How to stop hitting snooze and get up at the first alarm

It goes off at 07:00 and you hit snooze. At 07:09, again. At 07:18, again. At 07:30 you leap out of bed, with no time for breakfast and the feeling that you slept worse than if you had got up the first time.

If you want to stop hitting snooze, set the alarm for the time you will really get up and make the first ring the only one. Below is how to do it, and what the studies say about those extra minutes.

What the science says about snoozing

You are not the only one. A Mass General Brigham study looked at about 3 million nights from more than 21,000 users of the Sleep Cycle app. On almost 56% of them the alarm was snoozed, and people spent an average of 11 minutes snoozing each morning. People snooze more on weekdays than at the weekend.

Is it bad for your health? Less than people tend to say. In a Stockholm University study, 31 regular snoozers spent time in the lab. After 30 minutes of snoozed alarms they did not sleep worse or wake up in a worse mood, and straight after getting up they did slightly better on some mental tests. That said, the study only looked at people who fall back asleep easily.

So the problem with those five more minutes lies elsewhere. Every morning starts late and in a rush, and the first thing you do each day is skip what you told yourself the night before.

How to stop hitting snooze

The lead author of the first study, Rebecca Robbins, sums it up in the press release: set your alarm for the latest possible time and commit to getting up when the first one goes off. To make that happen:

1. Set the alarm for your real time. If you always end up on your feet at 07:30, set it for 07:30. That half hour of snoozing is spent in light sleep that gets cut off every few minutes.
2. Remove the button. On an iPhone, when you edit the alarm in the Clock app, turn off the "Snooze" option. Without it, all you can do is turn the alarm off.
3. One alarm, away from the bed. Three alarms in a row is snoozing by another name. If you have to walk to the kitchen to turn it off, you are already up.
4. A reason to be up at that time. Something you have to do in the first 10 minutes: take the dog out, put the coffee on, meet someone at the front door.

Step 4 is the one people forget most. Without a snooze button, it is very easy to switch the alarm off and fall back asleep, which is worse. What keeps you up is that something happens if you don't get up.

When it won't help

If you snooze because you sleep six hours, removing the button fixes nothing: go to bed earlier first. And if you do it now and then and wake up feeling good, the Stockholm study says there is no need to worry.

For people who switch the alarm off without noticing

In Ultimatum the alarm is only the reminder; what counts is getting up. You choose the time, leave a small guarantee and, before the deadline, take a photo in the moment, out of bed. If you take it in time, you get your money back, and if the photo check isn't sure, a person reviews it and nothing is charged automatically. The app isn't out yet: see how it works for heavy sleepers and join the beta.