Snooze Alarms: Tool of the Devil or Savior of Humankind?

[marcusmarcusrc]

There was a recent Tech Review article about an invention named
Clocky. Clocky is an "attempt to solve a common problem" - eg, hitting the snooze button one too many times - by rolling off your table and to some random location on the floor after you hit him, so you have to get up to find him in order to hit snooze again.

But why have snooze buttons at all? People seem totally wedded to the snooze concept but it seems to me that if I can afford to get up 15 minutes later than the time I have set my alarm for originally - why not just set my alarm for that time? I certainly don't trust myself 5 seconds after waking up to intelligently make a decision "can I afford five more minutes of sleep or do I need to get up now?", so I just assume that if my alarm goes off then I really need to get up. And then I try to set my alarm for the latest possible minute I can get away with...

Comments

[remcat.livejournal.com]

I (used to) purposefully set my alarm to 45 minutes (max snooze time) ahead of when I actually had to get up. I am not a morning person. It feels so good to be able to say, "ah, I have to get up soon -- but not yet!!" It also allowed me time to wake up slowly, without allowing me to go totally back to sleep.

Of course, the last couple of years, I have "alarms" named Seth, Eli, and Julian--alas, I have not yet located their snooze buttons. :)