Alarm Clocks for Heavy Sleepers? 340
jonadab asks: "I'm a heavy sleeper. I wake up gradually. Sometimes it takes quite a bit to
get me cognizant in the morning. I've been known to sleep through alarms entirely, or shut them off before fully awake and later not remember doing so. It's not that I don't get enough sleep (I go to bed at night when I get sleepy), but my body tends to want a day longer than 24 hours, and I have to use an alarm to keep myself on a constant schedule with the rest of the world;
otherwise, I get up a little later each day and pretty soon I'm sleeping till noon. So I'm always in search of a better alarm clock. Maybe some of you have experience with alarm clocks that you particularly like"
"Here are some features I'd particularly like to have (though anything that's good at waking a heavy sleeper is worth mentioning, even if it doesn't have all these features):
- Gets progressively louder until snoozed. Starts louder with each successive snooze.
- Max volume slightly painful, but not physiologically dangerous. An air compressor and train whistle is probably overkill.
- Easy to snooze, but hard to accidentally turn off completely. Bonus points if turning it off means being cognizant enough to operate a screwdriver or tool of some kind.
- Snooze time gets geometrically shorter each iteration (e.g., half as long as the previous) so that there's a maximum total snooze time that can be approached assymptotically.
- Has battery backup so that it will operate during a power outage, at least to keep time. (I _could_ just stick it on the UPS, but do I really want to spend a UPS outlet for an alarm clock?) This is a feature my current clock has (takes a nine-volt battery), but even better would be a rechargeable that will even operate the alarm during a power outage.
- Can be set to always go off at the same time every day, so I don't have to remember to set it at night unless I need to get up at a different time than usual.
- Has some kind of cool feature with geek appeal -- but not binary time display; I need to be able to read the time when mostly asleep.
If you were going to go the route of building a cheap computer to do this, what software would you use to do it?
THis is what I use.. Very loud and adjustable (Score:4, Interesting)
xmms alarm plugin (Score:5, Interesting)
also, every day you can wake up with a different music to get a different mood (ever heard about 'mood organs' in "do android dream electric sheeps"?)
cheers
Lights help, too (Score:4, Interesting)
Of course, if your wakeup time is after sunrise, this probably won't help much.
You could always rig up a smoke detector buzzer, but that's probably not something you should really get sensitized to....
Use the James Bond method. (Score:4, Interesting)
While you are falling asleep, imagine a clock showing the time you want to wake up.
I am a very heavy sleeper - to the extent that someone was able to get a locksmith to drill through the security lock on a door with me 10 metres (or 11 yards if you are a NASA scientist) away - but this works for me, and I just need the three chimes of a standard palm pilot alarm to remind me to get up.
24 hours (Score:5, Interesting)
Another thing: Turn everything off (even the PC) and lie in bed for an hour. You should be asleep unless it's ridicuously early.
For waking up, I need to be up at 8:30AM at the moment to leave at 9:30AM. I set the 3 alarms on my mobile phone, 8AM, 8:15 and 8:25, and plug it in on the other side of the room. I also set my normal radio alarm clock to come on quietly at 7:30AM (when wogan comes on), and stay on until 8:30AM (meaning I have to get up to turn it back on).
I used to have a cron job of "cat
Keep the clock out of reach, once you get up you'll stay up.
Most req's silly... (Score:2, Interesting)
I'd recommend the simple expedient of two alarm clocks.
I went to Sears and bought a cheap Panasonic (iirc) alarm clock radio/cd with 2 alarms and progressive volume. (The progressive volume has a min setting and a max setting, but not a duration setting (silly of them)). It was pretty cheap, like $35-45 a year and a half ago.
For you, I'd recommend two of them (or one of those and one of what you already have). One by your bedside, one across the room, requiring you to haul your backside out of bed, at least.
I just leave mine single one across the room, and have it turn on talk radio (two settings, starts low, waits a few minutes, the second gets much louder). Depending on the station I set it to, it usually infuriates me into wakefulness.
(I recommend NPR if you are a heartless conservative or Rush or Bill O' if you are a flaming liberal gasbag).
