

Ask HN: How do you wake up? - castis

I was thinking about this the other day. How you you guys wake up in the morning? And/or what is a routine you all know of to work better for you to get you started on the right foot?
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gwern
How do I wake up?

I realize the inherent nonexistence of all entities and how they are all
impermanent, and thus that all striving is striving for temporary results; the
only true achievement is to dissolve one's karma and be liberated from the
Wheel of Rebirth, never again to be born & suffer.

Then I have some tea and check my email.

------
neuromanta
Try to get used to waking up always the same time. Every time I wake up early
in the morning, I kiss my girlfriend, then get up, and after the bathroom I do
some workout. Nothing serius, just to make myself fresher. And then, for about
an hour, I work on my private project(s), until my girlfriend gots up too
(she's a little sleepy :) ). Then have breakfast (ALWAYS have a substantial
breakfast), and then I go to work (I always get a shower before I go to
sleep). This way I always start my day with good mood, and by achieving
something, which makes me confident.

~~~
dasil003
I'm going to sleep right now so I can try this in 7 hours.

~~~
cakesy
You are going to try waking up and kissing his gf?? Good luck.

~~~
die_sekte
Well, the other guy will make sure that he wakes up when he kisses the guy's
gf.

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andyjenn
I have a small 3 year-old walk into my bedroom ~6am every day and jump up and
down on the end of the bed saying, I want to have breakfast/watch Bob the
Builder/brush the baby's teeth..

Funnily enough, this perfect alarm-clock never fails to wake me up!

~~~
timwiseman
That sounds like how I wake up on the weekends, except mine is also normally
shouting, "The sun is up!" He never seems to realize that I know, but don't
care that the sun is up.

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phn1x
I find when I wake up at the same time each day I do a lot better. Weekends
completely throw me off cause I can usually sleep in until 7, sometimes at the
latest 8.

I have a few methods of waking up.

1\. Cell phone alarm set to 5 a.m, this is hit or miss. Sometimes I actually
wake up a minute before the alarm even goes off. 2\. A 2.5 year old who wakes
me up with a plastic golf club or other blunt instrument on the weekends (this
is the whole sleeping in part) 3\. Instances like this morning, where I was up
at 3:15 because I stopped breathing...

The last one is not recommended but it always wakes me up. Thankfully it does
not happen too often, just now and again.

Routine is get out of bed, roll the arms around to get the blood circulating,
make a nice breakfast and prepare a lunch to take into the office. Drink a
bottle of water, turn the coffee pot on, knock out a set of push ups, hit the
shower, get dressed, get in car, get 2 blocks down the road and realize I
forgot the lunch or my pants, turn around, get item, head to office.

Weekend is fairly void of a routine with the exception of my son waking me up,
and taking him to Starbucks in the morning to flirt with chicks.

Ultimately, My routine during the week is the best one for me. It make's me
pretty productive, and I really enjoy being the only one in the office for a
few hours. It's amazing what you can get accomplished when no one is around to
interrupt you.

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jacobroufa
If it's a good day and I'm paying attention to my body, I just get up whenever
my I first wake up, usually before my alarm goes off. Sometimes I think it is
the cats that wake me, other times I think I wake the cats... I can never
tell. If it's a bad day I don't get up right away and then proceed to sleep
through multiple alarms; often I will snooze them and go back to sleep until I
run out of snooze cycles and then wake up hours later wondering why my alarm
went off. I sleep snooze.

I have noticed though, that when I wake up first without (before) an alarm and
promptly get out of bed and start my day I am usually less groggy and more
inclined to be productive. My body has ~1.5hr sleep cycles, meaning if I sleep
in increments of roughly 1.5hrs I tend to get better sleep. I learned all this
about myself when I was practicing a polyphasic sleep experiment. I don't
recommend this to anyone as an actual method of sleep or rest (my experiment
was less than successful) but I sure learned a helluvalot about my body and
tolerances.

Read more at <http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/10/polyphasic-sleep/> or
on <http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2002/4/15/103358/720>

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badtoken
I've learned (and adapted) to the fact that I just can't get any reasonable
work done in the first 3 hours or so of the day. I can ingest massive amounts
of caffeine, go run a marathon, or whatever, but my brain just needs a few
hours to get up to speed.

~~~
TeHCrAzY
You might find that, like myself, you function much better in the evening and
night. Even though I keep a normal daylight schedule for work reasons, I long
to fall back to my natural rythmn: rise at 4pm, and sleep at 7 or 8am.

