Entry #6 I Need My Beauty Sleep

What is the worst noise you can think of? For me, it would probably be my alarm clock…if I even hear a noise that sounds similar to it I cringe and then hunt for its source to stop it as quickly as possible. Consequently, the snooze button has become my best friend. But I know I am not the only one. A recent survey found that over a third of American adults hit the snooze button at least three times each morning, yep that’s me (more like ten times though).

However, after watching this animated short called Alarm, I was forced to reflect on this behavior. The short is centered on a guy who is doing his best to catch a few extra minutes of sleep before having to get up for work. It would appear that he knew of this propensity of his and had attempted to ensure that he woke up by setting multiple alarm clocks and hiding them throughout his apartment. And even when he does finally get up out of bed, he finds even simple tasks to be difficult and remains groggy.

I won’t sum up the whole film (because I want you to watch it, c'mon it's only 9 minutes), but I guess what I took away from it was that the main character was really just delaying the inevitable. He had to get up for work, and he was just expending more energy trying to fight it. The extra couple of minutes he got of sleep could have been better spent waking up for the day.

But, what this guy does, albeit a bit exaggerated, is the exact same thing that I and a lot of people do in the morning. And as it turns out, we are only making things worse for ourselves when we try to get that extra minute or two of sleep. According to this article by Health.com, when we hit the snooze button and try for a few more minutes of sleep, we are only succeeding in making ourselves groggy. I don’t know, it seems like it makes sense when they explain it.

Ultimately, they suggest just setting your alarm clock for when you actually need to get up and to try to get more sleep (yeah right).