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

[farwing.livejournal.com]

I don't trust myself enough to hit the snooze button. I make myself get up, or else I ocassionally set the alarm clock again, if I was attempting to get up early and then decide not to.

I think the original point

[tirinian.livejournal.com]

was to have an alternative to just turning the alarm *off*, and falling back asleep again. I agree that nowadays, they're more likely to be used for "just another ten minutes."

[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. :)

[chenoameg.livejournal.com]

At this point I'm so lucky that I rarely set an alarm at all.

So for me the alarm is a mechanism for regulating my sleep cycle more than getting me to a certain place at a certain time. And sometimes the alarm comes at a startling place, so it's nice to be able to snooze it and try again in ten minutes.

So if I had an alarm clock that woke me up when I entered the proper stage of sleep within a range of times I probably wouldn't use the snooze button at all.

[bluesnapdragon.livejournal.com]

i'm a much more pleasant person if i've had 15 extra minutes to lie in bed and gradually wake up.

of course, i'm prevented from hitting snooze too often by the fear of immediately losing my job if i'm late for class. it's a pretty motivating fear. :)

[gigglefest.livejournal.com]

I set two alarms 5 minutes apart, so I get the feeling of being lazy and rolling over without having to make decisions in a hazy-sleep state. :)

Are you morally opposed to call waiting, out of curiosity?

[ilai]

Hey, that's exactly what I do! Once I got my dual-setting alarm clock, that is :-)

[nuclearpolymer.livejournal.com]

If I need to be awake or feel like getting up, I just get up when the alarm goes off. If I don't, turn off the alarm and go back to sleep until whenever. I think the snooze button is the worst of both worlds, because then you get jarred awake more than once.

Re: I think the original point

[marcusmarcusrc.livejournal.com]

Yeah. I could more easily see the logic of "I think I'm getting up, but just in case I fail to do so, the alarm will go off again in ten minutes" than "nah, I want 10 more minutes of not-very-good-sleep". Except it seems that other people really like those 10 minutes (or whatever) of half-awake sleep, whereas for me I don't seem to get any resting value out of it.

[marcusmarcusrc.livejournal.com]

I'm somewhat divided about call-waiting. It serves a very useful purpose (there can be calls that are time-sensitive) (and, in my case, my cell phone doubles as my door bell), but it seems sort of rude to put people on hold while you deal with your other call.

See, I can see the appeal of being lazy and rolling over, but I dislike alarms in general, so for me the extra alarm is more negative than the 5 minutes of being lazy is positive. I think one of the things I liked about ET was that a person waking me up is much nicer than an annoying electronic device...

[shumashi.livejournal.com]

I never used to use snooze. The alarm rings once and I'm awake. It wasn't until I started dating justom, who is a serious snooze guy, that I even really knew what snooze was for. I hated it when he used it. I used to share a room when I lived in the dorm, and my roommate used to hit snooze for an hour. Every time it went off, I woke up. It happened on my Greek cruise as well. I could throttle people like that.

Re: I think the original point

[deadpuppy5.livejournal.com]

see, those 10 minutes of half awake sleep are like ... oh, sugary candy -- you get no "useful value" (be it nurtients or rest), but damn are they enjoyable.