How Hitting the Snooze Button Is Negatively Impacting You and What to Do About It

Although it feels nice in the moment, hitting the snooze button is essentially postponing and putting the rest of your day on hold. Whether you want to be more productive or are just tired of running around the house to get ready every morning, it's time to address the primary way many people sabotage themselves at the start of the day.


Why You Shouldn’t Hit Snooze

Hitting snooze—although it seems like a blessing when you're exhausted—is actually hurting your sleep quality as those extra 9 minutes don't provide any benefits since it's not enough time for a sleep cycle. Instead, all you're doing is postponing the inevitable, and you'll be even more groggy when the alarm goes off again.

Creating this cycle of hitting snooze every morning is a bad habit that far too many people have. You’re essentially training your brain to recognize the alarm as the cue to hit the snooze and sleep more rather than to wake up. This fragmented sleep can also negatively impact your waking hours and hurt your sleep the next night. And the last thing you want is to be lying awake in bed unable to get any rest—it’s about as bad as waking up overheated with night sweats.

So, what can you do about your snooze-hitting habit? Luckily, with these tips and a little bit of discipline on your part, it’s a feasible habit to break.

Get Up and Move

If you keep your alarm on your nightstand within arm's reach, then reaching over and slapping the snooze button is way too easy. To fight against it, put your alarm across the room if not in an entirely different room altogether. Once the alarm sounds, it'll force you to get out of bed and move, which can help wake you up.

Adjust Your Sleep Schedule

If you feel like you're just too tired when you wake up every morning, the primary issue might be poor sleep fitness. If you aren't getting 7-9 hours of sleep every night, it's no surprise that your body craves more every morning. Start adjusting your nighttime habits so you can get adequate sleep every night and you'll wake up feeling more refreshed rather than groggy.

Wake Up When You’re Ready

How nice would it be if you could gently wake up every morning ready to get out of bed and face the day? Fortunately, companies like Eight Sleep provide the tools you need to sleep better so you wake up ready for the day ahead. As you are aware, the body goes through different cycles while you sleep and there are different levels of sleep depending on your body temperature. If you are in REM sleep, then you'll find that waking up is much more difficult; however, if you're in a lighter sleep, then waking up is easy.

To help implement this, a smart bed from Eight Sleep with a built-in smart alarm will track your sleep cycles and will gently wake you up using temperature when you're in a lighter state of sleep. Sometimes at precisely 7 a.m. when the alarm is set, you're in a deep sleep but at 6:45 a.m., you're not. The Pod, Eight Sleep’s newest smart bed, will track your cycles and will wake you up precisely when you're in the lightest sleep within 30 minutes of your set wake-up time.

About Eight Sleep

Eight Sleep is on a mission to promote the long-term health benefits of getting a great night's rest and to improve your sleep fitness so you can be more productive and feel more awake during the day. The Pod is their latest product, a smart cooling bed that will help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer all while it coaches you to become more sleep fit every night. Eight Sleep employed cutting-edge technology when creating the Pod and leveraged sleep data from people across the world to develop sleep solutions that provide real results. Whether you struggle to sleep or just want to optimize your waking hours, Eight Sleep has the solution for you.

Learn more about their advanced smart bed, the Pod, at Eightsleep.com

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