wake up when my alarm clock goes off

:D

I’ve been pretty good with this most of the time… But every once in a while, I’ll hit the snooze bar two or three times before I even wake up! It’s really frustrating. It’s been a big help just to get enough sleep, but sometimes it’s unpredictable.

I’m pretty close on this one, I think. I wonder, though, what criteria I should set for this being complete. Doing it for a solid 30 days seems like a good idea, but I’m not sure if that’s really enough in this case. I’ve made huge improvements, but I still have occasional problems with it. I’m pretty confident that I can reliably do this, I just need to prove it!

I guess this needs a bit more thought.

There hasn’t been a day so far (recently) that this has been a problem. I’m still getting up before the alarm goes off… But I’m getting closer to it. Which is too bad, really, because I like having the extra time to myself in the mornings.

At this point, this goal is really more “have a regular sleep schedule” that what the title is. I don’t have much of a problem waking up when my alarm goes off—the big problem I have is that I go to bed at 8PM, and then wake up at Midnight. Did that this morning, but wound up going back to bed around 2 AM… Now I’m up at 4 AM (about 1/2 hour ahead of my alarm). Being able to sleep from 10 – 4 would be perfect…

At any rate, I think I’ll keep this one on the list for a bit longer, just to be sure I can do it. I think I’m there though.

Since I’ve been out of a job for two years now (more or less), my sleep schedule is really messed up. I sleep from like 10 AM – 2 PM, and I’m up all night. Trying to shift bed time to something reasonable, like say 9 or 10 PM is proving pretty difficult. Hopefully I’ll get a job soon—that’s definitely one way to force a regular sleep schedule on myself.

Since this officially starts next Monday,today, Friday 5/1, is the last weekday before it starts. I’ve been pretty successful at programming myself to get 6 hours of sleep a night on weeknights. Last night, I went to bed at 10PM. My alarm is set for 6AM, and I woke up at 4, long before the alarm went off. Since the goal is to get up no later than when my alarm goes off, I’ll count this as a good thing.

But still pretty good. I turned the alarm of and lay there for about 5 minutes, then got up. Better than usual—I usually hit the snooze bar for upwards of an hour. This is a huge improvement.

In the interest of making this a SMART goal, here’s my criteria:

If I can get up within 5 minutes of my alarm going off 5 days a week for four weeks, I’ll mark this goal as complete. Since I only started yesterday on this, I’ll start it officially next week, on Monday 5/4. If I meet the goal over the following four weeks, I’ll mark it complete on 5/29.

Wow… and I wasn’t really even trying! :p This is one of those things that I’ve had in the back of my mind for a while now. The hardest part for me is just remembering that it’s a goal when I wake up! It’s usually just so much easier to hit the snooze bar and roll over. This morning, though, I had my alarm set to wake to music. So I lay there for a few minutes listening to the song that was on, and for some reason this goal popped into my head. Recalling what some other people had said about it not over thinking it and making a big deal about it, I just rolled out of bed and got my day started.

I hope I can do the same thing tomorrow morning.