Hello, my first post here. Beeminder has helped me to work on the goal of getting up early but still feels like drudgery. Have light sleep apnea so I never feel great upon waking although once up I gain energy. Any hacks on getting up more cheerfully? I just dread it. Goal, for now , during Pandemic is to be up at 7:30 AM .
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Welcome!
The body’s natural circadian is a tricky thing.
There are the obvious suggestions I could give–go to bed earlier, exercise in the evening, small-dosage melatonin (3mg), no electronics past 9-10pm, bright natural light when you wake up, etc.
However, you just might not be a morning person. There’s no reason to see getting up later as a bad thing if you’re getting a good sleep for a reasonable amount of time, in my opinion.
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I use the SleepScore app on iOS to wake me up when I’m in light sleep and not when I’m in deep sleep and that helps a lot with not feeling like a complete potato when getting up
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I beemind getting out of bed by a certain time (10 minutes after my alarm goes off), but I also have a non-beeminded goal of getting out of bed before my alarm goes off—i.e., waking up completely spontaneously. If I fail to wake spontaneously, I have to do a few extra pushups that day (which are included in a separate beminded goal).
I created this spontaneous wake up goal in response to frequently failing my beeminded wake up goal but not wanting to increase my max pledge amount. Encouraging myself to wake spontaneously has so far been very successful at increasing my success rate at waking up on time as I find it much less difficult to get out of bed when I come to consciousness naturally.
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Thank you all, I’m going to try some of the suggestions
I have tried many things over the years! There are alarm apps that have all sorts of features that may work. One I use blasts an alarm which goes until you answer a preset number of math questions of predetermined difficulty. I find that somehow this (while irritating) somehow does change mood/mindset in the morning, perhaps by engaging prefrontal cortex or something that is left flaccid by the normal alarm clock procedure. There are other apps that make you do things like scan a predetermined barcode to get the alarm to turn off (so, for example, it would only turn off if you got a cold drink from the fridge to help wake yourself up). Other options allow you to print a QR code and paste it somewhere, and it will only turn off to that (so you could put it on a sundeck, or in the bathroom). There are other options available, perhaps one or another could give you the affect-change you’re looking for in the mornings. I find one major thing I need is to be rapidly distracted from remembering nightmares on waking!
- Chris
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This thing will get you out of bed oh boy will you be awake, guaranteed:
Here’s a more in-depth review:
I have one myself and the bed shaker is just insane omg. Heart = pumping!
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(When I remember) Mel Robbins’ 5 second rule works well for me. I don’t understand how she managed to get an entire book out of counting backwards from 5, but it works.
There really is something about the countdown that breaks the dread-loop I have about whatever I’m avoiding. I often start my behavior by 3!
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