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I committed to living without an alarm clock in college, 20+ years ago. I fought long battles with my snooze button, and realized I was spending hours each morning hitting the snooze button. I realized if I just didn't set an alarm I'd probably get up later than I usually set my alarm for, but earlier than I typically got out of bed. It worked; I started waking up refreshed, and happy to get out of bed in the morning.

When I had an important exam or something else I really didn't want to miss, I'd set an alarm for a while. But then I just went all in, and never set an alarm. That made me pay more attention to when I was going to bed at night, and the quality of my sleep. When I started working I would set an alarm for about half an hour after I typically woke up, just in case, so I wouldn't be late for work. But after six months of that, I stopped setting my backup alarm as well. I was late for work maybe twice in five years, and it was never significantly late, and it was at times where my body really needed sleep and it probably helped me avoid getting sick. These days I only set an alarm if I have to catch a 6am flight, or if I'm getting up super early to climb a mountain or something.

If you're battling your alarm every day, I highly encourage you to experiment with not setting an alarm.

This doesn't work for me. Left to my own schedule, I go to bed later and later and wake up later and later.

The thing that works for me is waking up (with an alarm) every day at the same time (6 o'clock) including week-ends.

I have a "dawn simulator" clock so most of the time I'm already awake when the alarm rings. But no matter what, when it rings I get out of bed immediately. You snooze you loose!

I think the key point from OP was paying closer attention the when they went to sleep.

If you know you have to be up by X then be sure to go to bed at X-Y. I would imagine the struggle is winding down for bed early rather than waiting till you "feel tired" to go to sleep. Artificial light and stimulation makes it easy to stay up way later than intended.

For me, it's easier to wake early than sleep early. Whatever I want to do after midnight, I can do before dawn. And that plays into the artificial light thing of waking me up.

Once you're tired from waking early, you're far less likely to look at your phone too late.

Luckily I went through a similar experience in college, so when I got rid of the alarm I slowly but surely looped around a bit, until I got the napping right.

However - then I started a job where I had to travel between time zones, and I still haven't figured out how to get the body to know that it's traveled quickly other than mealtime & nap manipulation the day before, and even then I still need alarms.

You likely have DSPS, worth taking a look at: https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Curing_DSPS_and_insomnia which has many helpful suggestions (that could work better than alarm clock)

I tried doing this in college too but it broke down immediately. The way coursework and exams are conducted almost forces you to burn the midnight oil and sacrifice sleep for forcing another three or four things to memorize into your head.

That’s what it felt like, like I had very limited time to shove x amount of things into my brain which only processes at y rate, so if I had too many things to shove in at a time due to taking a full courseload, that meant staying up since I cant change the rate my brain digests information without abusing stimulants like some of my friends.

So then you end up with a few nights of 5 hour sleep which you pay for by sleeping for 13 hours on the weekend. Not healthy, but it became a matter of necessity due to also having to make time for a part time job.

The linked article is part of research on optimal learning. The proposed schedule will get a lot more out of your time. It's usually better to do your studying super early in the morning rather than late into the night, and proper sleep helps a lot with information storage. YMMV though; some people are naturally better in the evening, or sometimes daytime schedules just don't fit someone's lifestyle.

I had a similar college experience to the parent post. 8am classes every day and late night lab classes every other day. This schedule prevented me from having any time in the morning to study and pretty much forced an erratic sleep schedule on myself. Lots of quick naps in between classes.

You learn better when sleeping enough, consecutive 5 hour sleep nights were pretty much guatanteeing less learning.

This is good advice but doesn't work for people with sleep apnea.

When I had sleep apnea I could fall asleep at any time of day, no matter how much sleep I got (or thought I was getting) each night. The alarm was necessary because I never felt well rested and couldn't get up without it.

Then I went for a sleep study and was told that during a night of 6-7 hours of what I thought was continuous sleep, I actually woke up 120 times. Eek! Of course everyone normally wakes up at least a few times and doesn't remember it the next day, but most people don't choke and stop breathing 120 times a night. I rarely got any real deep sleep.

I had sleep apnea surgery, which changed my life. Almost right away I got better sleep and was more alert during the day. It was like getting an extra 2-3 hours a day, every day.

Now I get up without an alarm every day and never need caffeine. It's a great way to live.

I remember reading the article a few years ago (unfortunately down right now) and being struck at both how erudite and impractical it is. These days I find it even more of the later.

My biggest pet peeve is that it ignores the role technology (in the form of artificial light and comfortable indoor space) completely subverts our natural sleep cycle. It's a lost battle.

Better to accept that we're in an artificial state our whole lives and do our best to adapt to it. What I'm trying right now is a good melatonin supplement every night to counteract the unnantural stimulus, plus a magnesium supplement, and a lot of daytime exercise. This routine has gotten me from 6 hours of anxious sleep to 8-9 hours per night plus the occasional nap. And I feel great.

I very much disagree that it's a lost battle. It's not hard to put blue light filters on screen when it gets dark, and limit bright screen usage before bed. But I do agree that melatonin and magnesium is a great idea as part of a strategy to counteract artifical light messing with our natural melatonin production.

I think it is great you found something that works for you.

The main point of both your comment + the article (which, I also haven't been able to read yet) is that you need to find what works for you by trying things.

Personally, melotonin only gives me 6 hours of sound sleep (many times I have tried to get more, last night being one of them). But in 6 hours from sleeping almost like clockwork I will be awake- and quite wide awake. It ususally takes another hour to fall back asleep, or sometimes I just decide to be awake.

So personally, moving towards the no-supplement tact is appealing even if it is much harder in artificial environments.

Have you tried bi-phasic sleep patterns? You could for example get 6 hours at night and a couple hour in the day as a big nap.

My sleep got royal screwed during the summer and I'm trying to get back to at least some sort of stable baseline. Probably a few months ago I managed to get myself on a biphasic sleep schedule. It probably would have worked if I had more flexibility in my schedule.

I have the same problem with melatonin — it seems like artificial sleep because when I wake up 4-5 hours later, my body really doesn’t want to fall back asleep.

Have you played around with dosage?

naps are sometimes great, but sometimes if I don't set an alarm I end up feeling lousy. Don't know if it means sleep or something else is out of whack and I need a nap too much.

the pandemic has let me play with sleep and sometimes it's to let it gradually drift forwards an hour each day and wrap around. (schedule meetings are the only trouble spot to that experiment)

Bad post-nap feeling is very likely sleep inertia: https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Sleep_inertia

> 1. The ideal sleep pattern is sleeping when tired and walking up without an alarm.

I interpreted this in summary as "sleep when tired and don't sleep when not tired". Which seems like common sense. That's akin to my favourite feeding pattern, which can be summarized as: "eat when hungry, do not eat when not hungry".

The waking up part is more important than the sleep part.