~~~
tensor
For a long time I thought I followed the same schedule. Since I'm in grad
school, I decided to experiment with that. I found that I was not a night
person after all. Rather, anxiety and thinking about a given problem kept me
up indefinitely.

I even tried the experiment where you stay up until you are tired, then
repeat. It was terrible. After a week I could not sleep at all. I'd get tired
when the sun set, as we are supposed to. But despite being tired, no sleep
came.

Through much pain, I discovered that the major source of my sleeplessness was
a lack of social contact. Now this varies immensely by individual. But the
moral of the story is that every sleep problem is unique. Your solution is not
my solution. And mine is not yours (I don't have a good one btw).

I'll guess that sleep researchers already know this. Best of luck hacker news!

~~~
RiderOfGiraffes
While writing up my PhD I went through three different sleep styles, each time
for four months.

The first was to work nights. I'd get up at 15:30, "breakfast" at 17:00,
socialise from 18:00 to 20:00, then go to work. I'd eat my last meal at 07:00
(bacon eaggs and toast are an interesting "last meal of the day") and go to
bed at 09:00.

The second was to sleep every other night, sleeping for 12 hours when I sis
sleep at all. The night I stayed up I'd catch a cat nap at about 03:00 for 20
minutes. This was effectively a 48 hour day.

The third and most interesting was to stick to a 28 hour day with 8 hours
sleep. This gives a 6 day week, and I'd drift in and out of phase with normal
people. That really suited me, and I wish I could do it more.

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thedevelopment
First alarm: iPod plugged into a stereo playing something pleasant. (7.20am)

Second alarm: iPhone alarm 40 minutes later. I now mega-loathe the "Harp"
alarm tone. (8.00am)

Third alarm: Girlfriend kicking me out of bed between 5-10 minutes later.
(~8.10am)

Works like a charm every time.

~~~
blasdel
After ~6 months of using my call phone as my alarm clock, I now have a strong
pavlovian conditioning to several of the Verizon ringtones, especially "rings"

I'll hear it randomly in public in the middle of the day and immediately get a
rush of adrenalin -- "oh fuck I'm waking up 6 hours late _aaaahhh!!!_ " -- and
it will take me at least 15 minutes to calm down fully. For hours afterward my
ears will parse any plausible input into phantom ringing (that happens
randomly by itself too).

~~~
oomkiller
Spot-on, I like to change my wake-up alarm tones frequently to prevent my
brain from filtering them out + preventing the effect you describe here.

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avinashv
I have always had a lot of trouble getting up in the morning, and when I
started working at a company where I'm expected to put in normal hours, I
changed my wake-up routine quite drastically.

I use my computer as an alarm clock. This has a few benefits:

(1) It's on the other side of the room. After 10 years of having a clock/phone
by my head and hitting snooze (I'm capable of snoozing easily for 1 hour) or,
worse, off, having to actually get out of bed to turn off the alarm is enough
to wake me up past the point of getting back into bed.

(2) I have a different alarm noise every day. I found myself getting
conditioned to whatever sound my clock/phone was using, and especially with
snooze, after hearing that 30-odd times a week, I'd just sleep through alarms.
A different sound each day is _excellent_. Highly recommended.

(3) I keep a small bottle of water on my desk, which I drink right after
turning off the alarm. I once (and only once) tried this when my alarm was by
my bed and soaked an iPod in a groggy swat to snooze my alarm. I find that the
water makes me feel much better. The first week or so without this, I walked
around like a zombie until I got to work, but simply drinking the water makes
me feel better. There's probably some logical biological explanation to this.

I'm still not really a morning person--I miss my sleep schedule from college--
but it's the most effective solution I've found to waking up at 7am.

The easy solution is obviously just sleeping early, but I find myself unable
to sleep before midnight at the earliest.

~~~
Sigma7
The "sleeping early" solution requires a few tricks, the most recent of which
claims that you shouldn't eat between 12-16 hours from when you need to wake
up.

Of course, the real reason you can't sleep early is because the most
"interesting" stuff is done just before you fall asleep. You need to move the
interesting stuff to the morning, even if it means watching a silly children's
cartoon; when I stopped watching said cartoon, my wakeup time drifted to
beyond 8am, since I was only barely interested in going to school.

