Tip #14: Put Your Alarm Clock Far From Your Bed

It’s simple advice yet many people don’t use it. They keep turning the alarm off while being semi-asleep and then wonder how come they couldn’t wake up and missed an alarm…

The Simple Solution

All you need is to put your alarm clock far enough to make you stand up and take a few steps away from the bed to turn it off.

I’ve used this approach successfully for a few days until I found myself… walking back to the bed and falling asleep for one more hour!

If You Still Go Back to Bed

If this happens to you, here’s what you should do. This tip works great paired with another tip—Create a Morning Ritual. I found that if I have something else to do after turning off the alarm clock, I’m likely to go and do it, because the first and most challenging task—getting out of the bed—is already done.

So I’ve built a small morning ritual to follow, but it all starts with turning off the alarm which is in the opposite corner of my bedroom.

An Added Health Benefit

Having the alarm sound further away has an additional benefit. You should avoid putting a buzzing alarm clock right near your bed when you sleep because abrupt awakening is generally not a good thing for your health. Having the alarm clock 10 feet away will make your awakening less stressful.

Recommended Reading

How Alarm Clocks Can Disrupt Your Sleep and Stress Your Body — Sleep.me
Waking Up Is the Hardest Thing I Do All Day: Sleep Inertia and Sleep Drunkenness — PMC / National Institutes of Health
Is Snoozing the Alarm Good or Bad for Your Health? — Scientific American

Tip #8: Have Important Things Planned for the Morning

If you want to wake up earlier, make sure you have something important planned for the morning—something that you really want to do first thing when you get up, and something more important than taking an extra hour of sleep. You need to make getting out of bed feel more appealing.

Tip #7: Create a Reward System for Yourself

An excellent waking-up technique that works very well not only for waking up, but also whenever you want to do something you don’t like or keep procrastinating on, is promising yourself a reward. This tip can often be seen in various self-improvement materials, and it really does wonders.

Tip #11: Practice Waking Up

I am a big fan of Steve Pavlina and his blog Personal Development for Smart People. It’s one of the key things that pushed me towards the area of personal development back in 2005, and I have never regretted it. In his article How to Get Up Right Away When Your Alarm Goes Off, Steve offers a very original wake up technique I’ve never seen before, yet it’s quite simple.