However, I bet the real problem is not the waking, it's the sleeping - getting to sleep/staying asleep. If you find yourself waking up at night out of breath, or if you snore, or your gf/wife/so hears you stop breathing during the night, see a sleep doctor. Skip the last can/bottle/gallon of caffeinated soda, cut out cigs if you smoke, keep the room cool. Melatonin works well for sleep regulation if taken aperiodically, and consider Ambien for periodic regulation (note that it's addictive - not in the heroine withdrawal way, but if you use it too often, you get to feel like you can't get to sleep without it - a feeling which goes away after a few days, but still...).
Ambien is magic to those who have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep - bed down, one pill, read for 15 minutes, turn off the light, I'm down for 7.5 hours almost exactly and wake up feeling like a tiger. IANAD, YMMV.
-J
Amen, brother. (Score:4, Interesting)
I had exactly this problem. I solved it by getting an alarm clock loud enough to wake me up from across the room (RadioShack, $15 tops). Caltrops can be useful to make it so that walking across your room is difficult. Now I've trained myself pretty well to snooze rather than disable the alarm, but the walk across the room is helpful because it means that even getting up to hit snooze wakes me up a little.
When I was in a smaller room (everything could be reached without getting out of bed), I wrapped packing tape around the off button on the alarm. I could only hit snooze unless I removed the tape.
I can't tell you how many mornings I woke up struggling to remove that tape.
The only way I've ever had decent sleeping habits was when I spent time outdoors away from any artificial light. Within 24 hours, I perfectly adjusted to falling asleep at sundown and waking just before sun up. Weird to think that I was going to sleep at 8:30 PM and waking up at 5:00 AM without any prompting.
I wish I had the self control to do that normally.
Sleep Apnea (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:xmms alarm plugin (Score:2, Interesting)
Three years later, I am now able to login to my computer, open a shell, and kill the alarm task without ever properly waking up.
Its an arms race I feel I'll be running the rest of my life.
Re:Learn To Sleep! (Score:5, Interesting)
Melatonin is good for getting over jetlag, etc. But relying on it on a regular basis will only make things worse. If you take melatonin your body responds by producing less == worse sleep.
I had some trouble with insomnia and my Aunt (who is a Psych nurse practitioner) suggested I try an SSRI (ie. prozac, paxil, etc.). Apparantly insomnia is often triggered by the a deficiency of Seratonin, which can be fixed with Prozac and the like. Note: just because these are mainly depression medications doesn't mean you have to be depressed to take them.
I ended up fixing my sleep problems by getting a latex foam matress pad from CostCo (about $120) instead 'cause I don't have insurance to pay for meds.
Ask you doctor, there are non narcotic pharmacological solutions to this problem.
Screaming Meanie (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't bother snoozing. It's self-indulgent and offers less real benefit than going to bed twenty minutes earlier. If you have a very hard time waking up, you probably aren't sleeping as well as you should. Possibilities include excess sugar, caffeine or alcohol; sleep apnea; depression or anxiety; attention deficit disorder; or simple lack of exercise. Chances are that adjusting your caffeine intake and going for the occasional walk will make a substantial difference.
The best thing about a Screaming Meanie is setting it for one hour and hiding it in somebody else's room. The second-best is that it is physically tough enough to throw violently across the room without suffering any damage.
I send a series of SMSs to my cell phone... (Score:2, Interesting)
Wake up to danger. (Score:2, Interesting)
1) subscribe to a 976 style wake-up phone call service
2) buy an adapter that turns your phone ringing into an AC pulse - they are for the hard of hearing, so that a lamp can flicker on and off to indicate the phone is ringing. Got mine for $11 back in '92. It is a wall adapter that has a phone jack an AC plug, and an AC outlet on it.
3) hook a powerstrip to it
4) set the powerstrip to OFF.
5) plug a stereo with your least favorite LP on the turntable and the needle down. turn it way up. Also works with a cassette player, so long as you FF to the middle of a song, and press PLAY.
6) plug a drill into it, pull the trigger, and lock the trigger.
7) put a paint-stir bit on the drill
8) put the drill down in the bed with you.
When the phone call comes, you had better wake up. It is very unplesant. I only did it once, and it worked perfectly. This music blared, the lights went on and off, and this thing, which got bigger and bigger as it gathered more sheets, was jumping around in the bed, and it is starting to restrict your motion.
My plan now is to pattent this device that gives you immediate access to your fight or flight subroutine.
kulakovich