Waking up: alarm clock advice for the undisciplined.

January 25, 2006 10:51 PM

Two-part question about waking up: I'm looking for something that functions like the iPod alarm clock (but without having to own an iPod) or better yet, this "peaceful progression wake-up clock." The catch is I'm kind of a cheapskate, and have no idea whether an expensive alarm clock will really help me wake up earlier & more easily. (Secondly, any good advice on how to drag myself out of bed in the morning is more than welcome, too!)

Are there any good freeware Mac programs that will allow me to wake up to music? Or, given materials, how would you hack something like this together? I'm tempted to put a radio & essential oil diffuser on a timer, but I also like harebrained projects & I'm comfortable with basic electrical wiring!

As for the dragging myself out of bed part of things, I know the root problems: I stay up later than I should & I use the computer rather than reading before bed--these are things I can fix. The other part of the problem is that I share a bed with my partner 3-5 nights/week, and losing my before-bed time alone makes me more mentally disorganized, plus in the morning it's hard to get out of bed when I could cuddle with my beloved. I don't have a job that requires me to be awake/alert at a particular time, but I find if I don't take care of banal obligations first thing in the morning, they don't get done. A large part of this boils down to a lack of discipline, but still I'm left with the problem that sharing a bed with someone I love kind of throws off my day.

posted by soviet sleepover to health & fitness (12 comments total)

I was a cheapskate who really wanted one of those peaceful progression wake up clocks. I ended up hooking my bedroom light to a timer, it was way cheaper and in the winter at least it woke me up. I do have a regular alarm too for extra insurance. I also set my stereo to turn on in the morning to the classical music station. I can't say it actually wakes me up, but once the alarm is turned off it does remind me that I'm not supposed to be sleeping.

I don't have any good advice for getting out of bed vs. cuddle time. That's a tough one.
posted by mulkey at 11:16 PM on January 25, 2006

As a confirmed bachelor I don't have any advice about the cuddle time either, but I am a Mac & iPod user who also struggles with getting up in the morning.

I'm a night owl, and I have a day job that requires me to get up at around 5:20 AM. As that is the time I'd normally be going to bed when I'm left to my own devices, as you can imagine it's taken some getting used to over the past 20 months or so that I've had this job. Being more than 5 minutes late gets unfavourable attention, so it's taken a lot of effort & experimentation to ensure I don't end up hitting the snooze button until the time I should be stepping through my office door.

My problem was that after a while, I just seemed to adjust to the sound of whatever I was using as an alarm clock & sleep right through it. The same thing happened when I woke up to music alone. The successful solution was to aquire a Nokia mobile, which has a great alarm - very irritating beeping that takes a good two minutes to get up to full volume & also vibrates, making a racket on the bedside table. I dislike the alarm sound enough to have nightmares about it, but that's all the more motivation to wake up & turn it off.

Of course, as with previous alarms, I then had the problem of waking up to turn it off/hit snooze & then just keep sleeping, even if I did have to wake up every 8 or 10 minutes to hit snooze again. So I used one of the alarm programs for iTunes to wake up my iMac - I have it play as quiet as possible out of consideration for my neighbours, but it's not really to wake me up anyway - it's to remind me that I really do have to get up out of bed now & go to work, instead of turning over & going back to sleep. This combination has got me through all but my most exhausted mornings (when I've probably had less than 2 hours sleep).

Re: using your Mac as an alarm clock - it appears to be quite difficult to get it to wake from sleep at a specified time, and so there aren't that many programs that actually serve as useful alarm clocks. I've settled on PowerController which is $10 US shareware - it's a simple System Prefs pane that will wake up the Mac & fade in a selected playlist from iTunes. Although I just did a quick search for itunes alarm clock on versiontracker & came up with a mixed bunch of freeware & shareware programs - some of them might be better for your purposes, but I can vouch for PowerController's reliability.
posted by hgws at 12:04 AM on January 26, 2006

MP3 Alarm Clock
posted by weston at 12:07 AM on January 26, 2006

Googling "gradual alarm clock" yielded these sites, among others. (Your peaceful progression clock is an interesting idea, but do you really want a miniature Dalek next to your slumbering head?)
posted by rob511 at 12:22 AM on January 26, 2006

I, too am a creature of the night, and I had been relying on a travel alarm backed up by an old Nokia cell to get up.

Getting me awake is so difficult that I was forced to set the cell to require a seven digit code before I can shut off the alarm. Otherwise, that lizard part that is in charge when my brain is asleep will just shut it off and not tell me.

I was given one of those Zen digital clocks with the Fibonacci cycle of natural, tuned chimes (made by the same people who make the non-digital one in rob511's first link). Yes, they're $90.00, but the alarm is almost painless to wake to, and impossible to sleep through. The sound it makes is pleasing to the ear and does not promote startle reflexes or nightmares. It permits the tiny abrogations of responsibility that are the magic of snooze buttons, but without pushing any buttons. And the snooze period gets shorter and shorter until I find I am just... awake!

It also lives inside a beautiful wooden box, so that I never need to see the numbers on the clock, and it has a little nautilus on the off button. I like him -- he's curly and reminiscent of the alarm progression. It's only been a month, but I think this is my answer to my years-long search for a better way to wake up.

I believe you mentioned a tolerance for harebrained projects?

Or, if you're really really cheap, just drink two litres of water before bed. That'll get you up.
posted by Sallyfur at 2:02 AM on January 26, 2006

I have one of these and it really does make waking up a lot more pleasant, and easier.
posted by grouse at 2:40 AM on January 26, 2006

In my bedroom, I have a little Audiophase AM/FM/CD player that plays me Norah Jones "Sunrise" at 5:30 a.m. For me, that's a nice sound to wake to, but the player is across the room, where I have to get up to turn it off. And I do this willingly, without fail, because I know if I don't, that at 5:35 a.m. the main stereo in the living room is going to really light up Van Halen's "Jump."

God, I hate "Jump."
posted by paulsc at 2:56 AM on January 26, 2006

I agree that a good cheapskate solution is the $15 cd clock radio and custom cdrs. You can make a disc that ramps up in volume as well as musical style and you aren't locked into sounds that eventually drive you crazy. I used to feel like I had PTSD from my loud as hell klaxon alarm, but sometimes that is what it takes. Now my subconscious knows what's coming, so I generally wake up before it gets to the waking up the neighbors stage.
posted by roboto at 4:18 AM on January 26, 2006

Let me just say this: I have the ipod alarm clock you linked to.

Peaceful. Schmeaseful.

The volume "gradually" goes up in a timespan of about 10 seconds. And, no matter how low the volume is when you set the alarm, it goes up to 20 in the morning, which is waaay too loud, right next to your head, that early.

I used to have a high wattage sunrise clock that I loved and really helped me. It broke and I haven't replaced it. I should.
posted by clh at 10:06 AM on January 26, 2006

Dumb name, but works alright: iRooster
posted by travosaurus at 10:15 AM on January 26, 2006

Alarm clocks are bad. How to wake up and feel better.
posted by Sharcho at 10:29 AM on January 26, 2006

I have a dual alarm model. I set the first alarm to go off around 20-30 minutes before I go up and set the volume just high enough to start to rouse me. I can hit snooze a couple of times.

The second alarm is set to the actual buzzer. It's kind of like the final warning.

This also gives me a period of 20-30 minutes of semi-conscious cuddle time.

Here's one from Target.
posted by robabroad at 2:56 PM on January 26, 2006