Why More Alarms Make Waking Up Harder

You slept through your alarm. The next day you wanted to be sure you woke up, so you set another alarm just in case. Then you slept through that one, so you added another alarm. This went on and on until you realized you have 3, 5, even a dozen alarms ranging from a few to 15 minutes apart across your whole morning.

Somehow you manage to get up just in time (most days), but you’re still as likely to accidentally sleep in as you’ve ever been. Except now the last portion of your sleep is filled with constant interruptions and when you finally wake up you’re groggy and still tired.

It’s easy to think that more alarms is the answer to our problems, a back up to the back up to the back up. However more alarms is actually making things worse.

Our bodies and minds are very good at responding to situations they are familiar with. Unfortunately, that means we’re just as susceptible to maintaining bad habits as we are capable of creating new ones, perhaps even more so. Snoozing an alarm is a self-reinforcing bad habit. Everytime we snooze our alarms, we are signalling to ourselves that our alarms are meaningless and we should continue snoozing.

That is why more alarms is worse. Each alarm is fuel on the fire that’s burning to keep you under the covers and from getting a good start to your day.

I built Last Alarm after fighting this for years, but the real fix starts with something simpler.

How to Actually Wake Up: The Playbook

Instead of more alarms, the fix is to do the opposite, use only a single alarm. Get rid of that chain of alarms and focus on training ourselves to get up to one alarm as soon as it goes off. Not kind of wake up, snooze in bed for another hour doomscrolling, but up and moving around. Doing this repeatedly and consistently teaches our bodies and minds that our alarm going off means “Get up now!”

It feels difficult, perhaps even impossible, believe me I know. I spent years, decades even, snoozing over and over again in the morning, telling myself I’d quit soon but not knowing if it was even possible.

Well I’m here to tell you that it is possible. I know because I finally figured out how to stop snoozing this year, and this is the playbook I used:

1. Get enough sleep - no sense in making the process harder on yourself
2. Consistent sleep/wake times, even on the weekends - choose a time and stick with it
3. One alarm only - get rid of the chain of alarms, they just make things worse
4. Phone/alarm across the room, out of arms reach - you must force yourself to get up to turn it off
5. Do something that wakes you up - as soon as your feet hit the floor, do something that wakes you up. Could be exercise (squats, push ups, pull ups), drinking or making coffee, splashing cold water on your face, whatever works for you
6. DO NOT GET BACK IN BED! Start the rest of your morning routine to keep the momentum going

Set your one alarm for the time you will actually get up, and stick to it. Your buffer window will be gone, but it was never really helpful anyway. It was filled with low quality, groggy sleep, instead we want to replace that with high quality sleep right up until the moment we have to get up.

Getting Out Of Bed

Now, for the hard part, actually getting yourself out of bed and awake. This is where point #4 from above is key, you have to leave your phone or alarm out of arms reach forcing you to physically get out of bed to turn it off. Getting your feet on the floor gives you the opportunity to do step #5, perform a wake up task. On the flip side, having your phone within arms reach of your bed practically dooms you to snoozing. Even if you do wake up, the odds that you’ll lay around in bed on your phone are very high, and this is not the start you want to your morning.

Step #5 is the hardest of them all, at least for me anyway. I’m not particularly proud of it, but many mornings I would get out of bed (I was following step #4), turn off my alarm, and still get back in bed and snooze. I kept thinking if I could force my sleepy brain to do something that would wake me up, I could finally break the snooze chains once and for all.

That is why I built Last Alarm. With its infinitely customizable task alarms, I could force myself to do a task that pushes me through my grogginess and actually wakes me up. Instead of just standing up and walking to another room, my “Make Espresso” alarm forced me to get my morning coffee ready. I also often use a “Squat and/or Push Up Alarm” which helps to raise my heart rate and push through the sleepiness.

These combinations of alarms finally gave me what I needed and helped me break my snoozing habit once and for all. And the great thing is if you ever get too used to a task, or you outsmart yourself and the task becomes less effective, you can simply modify the task to make it more (or less) strict. Or change to a completely new task.

Get Started Today

So switch to one alarm and ditch the alarm chain. Get proper sleep, be consistent, and keep your phone across the room. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, do something that wakes you up the moment you get up, and do not get back in bed!

Not sure what time to set it for? Our bedtime calculator finds a wake time between sleep cycles so getting up is easier.

If you’re ready to finally break your snoozing chains, give Last Alarm a try today and never snooze again.