Hitting snooze on your morning alarm (again) is probably the worst thing you can do to start your day. Why? I’ve identified 4 main reasons:
First, by going back to sleep for another 10 minutes, you will actually feel more tired and groggy than when the initial alarm went off.
Second, you start your day with an utter and complete failure. You literally show yourself that you’ve got no self-discipline whatsoever. Not a very motivating and empowering start to the day, is it?
Third, you are already stressed out. It feels like you have to rush through your morning in the search of those lost minutes the snooze button stole from you. Feelings of calm, peace, and confidence are nowhere to be found.
Fourth, you are feeling guilty for hitting the snooze button. You are probably beating yourself up over it and building up a lot of negative energy at the start of the day.
Indeed, hitting the snooze button sucks. So here’s the #1 strategy that will make sure you never fall prey to it ever again:
(Note: Having an alarm clock without a snooze button doesn’t count if you just manually “snooze” by setting the alarm to 10 minutes later!)
See Also: Wake Up! Five Ridiculous Alarm Clocks
The simple strategy that can kill your snooze button addiction is called Implementation Intentions.
Implementation intentions are plans that take the form of if/then statements. They simply pre-determine how you will act in a future situation. The “IF” stands for the cue and the “THEN” stands for your pre-decided response to that cue.
“If [this happens], then [I will do that].”
You are essentially deciding in advance how you will act in a future situation. In our case, that situation is when the alarm clock goes off – we want to pre-decide that we get out of bed and don’t hit the snooze button.
The implementation intentions look like this:
– “If the alarm clock wakes me up in the morning, then I immediately get out of bed!”
– “If I’m thinking of hitting snooze, then I get out of bed right away anyway!”
We decide beforehand that we’re not going to hit the snooze button.
Now you may be wondering, “What’s the point of this? That certainly isn’t going to change anything, is it?” Well, actually it is going to change everything. It certainly turned me from snooze-button addict to someone who hasn’t hit snooze in over a year.
You see, implementation intentions are surprisingly powerful. They have been PROVEN in almost one hundred scientific studies to have a strong impact on our behaviors. In this case the behavior would be NOT hitting the snooze button.
Here’s one study that will hopefully convince you of using this strategy. Twenty drug addicts committed to writing a résumé before 5pm of the same day. Why a resume? The staff in the hospital encouraged the drug addicts to write out their resumes in order to find work after the end of the treatment.
There were 2 groups:
– Group 1: They drew up implementation intentions for achieving the goal. They pre-determined when and where they would write the résumé.
– Group 2: They made no plans for achieving their goal whatsoever.
The results: At 5pm, none of the people in the 2nd group had written the résumé. Not a single one. What about the guys who created implementation intentions? Get this: 8 of them had written the résumé.
My point is, implementation intentions work. They will work for you, too. So here’s what I suggest you do: Write down the two previously mentioned implementation intentions and read them every night before going to bed. Of course, you can add your own variations as well.
See Also: 9 Simple Tricks to Supercharge Your Whole Day
You will be surprised at how effective this trick is – it will (almost) singlehandedly kill your habit of hitting that dreaded snooze button.
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Author: Nils Salzgeber
Nils is a lifestyle coach and co-founder of njlifehacks.com, a blog dedicated to helping people live a better life through relentless self-improvement.
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