4 Reasons To Never Hit Snooze On Your Alarm

This small habit could be ruining your days

I don’t know a single person that enjoys being woken up from their sleep. Being pulled out of peaceful dreamland, especially when you are tired, often feels like punishment. And Newton’s 7th law of motion states something like ‘the force of gravity in your bed and eyelids is proportional to your body’s need for sleep.”

Hitting that snooze button or setting multiple alarms is extremely tempting and is in fact routine for many people. We postpone waking up as long as we can. Some of us even deliberately set the alarm earlier so that we have the liberty of snoozing to feel like we get more sleep. But this may not be the best idea.

Listening to health podcasts and reading up on the psychology of sleep, I’ve found 3 good reasons to stop hitting snooze and become more disciplined at waking up.

It breaks up valuable sleep

You go through different stages of sleep each night. How much time you spend sleeping matters, but what’s more important is the quality of your sleep. Deep sleep and dreams help us sort out both our physical and mental problems, acting as a restorative process that is beneficial to our health.

When we wake up from an alarm, it breaks this deep sleep and dozing off again only returns us to a lighter stage of sleep. Uninterrupted sleep is most effective, so even though you may sleep longer, those 10–20 mins of extra snoozing don’t really benefit you. You are even likely to feel groggy when you get up as a result.

If you are able to sleep an extra 15 minutes after your alarm goes off, it’s better to just set it 15 minutes later to begin with. That way you get the health benefits of those extra minutes of deep, uninterrupted sleep.

Could lead to trust Issues

It may sound silly, but your habits determine whether you trust yourself or not.

Setting your alarm is a deal you make with yourself to wake up at a certain time. If you make a habit of snoozing the alarm when it goes off, you continuously break that promise to yourself and create internal feelings of unreliability within yourself. You don’t really trust yourself to carry out the things you said you would because you have a history of not following through.

Snoozing your alarm may seem like an insignificant action, but each time you push your deadline for waking up, you lose a bit of trust in yourself. When you postpone your wakeup time, you are sending yourself the message that you don’t have the discipline and willpower to stick to what you said you would.

Micro-stress doses

Life is full of stress. We face varying degrees of stress throughout our day, some large and some seemingly insignificant. But we have a stress threshold.

In his book ‘The Stress Solution’, Dr. Rangan Chatterjee details how we receive countless minor doses of stress throughout our day, known as micro-stressors. These small injections of stress push us closer to our daily stress limit, a point where we lose our patience and get easily triggered. Alarms are one such micro-stressor.

Being woken from your deep slumber gives you a dose of stress. Each time you snooze the alarm and are woken up again from your peaceful sleep, the stress inside you starts to build up. You really don’t want to start your day with a few hits of stress before you’re even out of bed. If your body clock doesn’t wake you up on its own, try to stick to a single alarm ring.

You become less productive

I find that being disciplined about my sleep makes me much more productive. Whether it’s waking up early in the morning or keeping my afternoon naps short, making it a rule that I never snooze or push my alarm later has helped me get more done during my days.

It’s tough waking up early on weekends when every part of me says that I deserve to sleep in. But I don’t want to waste my day, so I force myself to get up when I hear that early morning alarm. Even after months of doing it, I’m always so tempted to just push it 20 minutes later because I can.

But I’ve realized that just sticking to a wakeup time not only gives me more time to do things but also makes me feel more alert when I get up. Going in and out of sleep a few times tends to make me feel lethargic later on, so getting up at the first ring helps me make better use of my waking hours.

There is growing evidence that sleep is one of the most important aspects of our health. Our sleep quality is extremely important which is why it’s important that we get as much restorative, deep sleep as we can.

It’s also vital that we transition from being asleep to awake in an efficient and healthy way to maximize our time and energy.

There will be some days when we really feel we need to extend our sleeping time. But for the most part, setting the alarm for the correct time and waking up from its first ring is a manageable habit to build.

Try to fight the temptation to snooze. Find the discipline to wake up from your first alarm, and you’ll reap the benefits.