------
brandnewly
Go to bed and wake up at the same time every night/day. Also, avoid using
'snooze' and taking naps. If you're not used to it, then you really have to be
determined at first, but there's definitely a noticeable difference after a
week or two. If you're consistent, your alarm will become obsolete.

~~~
joevandyk
no naps? booooo

~~~
jaaron
Really? I never take naps. My wife will, but I just can't do it.

------
dimarco
snooze my iphone about 3 times, zombie walk to the fridge for some orange
juice and then a shower. it's not recommended.

~~~
tptacek
Doesn't the iPhone alarm kick ass though? It's the best alarm clock I've ever
had.

~~~
dimarco
You have no idea how many times I've turned my blackberry alarm off and
thought I had hit snooze. the iPhone alarm is a thousand time nicer with 2
different mechanisms, touch snooze and slide off.

~~~
yellowbkpk
You can also hit the volume buttons on the side to snooze it.

~~~
tptacek
Just having an unbounded number of alarms puts it ahead of any other alarm
I've had. I have alarms set for 7:01, 7:10, 7:20, and 7:45 (when I finally
have to be on my feet to get the kids out the door to school).

~~~
aik
I have a Palm Centro and I just have to tap the screen anywhere to snooze. To
turn it off then requires a second tap to a specific button on the screen.
Best I've used.

------
FreeRadical
Live at home and my Mum wakes me up.

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spyrosk
If I have an obligation in the morning my girlfriend wakes me up, since she is
the one who hears my alarm. I am a really heavy sleeper and usually require
something around 200 dB to wake me up. I used to have my speakers do the job
but the risk of breaking up one morning grew daily so I stopped.. Plus, I
think she'd hate CPR with morning breath :P.

Afterwards comes my ritual, 1 cup of coffee, breakfast, another cup of coffee
with my pipe, all while reading emails/news etc. If I skip any of that,
especially coffee, I'm grumpy all day long (and with a headache for some
reason).

Although I live like a night person I've found that if I get used to waking up
around 5-6 am I'm much more energetic and feel like I'm really seizing my day.
The problem is that it's really easy for me to break the habit of rising early
so I've only accomplished that for month long periods followed by trimesters
of sleeping to noon and more.

------
_x0t
I set several alarms (alternating cell phone and clock): 0645, 0650, 0655,
0700, 0715, 0730, 0750. All of which I'm nearly immune to now. I've started
setting my phone alarm as my actual ringer so I can trick myself into thinking
someone is calling me.

If my wife wakes up before me, she usually kicks me out of bed. I get up,
shower, make sure my bag is packed, get dressed, maybe inhale a quick
breakfast, ride my bike to work (usually quite late and still in zombie mode),
have a cup of coffee, check feeds+email, and then finally start working on
real work by 1000hrs.

I'm a slacker, I dislike my job, and I'm a heavy sleeper. I have a little
trouble getting to sleep, but once I'm there, it's over.

------
Jem
Alarm goes off at 7:22 (for some reason the snooze uses 8 min intervals - so
if I'm tired I'll have 1 snooze until 7:30 otherwise I'm straight up). Pee,
puke (morning sickness), shower, get dressed, breakfast.

I don't have any problems getting out of bed.

------
Travis
Fun trick my dad taught me. It's inconsistent, but when it works, it's pretty
cool.

Before bed (when you're done reading and ready to flip out the light), close
your eyes and visualize a clock (old kind, with the arms). Picture it at the
current time, then slowly rotate the dial until it's your wakeup time. Repeat
a few times. Something is pretty cool about literally setting your wakeup
alarm, and waking up within a few minutes of that time.

Also it's a good time to meditate / focus / relax before bed, which is
probably the most helpful part of it.

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sp4rki
I take a bath ALWAYS around 11pm to 1 am on weekdays and wake up at 5:30am...
Kiss my girlfriend goodbye, get dressed and head to the office. Her iphone and
my blackberry both have alarms at 5:30ish. The reason I take a bath always
before sleeping is because although I wake up at that time, I am really just
asleep and on automatic. I wake up, get dressed, have coffee, drive to the
office, have a morning cig, power up my hardware, and then like at 7:30 or so
I start going out of automatic mode and wonder how the hell I keep getting to
work and not noticing.

------
michaelfairley
Two alarms: One within arms reach, and another that I have to get up for, set
1 minute later than the close one. Always make sure you have an alarm out of
arms reach from your bed.

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alanl
My radio alarm clock goes off at about 8:30am. The radio slowly soothes me
awake, so that I gradually wake over the next 30 mins or so Using this method
puts me in a better mood more consistently than when I used to get up
immediately and/or earlier. I would love to get up early and work on some
personal projects before I went in to work, but my brain just doesn’t start
running until about 11am, and I cant figure out how to change this.

------
Mankhool
The cat needs an insulin injection every morning before she is allowed to have
breakfast. She crawls up onto my chest and paws me in the face until I wake up
(no joke). When she first started doing this - years ago - I would keep my
eyes shut and pretend I was asleep, but to no avail. The moment she knows that
I'm conscious, she starts meowing, jumps off the bed and heads for the
kitchen.

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oomkiller
I become conscious sometime in the afternoon, take a quick look at my phone
for any missed calls/e-mails/text messages etc, and if they need immediate
attention, I pop open my macbook pro and go to work. If there are no critical
issues, I usually jump in the shower and "meditate" for 30 minutes to an hour.
Then I usually get to work or whatever I planned on doing that day.

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movix
Yawn, stretch my arms, glance up from my computer and realise it's daybreak
and that I've been up all night...again.

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yef
Sleep in a room with a window facing east, get up when the alarm goes off,
drink a cold glass of water, take some deep breaths, hop on the computer and
drink a cup of coffee, then go for a run. By the time I'm back from my run,
I'm "very awake".

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rsaarelm
At 6 AM, after 8.5 hours of sleep and after a sunrise alarm clock has been
getting brighter for about half an hour. Then I make breakfast and coffee and
try to have an uninterrupted 2 hours of working on personal projects before
going to work.

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bendtheblock
I have one of those alarm clocks that lights up the whole room over a 30
minute period - that makes it easier to get up in Winter. It also plays the
radio gradually louder. I also have my iPhone alarm set on my desk "just in
case..."

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rmanocha
Set a recurring alarm on my phone, snooze it a couple of times, head to the
restroom, freshen up a bit and go play squash for an hour. Come back, take a
shower, have breakfast and then get to work.

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wglb
Haven't used an alarm for i don't know how long. Wake up at desired time,
although often wake up earlier and try to sleep a little more.

Then walk to the next room and log on.

------
Flemlord
I leave my curtains open and wake up around 6:30 when the sun starts shining.
No alarm clock. Then I work out for 30 minutes, eat a light breakfast, and
walk downstairs to work.

