The magical allure of the snooze button
I’ve been meaning to write somehing about the snooze button for a while now, but it took me reading a post about it by cousineddie to get me up for the task. Cousineddie asks us:
Why do you push your snooze button several times in the morning? Do you really get more sleep by doing this? Why not just set your alarm for an hour later and not use the snooze button at all?
Why? Well, there’s not an easy answer really. I could go a number of directions with that. There are a myriad of reasons I could give you, but it only really comes down to this one thing: it feels good. It feels real good. There’s nothing better than just “switching-off” that annoying little thing that’s making all that noise and trying to wake you from your peaceful slumber. Of course you know deep down when you hit the button that you’re reprieve is only temporary. But that’s a good thing… you don’t actually want stay in bed and miss work and get fired. You just want those extra 9 minutes of sleep over and over again as many times as is possible before you have to really get up and put on a wrinkled shirt and two-day old socks and run every other red light just to get to work on time.
[photopress:alarmclock.jpg,thumb,alignright]Does this sound a little self destructive? Well, yeah, it is a bit… Setting the alarm clock for the real time that you need to get up and then only hitting the alarm once to turn it off would be a lot more productive and efficient.
But let me inform you how deeply this snooze-button problem has got me. First off, I can sleep through almost anything. I’ve slept through alarms for 2 hours before someone elese in the house got so pissed that they had to come up in my attic-loft and shake the shit out of me to get me up. This isn’t hangover sleep either. I basically can do this if I’ve had less than 5 hours of sleep. I don’t know what causes me to sleep so soundly, or if there’s actually something wrong with me, but it does lead me in to my next little issue…
Secondly, I have two alarm clocks. This may seem like a little overkill, but since I can sleep through a single alarm sometimes, I basically have to have two just for insurance. Sometimes I even set one of them on a table across the room so that I have to actually stand up and walk to turn it off. That sounds like it would be pretty helpful in actually getting up, huh? Well, no, it’s not. That’s because of my next, and probably most dangerous, issue…
[photopress:sleepy.jpg,thumb,alignleft]Lastly, I’m a master of self-persuasion when I’m only semi-conscious. I can convince myself of how little time it will take to get ready, right up until I have 30 seconds to throw on everything I wore to work the day before except for a different semi-wrinkled shirt. So, if I have to actually get up and walk to turn my alarm off, it doesn’t really help me wake up because the sub-conscious part of my brain has already convinced the rest of me that I’m just sleep walking and that I have plenty of time before I have to get up. Sometimes my mind is so good at convincing the rest of me that I don’t “really need to get up yet” that I’ll just sleep through my alarms all together (I didn’t know that there was a time limit on alarms), and only wake up after they go off. How freaky is that?
Some people in my family are afraid I’ll sleep right through a fire alarm, but I know this would never happen. Why? Because the part of my brain that’s so good at convincing the rest of me that sleep is the most important thing at any particular moment, also has no problem with waking me up to full alertness if my life depended on it. If there are any external indicators that something is absolutely urgent that I get up that instant, I can wake up and be ready and alert in about 2 seconds. But, if the only external indicator is an alarm clock, then, well… apparently my brain knows that the only thing I’m getting up for is work, and it doesn’t really place a “life or death” physiological response on that stimuli.
I don’t wish it to be that way. I’d rather be the first one in the office every morning, ready to go, with a list of stuff I’ve gotten done before everyone else even got into the building. But alas, I don’t think that shit will ever happen. I’m pretty sure I’m doomed to be the guy that “wonders in 15 minutes late everyday”… no matter what the job is.
[tags]alarm clock, sleep, waking, job, lazy, problem, commentary, humor, blogging, blog, weblog[/tags]
Gah dude, it’s frickin EERIE how much this sounds like me. I had to keep checking the blog to make sure I wasn’t reading one of my own posts!
Needless to say that I’m 100% with you on this whole alarm thing. Especially the delectability of hitting the snooze button till the thing practically falls off.
Besides, if I set the alarm to the time I actually plan to wake up, I’ll just hit the snooze button again anyway.
My snooze button and I have a special bond. It is like a pre-wake up reminder so when I really do need to wake up I’m not as groggy as I would have been 27 minutes ago. (That’s 3 snooze button hits times 9 minutes each.) No, I do not get to sleep an extra 27 minutes, usually, but it’s like a pre-coffee pick me up. If I actually woke up the first time my alarm clock went off, I’d be a bitch for the rest of the day. Ok, I’m all ready a bitch for the rest of the day, but I’d be an even bigger bitch! So I agree that snooze buttons are essential.
ngregory00: It’s very encouraging to know I’m not the only blogger out there with this ‘affliction’.
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April: That’s exactly what I use it for too… I set it for my preset “wake-up” period, so that I spend 45 minutes (that’s 5 button pushes), getting my body ready to get out of bed. It’s either that, or actlike an angry bear locked in my office all day if I get up on the first alarm sound.
Does anyone actually wake up 15 min later and say damn all of a sudden I feel refreshed and ready to go. Your worse then my women I turn the lights on and throw water on her in the morning to get her out of bed
I never ever use the snooze button. I like to set my alarm for the absolutely latest time I can get away with and then actually getting up when it goes off. I never understood Snooze….you just lose more sleep that way!! It always seemed kind of backwards to me.
crazy_dan: No, crazy_dan, I don’t feel refreshed, I’m just lazy.
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Dawn: I wish I could do that… but my ‘natural’ wake up time seems to be anywhere between 11AM and 2PM.
I’ll hit snooze once…but it does mess with your sleep pattern. You can fall right back to sleep, and then the alarm goes off again. It’s like self trauma over and over.
The Phoenix: Yes, it is like self trauma all over again. Since writing this post, I’ve made the resolution to try and get to bed at a reasonable hour so I can actually get 8 hours of sleep before getting up at 6:30AM.
I think my real problem with alarm clocks stems from my habit to only get about 5 hours of sleep most week nights… which causes me to sleep for 12+ hours on the weekend.