Some mornings I just cannot drag myself out of bed when my alarm sounds. I have mastered the art form of rolling over and hitting the snooze button in one fell swoop, within seconds of my alarm going off. Unfortunately, it appears that using the snooze button actually results in being more tired throughout the rest of your day.
According to a YouTube video by AsapSCIENCE, hitting the snooze button can actually be pretty detrimental.
Your body produces chemicals that naturally put you to sleep as well as wake you up. In the hour before you naturally wake up your body temperature rises, your sleep becomes lighter, and your body releases chemicals to wake you.
A lot of times your alarm clock cuts this last hour short, often due to an irregular sleep schedule. So you wake up feeling groggy. The problem is, when you hit that snooze button and go back to sleep you body starts the above sleep cycle again. So the next time the alarm goes off you’re probably somewhere in the deep sleep part. That means you’ll probably feel even more tired than you did the first time your alarm went off. Fragmenting the last 20-30 minutes of your sleep actually leads to sleepiness and less productivity during the daytime.
To combat this, you could set your original alarm later or you could go to bed earlier. I have a bad habit of setting 3 alarms on my phone, with the first two being earlier than I actually need to get up. This is pointless because I know when the first two go off that I really don’t have to be up, yet. So I hit the snooze. I set them so that I get to hit the snooze. But it would be better to just set one alarm at the time that I actually need to get up.
The best thing to do is to develop a regular sleep schedule. Go to bed and get up close to the same time each day, even on the weekends. After a few weeks your body will adhere to this cycle on it’s own and you won’t even have a need for an alarm (not that I’m going to stop using mine- that would be dangerous!).
If you wake up sleepy, try and avoid hitting the snooze at all costs. I have been working on this over the past few weeks, since I first saw this video, and three out of five days I am managing to get up with my first alarm. It does seem like I feel better during the day when I get up the first time it goes off. I especially notice a difference in the afternoon, when I usually hit my “2 PM slump.”
**all pictures are screen shots from the AsapScience YouTube video “Should You Use The SNOOZE Button?“
Are you a snoozer? If so, are you going to try and break the habit?
Are you a morning person?
Turkey Runner 
I’m DEFINITELY a morning person – and I never used to be a ‘snoozer’. But my husband is, so sometimes I get infected by his habit. I try not to, though. I’m most productive in the morning, and hate “losing” a chunk of productive time just because I dragged my feet (or butt) getting out of bed.
Husbands can be such bad influences sometimes 🙂 I’m just like you- I hate feeling like I’ve lost productive time. That’s the reason I seldom take naps.
I’m a snoozer, but once I get up and get to work I’m just fine. Snoozing is the worst… especially when I decide, “Yes. Now is the time when I will wake up for real” and I turn the alarm OFF and go back to sleep.Nooooooo!
Same here! I’m not always the best about getting out of bed, but once I’m up I’m good to go.
some great news, and i’ve got some pretty nasty sleep issues myself. and it is tied to not getting the deep, REM sleep, sorta similar to what you’re describing. maybe we should invent an alarm clock that slaps u on the head with running shoes and yells, “get up, time to go run!” 😉
The Runner’s Alarm Clock! I love it!
Up every morning around 5. I do enjoy the downtime in my jammies on days when I don’t have to go to work. And it doesn’t seem to matter when I go to bed anymore. I’m still up at 5!Definitely a morning person.LUD.
I am a morning person, too…. once I get out of bed 🙂
I set my alarm to allow to hit snooze twice. I usually stay awake after the first snooze and just think about my day and my plans. I’m a morning person. The second my feet hit the floor I’m wide awake!
There’s just some kind of satisfaction in getting to hit that snooze button, isn’t there?
I am SUCH A BAD SNOOZER…especially lately. I feel like back in Jan/Feb I was so good at getting up at 5am at my first alarm…but now I am a snoozer user. I’m trying really hard to get back on track..so this morning I managed to roll out of bed at like 5:30 (my first alarm went off at 5). I definitely agree that I am less sleepy if I don’t snooze.
haha “snoozer user”, it sounds like some kind of AA. Good job getting back on track! I’ve been trying to do the same.