The Written Podcast: Waking Up with an Alarm

Waking up without an alarm is gloriously relaxing. Not having to worry about being late for work or school or college, you can simply wake up naturally, when you’ve had enough sleep. This feeling of relief is felt the most during Bank Holiday Mondays. Here in the UK, we have four Bank Holidays scattered throughout the year, where we get three days off instead of the usual two. Going to bed on Sunday night knowing you don’t have to wake up early in the morning can help with having a better night’s sleep, and waking up on a Monday – on a day you’re usually at work – knowing you’ve got another day to relax. What I like the most is when I wake up at the time I’m usually leaving the house to go to work, or when I’m walking in through my work’s front doors, it can take a load of stress off your shoulders.

Of course, we don’t just have Bank Holiday Mondays, we also have our set number of days of holiday we can take throughout the year as well. Having an entire week without the need to wake up with an alarm clock is satisfying. On an unintentionally selfish level which our subconscious tricks us into thinking, we’ve all woke up at the time your colleagues are starting their shift and been happy you’re still in bed – even more so when it’s raining heavily and you can simply roll over onto your side and close your eyes for a few more minutes.

There are occasions however, when even on our holidays we have to use an alarm to wake up early due to certain commitments, whether we’ve got plans for a day trip out, or we have to be somewhere important at a precise time, but it still can be relaxing. Sure, you’re waking up at the same time as you would if you were to go to work, or maybe even earlier, but because you’re not going to work, there is still that level of relief from the daily stresses you go through for the majority of the day. If you have an exciting trip planned, you may leave the house at the time you’d normally leave for work, but instead go to a theme park, or head to an airport to catch a plane where you’d end up on a beach in sunny weather drinking orange juice with little umbrellas on the top.

I’ve been waking up with an alarm for years now. Since high school. Comparatively, it’s rare for me to wake up without an alarm than with, and therefore my body clock as adjusted to waking up at the time I’ve been doing so for a while now, I actually wake up just before my alarm goes off. Only a few minutes before my alarm goes off, but nevertheless, I’m waiting for it to scream its head off. And that’s when things take a sudden change. You see, with your body clock set to waking up a few minutes before the alarm, that becomes you’re natural waking up time, so you’re relaxed. The problem we all succumb ourselves to is waiting for that alarm to go off before getting up on the basis we’re all so very comfy. When the alarm eventually does go off and we turn it off, suddenly our beds become even comfier, and we struggle to pull ourselves out from under the covers.

The opposite effect can happen, for if we’re having a difficult and rough night and we just cannot find the right position to sleep and the bed just doesn’t feel at all as comfy as it normally does – but the moment the alarm goes off we’re practically falling asleep in seconds, with the bed wrapping itself around us to make sure we’re getting the rest we should’ve gotten throughout the night.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m not complaining about having to go to work, but how nice would it be if we could wake up naturally and get ready for work at our leisure and leave the house when we’re sorted? The problem with that is, the complete inconvenience it’ll be on the work itself. I can guarantee most managers wouldn’t get in before the colleagues as they do have a much more of a stressful job.

Moving onto a slightly different but relevant topic, I discovered a couple of years back a top tip for those who have difficulty sleeping and it’s all down to the automatic subconscious effect we have when our alarm goes off – how the bed instantly feels much more comfortable the moment it does start screaming. If you frequently have difficulty getting comfy in bed and struggle to sleep, set your alarm clock to an extremely early time in the morning; for example, 2AM. When the alarm goes off and you’ve turned it off, you then can simply roll over and not get up for another few hours. You do have to make sure another time on your alarm is set so you don’t sleep passed the time you’re meant to get up. Knowing that you don’t have to get up upon the alarm going off, the instant effect where the bed is feels comfortable kicks in and it helps you sleep. Those who do this technic have reported them getting better night sleeps.

In fact, those who don’t struggle with sleeping but tried it out anyway as a baseline, actually reported them getting better night’s sleep than if they were to sleep all the way through, and a few of them also documented having better dreams, even lucid dreams as the dream they were having was interrupted with the alarm, but because it’s still fresh in the mind upon going back to sleep the dream resumes, bringing with it a sense of familiarity and realisation you’re in a dream, resulting in a lucid dream.

Lucid dreaming is fun. I’ve only had three lucid dreams I can remember. They say you can train yourself to have lucid dreams every night, but I haven’t attempted to practice. I just want to go to sleep.

Anyway, going back to having an alarm clock – I did try the strategy of setting the alarm to go off during the night just to see how it’ll work, and unfortunately it made me lousy in the morning. I guess it doesn’t work for everybody, but if you’re having difficulty sleeping I’d certainly recommend trying that plan out, as the positive effects are almost instant and helps boost your overall productivity throughout the day.

Thanks for reading

Antony Hudson

(TonyHadNouns)