The early bird gets the worm.
Early to bed, early to rise, makes one healthy, wealthy and wise.
Whether or not these cheesy sayings mean anything: Waking up in the mornings is pretty important, especially if you have work or school to go to. It’s also often very unpleasant, and unlike almost any other thing in life, people can struggle with it even after years (pretty much all their life) of doing it.
This morning I woke up at around 8:30 AM [I started writing this article at SXSW], and called some people for about an hour to [try to] wake them up. It didn’t work and one of them woke up 5 hours late and missed all the day’s panels. The following is a brief guide to something very rudimentary: waking up. With modern technology, it shouldn’t be hard or inconvenient. This is almost a silly article, but many people were interested and hopefully it’ll help out some people.
Basically, I’m (and I think it’s a pretty old idea) harnessing the power of great music and its stimulation & inspiration, rather than the annoying drone of an alarm clock, easily ignored or deactivated. iTaf’s (one of the alarmclocks I recommend) volume Fade-in also incorporates the elements of fear and decency, since at a certain point it’s simply loud enough to wake me up, and soon after a while the building starts shaking so I have to turn it off or like everyone in the building will wake up (they should thank me) and then get really mad or annoyed (not so good).
This is vastly better than setting it to a fixed moderate volume – it should fade in and continue to fade in till it is loud enough to wake the dead. Hopefully you’ll wake up slightly before and have to get up and turn it down. If it’s just a medium volume, it’ll either be too loud or not loud enough to wake you up — and that will vary from day to day depending on how and when you slept, etc. Not to mention, you’ll have to jump right out of bed and turn off the extremely loud music (if you’re a heavy sleeper) and so you won’t get to enjoy it for a while.
Macbook pro (or could be a desktop) connected to great powerful speakers (Logitech Z3200).
Don’t close the lid (I just leave it slightly open) and use:
Preferences » energy saver » Schedule
to set it to startup/wake every morning at like 5:25. (or whenever you wake up – it’s 5:30 for me)
Your security settings, etc. play a small part here – if you have a password on login it won’t be able to turn on so youll have to put it to sleep logged in before you sleep or something. There might be better ways around this, and it works differently between a laptop and a desktop.
Then create a playlist in itunes of music that you want to play when you wake up. Here are some of my favorites, and I’d highly recommend you check them out:
I’d suggest something sort of soft, to start off with. No lyrics, sort of dreamy – something you’d want to lie in bed for 5 minutes listening to.
Then something to get you going. Something that makes you want to get up, out of bed and kicking ass. With or without lyrics. I usually use Auto Rock or a recent Song of the Week (SOTW).
One of the reasons why I think this works is that once the music is playing, your mind is engaged. With the alarm clock, just a flat drone, that doesn’t happen. For example, if I’m tired or just woke up and hop on the computer, all of a sudden I’m fully immersed and not tired. But if I’m just lying in bed I’ll fall back asleep again. Music can be used to invoke great emotions and feelings, one of them being the vitality and energy that one should feel in the morning.
Another distinction I wanted to make: waking up and actually being awake or fully conscious. If someone wakes me up, I’m often delirious or totally out of it for 10 minutes, unable to understand what’s going on or why I should get up or what school is. Logic is simply just not operating. This might have something to do with sleep cycles, something I don’t know much about.
Speaking of sleep cycles, the concept of powernaps (short 20 minute things) and timing your naps is very interesting. I’m not an expert on the science of sleep, but I think 9 hours is ideal. I often wake up and look at the clock and exactly 6 or 9 hours have passed since the time I slept. Since I usually try to wake up at 5:30, this would put my recommended bedtime at around 9:30 to 11:30.
An interesting phenomenon (or just a theory of mine): listening to these songs on a routine basis while waking up [or going to sleep] (and generally restricting it to those times) can possibly create an association and bind it to the time and action in your mind, to the point where it hearing something instantly wakes you up or puts you to sleep. ( A lot like that episode of Office, where Jim programs Dwight to ask for an altoid every time the Windows shutdown sound plays. ) Something like that would probably take a few years to develop but it would be pretty cool and efficient.