~~~
Shamiq
This sounds wonderful.

------
jambalaya
My alarm goes off at 7:55 pm. Work starts at 8 pm so there isn't much time for
messing around. This is by design. I work support and sign in, start work-
related tasks etc.

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focalpoint
Coffee and a grapefruit.

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grizzydot
I've noticed I don't need an alarm to wake up. If I keep my blinds open, the
sunlight along w/ any ambient noise always wakes me up after about 7-8 hours
of sleep.

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chrismear
Badly.

------
jamesbritt
I make myself smile, which in turn triggers a good mood, which in turn makes
me think about the interesting things I could be doing if I were up and about.

------
hova
mpd + cron + some hard rock... i'm a heavy sleeper :D

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taitems
Sidenote: Mega annoyance. Why does the iPhone not wake for an alarm. I think
pretty much every other phone in existance has nailed this?

~~~
andrewf
If you want to take it off the grid (versus letting it ring out in silent
mode), you could put it into airplane mode.

~~~
taitems
That's a good idea, but it's also battery conservation and the knowledge that
it's also OFF. Certain processes can hang and chew through your battery until
you restart, which is also why it's nice to turn it off of a night.

------
carterschonwald
Lots of sunlight in the face, then about 20 minutes later an alarm to unwrap
the last bits of stupor

------
zoba
Usually about 5 minutes before my real alarm goes off...

------
justinchen
iPhone alarm set for 6:30am.

Usually try to get some fresh air, eat some breakfast, go through RSS reader,
then get to work.

------
cakesy
I haven't used an alarm in about 10 years, and always manage to wake up at the
correct time, even if it is 5am. My girlfriend is always amazed. I get up,
have a shower, then go straight to work. I can be out of the house in 10
minutes. I find my housemates strange, the ones who fool around in the
mornings having dinner, watching tv. I know I used to when I was a kid, but
not anymore.

~~~
piramida
so you are kind of like a robot now no?

