Hmm, here’s another solution which a friend of mine tried which seems to require careful timing- set multiple alarms and have each alarm set to go off a few seconds after the other, having them lead you all the way around the room.
In general, I dislike posting comments that just express agreement without any content, but this is such an great idea that I just had to pop in and say, “That’s awesome.” So, without further ado:
It also happened to me. I used to wake up at 7:15, snoozing up until 7:30, which was very bad for my morning routine. Putting the alarm clock on the other side of the room helped, but when I tried to set the waking time at 7:00, I would just get up, snooze and go back to bed. Now I’m trying to set it to 7:10 and it seems to work well.
There probably is a subconscious set point which needs to be adjusted gradually. You also need stuff to do when you wake up: if you wake up just for the sake of it, your subconscious will know and put you back to sleep.
I would too, so I replaced my alarm with a cron job on my computer to play music at a certain time—usually an Insane Clown Posse song (specifically Vultures, which starts loudly and distinctively enough to work well structurally as an alarm), to make sure I wouldn’t stay in bed and listen.
As soon as I close my eyes to sleep I silently say to myself “I will wake up early in the morning” 100 times. If I do this I will wake up before my alarm without fail, if not I will hit snooze as many times as I can get away with it.
Have you ever learned (self-)hypnosis? I tried something quite close to this technique (repeat a phrase or short set of phrases as many times as I could, while intentionally relaxing as though into hypnosis but without the “and at the end of it I wake up again” key) after I learned self-hypnosis, and it achieved things I would not have thought were possible. Getting up without lazing in bed is interesting and handy, but programming my brain to wake up at 4AM (when you went to bed at 11PM or so) without an alarm of any kind was just freaky. I could hit within five minutes or so of my target time (it may help that I tended to fall asleep such that the last thing I saw before falling asleep was the time on my alarm clock) and I would wake up alert, enough so that it felt natural to get out of bed.
Of course, being roughly 13 at the time, I didn’t use this power for anything particularly valuable—usually just to sneak downstairs and play more StarCraft than I was allowed to play mid-week, then sneak back upstairs and into bed before my alarm went off for school—but the fact that I could do it still astonishes me. It’s a lot less reliable now, either because I’ve long since fallen out of practice with self-hypnosis or because my sleep schedule is now a lot more irregular but arguably less flexible to start with.
I should start practicing again… maybe even see if I can find my hypnosis lesson tapes (and something that will play audiocassette) for a reminder.
“I will wake up, alert and feeling rested, at 7:45 in the morning and immediately get out of bed. I will wake up, alert and feeling rested, at 7:45 in the morning and immediately get out of bed. I will wake...”
I have this ability when my sleep is regular enough and I’m somewhat aware of the time when I fall asleep. I think you probably could have done it without hypnosis, and the relaxation was the key, so that you fell asleep reliably and quickly.
I’ve got the self-timing ability (or at least did, I haven’t tested it lately) including being able to decide when I want to be out of a store—I can (or could) wander around, looking at whatever I pleased, and be out of the store within a minute or two of when I planned.
My ability kicked in when I’d been watching a lot of tv (not on a computer), so I had a chance to learn what a half hour was.
I consider the ability to monitor clock time unconsciously to be very mysterious.
Huh, I never tried using it for anything except sleep (or rather, waking). For me it’s quite literally an unconscious thing—the effect didn’t work if something prevented me from going to sleep while/after I did it (the idea being to repeat the sentences until I’m asleep) - but I don’t see any reason it shouldn’t be usable while awake. Now I’m curious and want to try it; thanks for the idea!
Note that my waking use of it is still unconscious. I don’t know that I could say what time it is, and I don’t have awareness that it’s getting close to the time I want to leave the store. I just happen to be done looking at things at the time when I wanted to be out of the store.
My preferred solution for this problem is to have the alarm on the other side of the room so I have to actively get out of bed and walk over to it.
I tried that before, I’d just turn it off and get back into bed.
