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  • I use an old standalone alarm clock, that I put on the other side of the room. So I have to get up to turn it off.

    • And if it’s not loud enough put it in a small metal pan or bowl, and place that inside a partially opened dresser drawer. Amplifies it quite a bit in addition to your suggestion to physically get up to turn it off.

    • This. I have an old vintage alarm clock that I put across the room. It's set to my "if you aren't up by now you will be late no matter what" time. If my phone alarms don't get me up, this thing is so loud and unpleasant I will certainly get up.

      Phone ringers are too pleasant sound and easy to snooze. I need to change the tone every few months as I adapt to them all. A harsh metal bell or mechanical buzz on an alarm with no snooze that I cant reach from bed has me wake up at the last phone ringer because it is so ear shattering when that alarm clock goes off, I can snap through all but the worst sleep deficit nights.

      It also pisses off the girlfriend when that annoying thing goes off too, so then I have her mad at me for waking her up if I'm not up to shut it off before it lets loose.

  • Go to bed earlier. If you're frequently sleeping through your alarms or falling asleep immediately after turning them off, then you're not getting enough sleep. Any tips and tricks like "two alarms 5 minutes apart" or "drink water before bed so you have to pee when you wake up" will only get you so far where sleep deprivation is concerned.

  • Turn the volume up on your alarms, and pick an annoying ring tone helps a lot. As well setting the phone away from the bed if you're able to.

  • I use a smart alarm app. It uses your mic to track your breathing, and uses that information to identify when you're in deeper and lighter phases of sleep. You set a range of time for the alarm, and when it detects you coming out of a deep cycle it starts the alarm. I've always slept through alarms, and this works like a dream.

  • Does this occur even after a few nights of proper sleep?

    If you generally sleep enough and don't have other sleeping problems you could try to change the ringtone. Or if you are like me and turn off the alarm half a sleep and don't remember it, put your alarms further away from your bed.

  • Well, it mostly depends on why you're missing them.

    Believe it or not, sometimes there's nothing you can do. Some people will sleep through any noises at all, though it's really unusual.

    Most likely, your brain is telling you that you aren't sleeping enough by refusing to react to the stimulus.

    So you gotta fix what's wrong. If you're staying up late, begin rest earlier, even if you don't sleep earlier (which can be the case for some types of insomnia). Just being in dark/low light with as little external stimulus as possible can help your brain and body "recharge" a little even when you don't sleep enough. That's a short term fix, you'll eventually need to figure out what to do to address the insomnia directly.

    If you're not staying asleep it's harder to address without outside help. Tbh, it isn't usually something that you can crowd source an answer for just because there's too many possibilities. A sleep study tends to end up being the real answer. But you can try various meditative methods when you wake up to help drop back out faster, if you're waking up enough to do so.

    The major problem comes in when you can't tell you're waking up, or are just sleeping so poorly that it amounts to the same thing. Apnea is a removed like that, so you'd want to rule it out one way or another.

    All of that being said, you can also try vibration based alarms, like the kind that go under the mattress or pillow. There's also wrist and headband based ones. Sometimes, especially if your brain is just inviting the alarms because it's pissy about ignoring sounds, tactile stimulation gets the job done because our brains process it differently, and it's harder to filter out past a point.

    I would try getting more and better sleep as the primary fix though. Get to bed earlier, make sure you minimize light and noise, and learn some techniques like progressive relaxation and deep, controlled breathing. If you need background sound, err on the side of "white noise" over music, but music will do in a pinch as long as it's on a timer so it doesn't interfere with the sound of the alarm later.

    Make sure you aren't snoring heavy, and if you are, address that. The problem is that it often takes a ton of experimentation to figure out what actually helps you. Snoring isn't the same as apnea, necessarily, but it does disturb your sleep sometimes.

    Avoid stimulants at least 4 hours before bed. No caffeine, no tobacco, no meth (the last is mostly a joke, but check that any prescription meds or OTC meds aren't stimulants).

    And, obviously, if you can, talk to your doctor about a sleep study.

  • Check your settings to see if the alarm isn't giving up after a set amount of time, had this happen to me. Try changing the ringtone to a song you hate and putting it the furthest away you can inside your room so you have to get up.

  • Sleeping earlier should help, if the issue is falling asleep earlier, consider light exercise a couple hours before trying to sleep. I'm personally not a big fan of medicated sleep assist, but some people may need it.

    I used to be a very deep sleeper. The things that helped me wake up on time were making sure I was tired enough at the end of each day to sleep soundly, and getting up at the same time daily. I usually wake up a bit before my alarm goes off these days.

  • Android lets you set custom alarms. The best one I have is a recoding of me screaming into my phone to "get the fuck up"

  • I wish I could sleep in past 6. We are all wired differently. It may never be easy for you to do. Your best bet is to shift your sleeping time forward by an hour or so. Once your mind gets used to it hopefully the alarm will do a better job.

