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Alarm Clocks for Heavy Sleepers?
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?
http://www.appealinggifts.com/screaming-alarm-cloc k.html
does exactly what you said. you can lock your screen with a screensaver (so you'll have to enter a password, and being cogniscent), and maybe set up your BIOS to turn the computer on at a given time, if it is supported.
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
-- There are two kind of sysadmins: Paranoids and Losers. (adapted from D. Bach)
We've found that having a bright light on a timer (X10 does nicely) helps, too. There's nothing like having 150 watts of "oh my god turn that off" on your eyes to wake you up. Actually, I think it subtly starts the wakeup process, which completes when the loud alarm goes off a couple minutes later.
:)
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....
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.
None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.
Most people prefer a 24 hour day. I used to live a 26 - 26.5 hour day when I was a student, now I prefer about 25 hours. Thing to do is cycle round. Assume 8 hours sleep and need to be up by 8AM. Go to sleep at 9PM monday, 10PM tuesday, 11PM wednesday, 12PM thursday, then stay up all night friday, until arround 6PM saturday, then get 12 hours sleep and go to bed at 8PM sunday. Probably not healthy, but I've done it before, and when I start shift work in a few months I'll be doing something similar to get back onto days.
/dev/urandon > /dev/dsp" too, but I'm getting better now.
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.
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.
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.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
You might consider having a sleep clinic check you out for sleep apnea. Just a thought, in case you haven't considered it.
Gasp! No!
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.