready and go to work - not very motivating. Plan something to do in the morning that you enjoy. This could be having a really tasty breakfast, or even fitting in time to watch an episode of your favorite show.
4. Get a good sleep the night before
Waking up will never be easy if you aren't getting enough sleep. Make sure you are going to sleep at a reasonable time the night before, it will make waking up 10x easier.
5. Wake up at the same time everyday
Your body becomes conditioned to this and regulates your sleep patterns accordingly. You get a better sleep when you have a regular wake time, your body actually begins the process of waking up long before your alarm sounds, if it is used to a wake-up time.
6. Download the sleep cycle REM app
While you sleep, you go through cycles of sleep states. The first state in a sleep cycle is light sleep, followed by deep sleep and a dream state referred to as REM-sleep. A full sleep cycle lasts about 90 minutes and is normally repeated several times each night.
Your movements vary with each sleep phase. Sleep Cycle uses sound analysis to identify sleep states by tracking movements in bed. Sleep Cycle uses a wake up phase (30 minutes by default) that ends at your desired alarm time. During this phase Sleep Cycle will monitor signals from your body to wake you softly, when you are in the lightest possible sleep state. This is a free app and will make you feel more awake when your alarm goes off. You can also track how you slept the night before.
7. Never hit snooze
Hitting snooze does not ease you into waking up, it just makes you more drowsy. Your body and mind aren't recuperating, you're just wasting time.
Waking up doesn't have to be horrible. Okay, maybe it will always be horrible, but follow these tips to make it a little less horrible. And maybe, you'll end up becoming a morning person, who knows?