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YOUR FIGHT WITH the snooze button is won, not when you wake up in the morning, but in the work you do to prepare the night before.
Before you try to get up with your alarm here is your Snooze Academy homework to set you in the right direction.
Starting each morning on your own terms and in a relaxed manner can have a big impact on your general well-being, rather than spending each morning chasing your tail and rushing out the door. It’s important to work out why you want to stop snoozing. Is there an activity you could do instead of snoozing?
Action: Take some time to think what difference stopping snoozing would make in your life. Write down what you hope to achieve.
If you have snoozed for the last 5 years, at an average of 30 minutes per day, roughly 300 times a year, with the alarm going off every five minutes, you would have hit the snooze button 9,000 times. You have been training your body to snooze.
Action: Practice your ‘getting up routine’ during the day or early evening. Get into bed and practice getting up. This may sound like an odd thing to do, but it works. We are retraining our minds to get up when the alarm sounds.
Research into sleep fragmentation and sleep cycles carried out by Dr Edward Stepanski of the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago indicates that fragmented sleep like that carried out during snoozing does not provide any additional rest, and may in fact reduce your levels of rest. If you still feel tired when you wake and think that you need more sleep, then you can only fix it by going to bed earlier or setting your alarm later, but snoozing isn’t going to help you out here.
Action: Remind yourself before you go to bed that you won’t get any sleep benefits from snatches of 5 – 10 minute snoozes.
Make sure that the first thing you’re doing in the morning is something you actually want to do. This positive thing might take only 5 minutes, but will get you started and out of bed.
Action: Decide the night before what the first thing you’ll do in the morning is. For example: Write a few pages of diary, have a nice long shower or send an email to a friend overseas.
Your alarm, if used correctly can be a key component of your stop-snoozing arsenal.
Action: Put your alarm clock across the room so that you have to get out of bed to turn it off. Disable the snooze alarm on your phone or get an alarm clock without a snooze alarm. Get an alarm that lights up your room in the morning (we can’t overstate the importance of this, particularly in winter). Keep a glass of water beside the alarm and have a drink as you turn your alarm off.
It is cold. I still feel tired. It is raining outside. I feel like sleeping more. It has been a long week. I’m not a morning person. It is still dark outside. The alarm is really annoying.
Action: Choose which is more important to you, snoozing or getting up with your alarm.
You know why you want to stop snoozing and you’ve followed all the steps above. Now is the time for you to commit to your goal and declare it to the world.
Action: Find a friend who also wants to stop snoozing and text or call each other in the morning. Track your progress in a notebook and stick with it through the initial difficult period.
Darren Ryan is the Founder and ZzzEO of Snooze Academy. Snooze Academy provides support to people who want to stop snoozing, through workshops and online programmes. Find out more information and join the Academy by visiting www.snoozeacademy.com.
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Did anyone explain the rules of fight club to these people!
@Darren Ahern: Seems they did… hence no one’s talkin’ about it!?
@Joe Phillips: they made a Snapchat group about it sure that’s worse than talking about it!
@Darren Ahern: They are cowards, gangs attacking one or two people, not really a fight club.
@Darren Ahern: Haha! Good point
Although I don’t remember hearin’ Tyler Durden mention snapchat so, technically…
@Darren Ahern: came here for this comment. Was not disappointed
People don’t report stuff because Guards do nothing about it the majority of the time. And if they do something, the courts don’t follow through. There is no justice for victims in Ireland.
Can’t do anything if it’s not reported.
@Anthony: Can’t do anything when crimes are reported either apparently.
@Carol Oates: moral of the story: never try
@Carol Oates: “apparently”
@Carol Oates: something tells me you want to see more criminals doing porridge.
@Carol Oates: I didnt know Ireland has a 0% crime detection rate…….. why have you hidden this from us for so long… all wise and powerful one
@Carol Oates: It’s sadly true. Someone without a previous conviction would likely be given a suspended sentence for assault in this country, if it can even be proven through the courts. For victims the idea of taking on a gang like this when none of them are taken off the streets is terrifying since the chances of them or one of their comrades coming for revenge is high.
@Carol Oates: all the gardai do is issue speeding fines
@Rochelle: Exactly right.
I’m in no way condoning any of the behaviour described here but I cannot imagine what my childhood would have been like if all the fights that went on when I was young had been filmed.
Two opposing schools fighting down the park….. fights after school….
Can’t say I can think of strangers ever being randomly attacked but there was a lot of fights when I was young that I’m very glad there is no evidence of today.
@Bob Earner: I always get a chuckle out of the “kids these days”’comments from older generations. The same stuff and worse went on back the. Just there wasn’t cameras everywhere to record it or social media to share it
@Kian: It’s the weirdest form of amnesia!!
Can you imagine if every fight resulted in a criminal assault charge!? 60% of my school would have been up in front of the Childrens Panel!
@Bob Earner: There has always been fights after school. But these youths seem to be recording random vicious assaults just for the fun of it. A big difference.
@Kian: ha exactly. If there’s a gun attack : jaysus the worst I ever saw was a knife.
If there’s a knife attack : why can’t they just use their God given fists the cowards!
Use fists : what is wrong with these monsters bring back the rope
@Bob Earner: War of the Buttons is a classic Irish children’s film about two rival schools baiting lumps out if each other.
any shyte bag who randomly attacks someone should be tarred, feathered and forced into the wilderness to fend for themselves
@Eon Cocker: and blow we go live to the 1700s
@Seriously stunned: and now we go live to the 1700s.
Gardai are only getting involved and making a statement in the media because it’s in the public eye and they have to be seen to be doing something. Especially after the recent stats on young offenders getting away with a slew of crimes. They couldn’t care less about teenagers fighting, in reality.
Don’t bother reporting it to the guards they are useless. I witnessed a car being broken into at the weekend rang the guards to report it & they never came, an hour later my wife rang back & reported it again, they never came and now the car is just sitting there wrecked. The scrotes sat in it for an hour trying to get it started and then just walked away.
@Tom Sawyer: no money in responding to that.
@Pius Flynn: we get it you don’t like the Gardaí…yawn
We effectively have no police force in this country now as all their time is taken up gathering revenue for the Government by harassing hard working people going about their business.
No other European people would put up with this lunacy
@Pius Flynn: 10 people dead in 7 days on Irish roads! I think enforcing road traffic legislation is a worthwhile endeavour
Why do people insist on sh*tting on the Gardai when the article clearly states that they are pro-actively trying to sort the problem out?
@Pius Flynn: What exactly are you getting at? Hard-working people speeding; not paying tax; insurance; unsafe vehicles? And if you think that no other Europeans would put up with this, I invite you to try any of the above in France, the Uk, Spain or Germany. You might be surprised to find yourself walking home.
@David Irwin: it depends on what legislation you are talking about.
And anyway we have enough laws, we need training for young drivers, and roads that are safe to drive on.
@George Salter: In other country’s they have technology called number plate recognition, you were probably too busy shining the local superintendents shoes to hear about it.
In other country’s if the police tried to set up checkpoints like they do here, they would be driven across, and rightfully so.
If you pay your tax and insurance and you have a valid drivers license you should be able to go about your business unhindered.
The police have far too much power in this country, it’s a police state really.
@Pius Flynn: been stopped at checkpoints in Germany and Slovenia. Anymore “facts” you want to make up?
Make the statements before someone dies.
His name is Robert Paulson…
Could we not just get some undercover Gardai to join the group and go beat the bejaysus out of them?
have your say