The Biggest Deterrent to You Crushing Your Day is Your Snooze Button

Summary

Overcoming the habit of hitting the snooze button can significantly improve one's daily productivity and fitness goals.

Abstract

The article emphasizes the detrimental impact of the snooze button on achieving a successful and healthy day. It suggests that by resisting the temptation to snooze, individuals can enhance their running and fitness routines, leading to better overall health and goal attainment. The author shares personal experience of transforming morning habits to prioritize exercise, which has had lasting positive effects. The piece also provides practical strategies for defeating the snooze button, such as setting a motivating alarm tone, engaging in physical activity upon waking, and establishing a consistent sleep schedule. By reframing the mindset and creating a sleep-conducive environment, individuals can improve their sleep quality and daily energy levels, ultimately setting themselves up for more productive and optimistic days.

Opinions

The snooze button is seen as an obstacle to personal fitness and productivity goals.
Disrupting REM sleep by snoozing can negatively affect physical health by increasing blood pressure and heart rate.
Establishing enjoyable morning activities can serve as a strong incentive to wake up.
Placing the alarm out of reach forces one to get out of bed, making it harder to succumb to the snooze temptation.
Consistency in sleep and wake times is crucial for forming habits that contribute to long-term success.
The bedroom should be reserved for sleep and personal time, free from work-related activities, to ensure a restorative environment.
Pre-sleep routines, such as eliminating blue light exposure, are important for enhancing sleep quality.
Morning routines are equally important and should be planned to ensure a positive start to the day.

Once you defeat the snooze button, nothing can stop you.

A successful life is as close as developing better habits around your alarm clock. Photo by Mpho Mojapelo on Unsplash

You’ve got your clothes laid out for your run the following day, and as your head hits the pillow, you say to yourself, “I’m gonna nail this run tomorrow.” Then, at 0 dark 30, the alarm goes off. You can tell from swinging your foot out from under the covers that not only is it dark outside, but it’s also cold. Is that rain you hear on the window? With that, you hit the snooze button and roll over again.

Once you’ve hit the snooze button, you can never recapture that time where you roll over and go back to sleep. The snooze button may be the worst invention of all time. The snooze button keeps people from reaching their full fitness and running goals than anything else.

Defeat the snooze button and watch what happens to your running and fitness stature. You may just amaze yourself by getting in the kind of shape to conquer the fitness goals that you only dreamed about.

I was never a fan of running first thing in the morning until I began training for my first 100-miler. The twenty-week plan had weekday mileage in there that I knew with the pressures of my job, I could never accomplish and still be gainfully employed. To be prepared physically and mentally, I knew something had to change.

After much study, I chose to sacrifice that extra fifteen minutes of snooze button heaven and crawling out of bed to get an early jump on my running goals. It became a habit that still exists to this day.

When I choose the snooze button over getting out of bed, my whole day is affected negatively.

Methods to Defeat the Snooze Button and Crush Your Day

Make your bedroom a refuge and crush your day. Photo by Mark Champs on Unsplash

Since hitting the snooze button doesn’t just affect your health and fitness but your entire day, I thought it would be a great idea to give you a couple of methods to claim victory over the evil button. These buttons may be on an actual alarm clock or your smartphone or tablet.

To begin with, though, understand why the snooze button should be considered an evil instrument of dreams and goals death.

An article on Headspace.com, “How to Stop Snoozing,” explains the effect the snooze button has on our physical health. This article explains that drifting in and out of sleep during the time you hit the snooze disrupts REM sleep. REM sleep is restorative sleep, so every time you hit that evil button, what you are doing is increasing your blood pressure and heart rate. These two increases cause the extra sleep you think you are getting to actually be a detriment to the very purpose of sleep, which is restoration.

Once you begin looking at the evil snooze button as a detriment to the purpose of sleeping, then overcoming this horrible habit gets much more manageable.

Suppose you’re looking for a way to overcome this bad habit and replace it with good. In that case, you’ll need healthy habits that will enable you to crush your entire day and get closer to fulfilling your dreams and goals. Here are a couple of methods I know will help you bounce out of bed in the morning, ready to have a fantastic day.

Give yourself a reason to wake up. Schedule fun things to do in the morning that enable you to get out of bed thirsty for the zest of life.

Set your alarm tone to something besides the dull old buzz. I put my alarm tone to “Good Morning” by Mandisa. Find a catchy tune that gets you out of bed dancing and singing. Your significant other may think you’re insane, but insane feels good, so who cares.

Get physical. Go for a run, do jumping jacks, a vigorous yoga workout, anything that gets your body moving first thing in the morning. An article on Healthline.com, “13 Benefits of Working Out in the Morning”, explains that early exercise enables you to start your day with more energy, focus, and optimism.

Place your alarm someplace where you can’t reach it. Put your alarm clock across the room, in your closet, or on the bathroom counter. If your alarm keeps going off and you can’t just roll over and turn it off, you have to get out of bed.

Follow a sleep schedule. Get religious about making sure you’re going to bed at a consistent time every night and getting up at a consistent time every morning. Consistency creates habits that win the game in the long run.

Reframe your mindset. The bedroom should be a place for two things to happen. One of them is sleep. The other is for you and your significant other to figure out. Do not let work creep into your bedroom. Make your bedroom a refuge where all you do is rest. This will create the peaceful environment your body needs to fully restore itself from the rigours of your day.

Finally, create routines. One great practice I brought up in “How Sleep Quality and Running Performance are Linked” is to eliminate blue light emission an hour before bed. This enhances sleep quality. This bedtime routine allows your body to naturally ramp down and will improve your sleep quality. The habits you have upon waking up are of equal importance. The more you plan these routines, the better your days will go.

The more importance you place on defeating the snooze button, the better you will feel every day. Not to say you won’t ever have a bad day, but by getting up out of bed every single day with a bounce to your step, you’ll have more energy to overcome the bad days.