The snooze button is the biggest enemy of all. The reason I believe it is because it not only messes up your sleep, but also your time. From my experience, I have noticed that when I would hit that snooze button, I would be more tired and feel worse about myself. That is why I wanted to cover the snooze button habit in this post.
This post is divided into three sections:
- What you need to do before going to bed?
- What should we do when the alarm goes off?
- What do you need to do to keep on going?
Hitting the snooze button is nothing more than a habit. This habit is a pathway that is formed in your brain – it’s pretty much a shortcut. As we all know, our brain loves shortcuts. The reason it loves shortcuts is because in a way shortcuts saves energy. Saving energy is a evolutionary phenomenon. Think about it, we didn’t have access to all this food 20,000 years ago. So our brain had to come up with creative ways to save energy.
Now, in order to save energy, the brain is going to come up with all kinds of rationale. The rationale for snooze button often comes in a way of self-deception. We say things such as, “The 15 minutes of extra sleep is really going to help me,” “Just 5 more minutes.” But science has shown that actually those 5 more minutes are actually pretty bad for you.
Usually, it is self-deception that leads us to keep repeating those bad habits. My recommendation would be to work on one habit at a time. This will help you to be on track – because if you try to work on all your habits at once, you are going to burn out and give into instant gratification.
Step 1 – Before Going to Bed
Before going to bed is the most important step you are going to take in order to break this habit. What you do before bed will determine what you are going to do when that alarm hits.
The first thing is to schedule your sleep time. The reason being that once you give a command to your brain to do it, it starts following it. A calendar will give your brain the command to follow. For example, my sleep time is scheduled from 9:30 p.m. to 4:30 a.m. No matter what, I try to go to sleep around that time.
Once my sleep time is scheduled, then it is time to schedule the golden hour. This golden hour before sleep is very important as it will get your mind ready for sleep. The few things we need to do in the golden hour:
- Turn down the lights and turn off the TV or anything that stimulates your mind
- Get tomorrow’s task list in order
- Put your phone away (8-10 feet) with water
- Lights and TV are your enemies
Believe it or not, we are naturally wired to start getting tired when it starts to get dark. But, the TV emits blue lights that keeps our brain awake. I used to have this habit of going to bed with the TV on. No wonder I stayed up late and couldn’t get a lot of sleep.
The best thing you can do is turn off the TV and put some relaxing music on with the lights dimmed. This tells your brain that it time to go to sleep. I love playing dark screen music on YouTube. Dark screen means no light.
Get tomorrow’s task list in order
Once this is done, it is very important to set your next day up. I usually get my task list ready in order to make sure I know exactly what I need to work on when I get up in the morning. So, go ahead write down your goals for the next morning. This will help you to get on work mode right when you wake up.
My usually create my list on Google Calendar and is often copied from Trello that I use religiously. I use Trello for organization and breaking down large projects.
Calendar does 2 things for me: it helps me organize my tasks and creates a time frame they need to be completed in.
Put your phone away (8-10 feet) & Water
This is very important, the best thing you can do is put your phone away. From my experience, it has to be about eight to ten feet away. This is gonna be hard, but this is something that is needed in order to break this habit.
Once your phone is away, it is important to put a glass of water right by the alarm clock because when we sleep, we get dehydrated. This makes us sleepy and tired. This is one of the main reasons you want to go back to bed after you hit the button.
Also, the reason you want to keep your phone away from you is because it is easy to hit the snooze button if the phone is right by you. If it is far away, then you have to walk a bit and have to put a little bit of effort before you hit the snooze button.
Step 2 – When the Alarm Hits
So what do you do when the alarm goes off? What I do is use Mel Robbin’s five-second rule. She created this rule and it works. The moment the alarm hits, and I am still in bed, I tell myself five… four… three…two…one and the moment I hit 1, I am up. That’s my anchor. That’s it. 5…4…3…2…1 and take action.
Before you can hit the stop button on the alarm, you need to drink a glass of water. This will help you wake up and help you fight the urge to go back to bed.
Step 3 – Staying consistent
If you want to stay consistent with this habit, you gotta have someone hold you accountable. This is where the accountability partner comes in. If you don’t have an accountability partner on a new habit, you’re going to keep on repeating the old habits because no one’s holding you accountable.
Think about it, there are certain parts of your job you don’t like to do, but you still do because you are held accountable for it.
So give these steps a try