The previously outlined idea is great for routine, scheduled stuff. Like waking up every morning, since it should go off every morning without you having to remember to do something the night before.
But what if you just want to take a nap? Randomly. You could possibly turn on your computer and set an alarm and all – the alarm applications are robust enough to allow multiple and one-time alarms.
But if I’m not in the mood for all that setup, I also like to use a standard kitchen timer. This is nice because you can just set a time, say 1 hour, and then start it and go to sleep. Beats a regular alarm clock, where you can set the wrong time or not activate it right or something.
It’s not always loud enough to wake you up (has to be close enough) but if there are other people around they’ll probably come in (annoyed) and wake you up.
However, I like to keep it far enough away that you can’t just turn it off once you hear it. You have to actually stay awake for a minute, then get out of bed to reach it.
Ultimately, that is the power of a good alarm (those snooze things are useless). You have to actually get out of bed to turn it off; and once you’re finally out of the comfort of the blankets (at the right time, not with the frame of mind to just run out turn it off and return to warm blankets) — presto, you’re awake and conscious.
At SXSW I first tried to use an adaptation of this, but the macbook pro speakers, far away on a desk, were powerless against my stupor. I tried using a kitchen timer and the clocks in the hotel room, but I found that the regular room wakeup calls worked best because the phones are so damn loud.
The downside with this is that you can just pick up the phone and hang it up and go back to sleep (usually they’re that close). But being so close makes it also loud enough to awaken you when things more distant wouldn’t. Nevertheless, though it’ll get you up for a minute, the phone isn’t always good enough to keep you up, especially if you’re tired and not at 6 or 9 hours of sleep yet.
Ultimately, a combination of both works best. Set music to start playing, and then get a wakeup call once that starts. The sound of the music won’t pull you out of the sleep, but once the phone gets you up the music will keep you up.
All this stuff is for a Mac. If you have a PC, you’re on your own — but I’m sure there are plenty of applications out there that will do the same thing.
A few months ago I went through about every single [OS X] alarm clock application that I could find. Two of them were the best and did everything I needed: Awaken & iTaf.
Awaken has a nicer interface – I particularly like their icon – but they both have pretty much identical features and functionality. iTaf’s might be slightly more robust but I’m not sure.
I have a password on my account, and it asks for it on startup – and I have it ask for it when returning from the screensaver. So this messes with the standard alarm startup workflow a bit – it can’t just turn on the whole computer and start ringing. For this reason, I have to turn it on the night before.
However, I don’t have to start the actual program (i’ve been using iTaf lately but Awaken has it too) since it initializes itself once it’s time for the alarm. Something about daemons and scheduling..
Awaken goes a bit further and provides options to disable password prompting, etc. while the application is open. — that really defeats the purpose though so I’m not a big fan of that feature. All of this is probably not a big issue for most people with the standard security policies; it’s more of an issue with laptops that should always have passwords to get in or awake from screensaver.
http://itaf.sourceforge.net/
FREE! I’ve been using this for the last few months, as it does everything I needed.
http://embraceware.com/software/awaken/
$9. Nicer interface (graphics wise, it has the same buttons and controls). I might switch to this eventually – either one does a lot.
Comments
This place isn't ALL about me — just mostly.
Ben
3 years, 5 months ago
I tend to use Aroura, works very well. Great interface too :)
But I always leave my Mac on sleep so it doesn’t need the password.
Basheer Tome
3 years, 5 months ago
Hey, I’m pretty much liking all of your music selections. ^_^d Is there anyway you could post your library or at least the majority of your favorites in one big list?
Anand
3 years, 5 months ago
Basheer: That’s sort of what the SOTW (Song of the Week)’s are . Go to the archives, view by tags and then SOTW. Should bring up a small good listing – I try to just post the best and my favorite at the time.
Basheer Tome
3 years, 5 months ago
I did. I’m just hungry for more. :P
kabababrubarta
3 years, 5 months ago
Cool! kabababrubarta
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