Hmm, here’s another solution which a friend of mine tried which seems to require careful timing- set multiple alarms and have each alarm set to go off a few seconds after the other, having them lead you all the way around the room.
In general, I dislike posting comments that just express agreement without any content, but this is such an great idea that I just had to pop in and say, “That’s awesome.” So, without further ado:
That’s awesome.
It also happened to me. I used to wake up at 7:15, snoozing up until 7:30, which was very bad for my morning routine. Putting the alarm clock on the other side of the room helped, but when I tried to set the waking time at 7:00, I would just get up, snooze and go back to bed. Now I’m trying to set it to 7:10 and it seems to work well.
There probably is a subconscious set point which needs to be adjusted gradually. You also need stuff to do when you wake up: if you wake up just for the sake of it, your subconscious will know and put you back to sleep.
I would too, so I replaced my alarm with a cron job on my computer to play music at a certain time—usually an Insane Clown Posse song (specifically Vultures, which starts loudly and distinctively enough to work well structurally as an alarm), to make sure I wouldn’t stay in bed and listen.
Hard mode version: instead of music, use a cron job that will start deleting all your files if you don’t answer a prompt within the space of a minute.
Then one day you’re ill, or in the shower, or you go away on business and forget to disable the cron job, and BOOM no more files.
As soon as I close my eyes to sleep I silently say to myself “I will wake up early in the morning” 100 times. If I do this I will wake up before my alarm without fail, if not I will hit snooze as many times as I can get away with it.
Have you ever learned (self-)hypnosis? I tried something quite close to this technique (repeat a phrase or short set of phrases as many times as I could, while intentionally relaxing as though into hypnosis but without the “and at the end of it I wake up again” key) after I learned self-hypnosis, and it achieved things I would not have thought were possible. Getting up without lazing in bed is interesting and handy, but programming my brain to wake up at 4AM (when you went to bed at 11PM or so) without an alarm of any kind was just freaky. I could hit within five minutes or so of my target time (it may help that I tended to fall asleep such that the last thing I saw before falling asleep was the time on my alarm clock) and I would wake up alert, enough so that it felt natural to get out of bed.
Of course, being roughly 13 at the time, I didn’t use this power for anything particularly valuable—usually just to sneak downstairs and play more StarCraft than I was allowed to play mid-week, then sneak back upstairs and into bed before my alarm went off for school—but the fact that I could do it still astonishes me. It’s a lot less reliable now, either because I’ve long since fallen out of practice with self-hypnosis or because my sleep schedule is now a lot more irregular but arguably less flexible to start with.
I should start practicing again… maybe even see if I can find my hypnosis lesson tapes (and something that will play audiocassette) for a reminder.
“I will wake up, alert and feeling rested, at 7:45 in the morning and immediately get out of bed. I will wake up, alert and feeling rested, at 7:45 in the morning and immediately get out of bed. I will wake...”
I have this ability when my sleep is regular enough and I’m somewhat aware of the time when I fall asleep. I think you probably could have done it without hypnosis, and the relaxation was the key, so that you fell asleep reliably and quickly.
I’ve got the self-timing ability (or at least did, I haven’t tested it lately) including being able to decide when I want to be out of a store—I can (or could) wander around, looking at whatever I pleased, and be out of the store within a minute or two of when I planned.
My ability kicked in when I’d been watching a lot of tv (not on a computer), so I had a chance to learn what a half hour was.
I consider the ability to monitor clock time unconsciously to be very mysterious.
Huh, I never tried using it for anything except sleep (or rather, waking). For me it’s quite literally an unconscious thing—the effect didn’t work if something prevented me from going to sleep while/after I did it (the idea being to repeat the sentences until I’m asleep) - but I don’t see any reason it shouldn’t be usable while awake. Now I’m curious and want to try it; thanks for the idea!
Note that my waking use of it is still unconscious. I don’t know that I could say what time it is, and I don’t have awareness that it’s getting close to the time I want to leave the store. I just happen to be done looking at things at the time when I wanted to be out of the store.