  • I personally use Sleep as Android which comes with a bunch of options to help ensure you've actually woken up. I utilize the "captcha" option in which when I go to turn off the alarm, it displays a screen full of sheep and all of them but one are sleeping - you have to click the one that is "awake" in order to dismiss the alarm. I guess the process wakes up my brain just enough so that I don't go back to sleep, whereas with a regular alarm that has just a simple dismiss button I'll absolutely either hit dismiss or one of the volume buttons to turn off the alarm before I've fully woken up.

    I also have it set to buzz on my watch for 90 seconds before playing a sound on my phone (which escalates in volume) - I've not had a problem waking up with this in the years that I've been using it.

    There are other options too, such as answering math questions, scanning a QR code, pressing your phone to an NFC tag, heavily shaking the phone, one called "Say cheese!" that makes you smile as hard as you can and uses the camera to detect it, and one that you have to "laugh out loud".

  • If you don't wake up by noises, you may want to consider an alternative option. Smart watches vibrate, for instance, and there are various alarm clocks you can put under your pillow that'll also vibrate to wake you up.

  • Vibrating smart watch seems to do the trick for me.

  • I forget the name of it, but back before I got old and started waking up consistently before the alarm went off, I had an alarm clock app that made you do math problems in order to shut it off or snooze it. They got progressively harder with each snooze, so you eventually had to actually wake up.

    Can't get you out of bed, but it can definitely force your brain to kick into gear which usually kept me from falling back asleep.

  • 1. Set even more alarms. Annoy yourself into being awake. Identify when you want to be awake, and start your first alarms at that time. Increase frequency as you approach the time you need to be awake. Make your wake up time harder to ignore.

    2. Involve multiple senses. Sound alone isn't doing it? Add sight, touch, taste, or smell to your alarm regimen. There are several products that can do these kinds of things. For example, I have Home Assistant turn on my room lights to full when my phone alarm goes off, and I could easily add a diffuser, or a vibrator under my mattress. Bonus points if it takes multiple steps to reset your alarm. Which leads me to...

    3. Increase alarm reset difficulty. The more you have to conciously engage your brain to reset your room to sleep mode, the harder it will be for your brain to automate the snooze button. Put your phone across the room, use an app that continues to scream until you scan a QR code in another room or solve math problems, make a deal with your partner that they get to spray you with cold water unless you correctly answer these riddles three, anything. Make it difficult for your brain to remain in sleep mode when your alarm goes off.

    4. Enlist the humans in your life to help. Ask, cajole, or haggle with your parent, partner, sibling, roommate, friend, or whoever else you've got available to help you wake up. Be it pleasurable reward or punishing annoyance, whatever they can do that is hard to ignore and can get you going will be better than one phone screaming into the void.

    5. 4 part 2: Involve medical professionals. Sleep is a process that involves your body, and when your body isn't working as you expect, you take it to the Body Shop. If nothing is working, talk to your doctor about your struggles with waking up when you want. They can help you narrow down the root cause and supply treatment if necessary. This treatment can range from sleep hygene coaching, to OTC medication recommendations, to prescription medication addition or adjustments, or even doing a whole-ass inpatient sleep study to figure out what's going on. If nothing else is working, present your problem to a licensed Professional Human Animal Mechanic.

    6. Don't give up. This is a problem that can be addressed. It may take adjustments to your life that are unusual or unpleasant, but remember that, just like exercise, you are trading one unsustainable unpleasantness (i.e.: employment problems due to chronic tardiness), for another sustainable unpleasantness (i.e.: going to bed earlier, or changing your sleep environment)

      1. Increase alarm reset difficulty. The more you have to conciously engage your brain to reset your room to sleep mode, the harder it will be for your brain to automate the snooze button. Put your phone across the room, use an app that continues to scream until you scan a QR code in another room or solve math problems, make a deal with your partner that they get to spray you with cold water unless you correctly answer these riddles three, anything. Make it difficult for your brain to remain in sleep mode when your alarm goes off.

      To add to this, you can get alarm clocks that literally run away when they go off so you have to chase or find them, and others that have a bit of a puzzle to solve to switch them off (I suspect there are phone apps that also have the latter, but I've never looked for them)

  • I use an alarm captcha, simple math problems so I can't accidentally dismiss the alarm instead of snooze. I also keep a similar sleep schedule throughout the week so I'm sometimes already awake a little before the alarm and I have an alarm to remind me when to go to bed.

  • I have an alarm clock with two alarms on it. The first is radio, at a reasonable volume. The second is beep Beep BEEP with ascending volume. If the first doesn't wake me the second will. Unless I press the off button and fall back to sleep.

    I'm amazed the clock with the bell doesn't wake you (if you mean one of the traditional alarm clocks with the bells on?). Those things are LOUD.

    As sound isn't working, maybe try one of those "silent alarms" which just turns a light on to help you wake up naturally (I haven't tried these and would definitely have a beeping alarm as a backup!), or something like a Fitbit which can wake you up by buzzing on your wrist (and will adjust when it wakes you to match your sleep cycle)

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