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Comment by jwalton | Hacker News Reader

In my late teens I would frequently be late for university because I’d turn off my alarm or my gf would come wake me up and I’d go straight back to sleep. One day I decided to move my alarm clock to the other side of the room so I’d have to physically get up to turn it off. The next morning I got up, walked over to the alarm clock and turned it off, then I was startled awake as I started to fall over standing in front of the alarm clock.

I’d like to be able to blame this on some kind of medical problem, but I think mostly I just stayed up late playing Counterstrike too much. :P

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In the apartment I live in, I don't have a distance large enough I could put my alarm clock that I wouldn't be able to cross to turn off the alarm, then cross it again to get back to bed, and not even remember it later. Adding a lock or some puzzles to solve only results in me either solving them and not remembering, or continuing to sleep while the alarm wakes up half the apartment building. Fun fact: turns out I'm really good at mentally adding and multiplying 2 and 3-digit numbers while unconscious.

Hang the alarm clock from the ceiling :).

Even better, ceiling fan.

It works: https://clocky.com/

>Clocky leaps from your nightstand, and runs away beeping

This is a hilarious mental image

It is hilarious, and infuriating at the same time.

Yeah, I remember seeing that one; I thought of buying it, but I'm sure it'll just trigger my "screw it, I'll stay asleep while half of the neighborhood secretly hates me for the morning noise" adaptation. I don't think I ever experienced a noise I couldn't sleep through.

If there is one, it would be this, it's loud and continuously cycles through so many different noises, there is no pattern you can tune out. I can't find a recording of the whole progression, but I can assure you it is very long. I should record a full video of it.

I have one of these things, and I love it so much. The sound it makes keeps changing so you can't tune it out, and it flashing while moving around requires a bit more mental awareness to actually find the button to turn it off, so it's pretty good at waking you up.

For anyone else who has one: if you double click the third (alarm) button, you can change the default 1 minute snooze. You can also press the first two buttons at the same time to test the alarm going off without sound or the right two buttons to test with sound (albeit quieter than a real alarm).

Have you considered trying an alarm clock that will run away from you? [0] I've never used it but I also have a tendency to sleep through _the most annoying alarms_ so I would consider it if I couldn't put my alarm out of easy reach.

0: https://clocky.com/

edit: rrr_oh_man beat me to it, that's what I get for re-watching their video :D

I know this sounds kind of smug, but you could also "simply" try going to sleep earlier such that you are not as dependent on an alarm clock. I've found that when I am still in deep sleep in the morning, my body has many ways to avoid/ignore alarms, but if I get enough sleep such that I'm already mostly awake by the time the alarm sounds, I don't ignore it.

I won't say it's impossible for me, but there's a huge, tangled mess of psychological, social, habitual and lifestyle reasons that prevent it. Starting with, ever since I finished high school and was no longer forced by my parents to get up on time, my natural awake time is between ~11:00 and 04:00. Any attempts to shift it to what society considers normal tend to drift back to baseline within a week. These days, 報復性熬夜 (revenge bedtime procrastination) is a significant factor, too.

(It's 00:15 here as I'm submitting this comment; I'm fully wake and alert, as opposed to how I was 3-4 hours ago.)

The human body has a natural tendency to sync up with day/night cycles in terms of wake/sleep, but exactly how this aligns varies significantly between individuals. If it's quite delayed then trying to get to sleep earlier isn't an easy task: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder

After my last move I ended up in a bedroom with excruciating amounts of windows letting in so much daylight you'd probably get a sunburn if you didn't get up. I "fixed the glitch" but I was thinking that it would make a great alarm to set up a lot of overhead lighting (such great LED fixtures these days) and ramp them up slowly to full power over say a half hour. And leave no way to shut off :-)

I might do this one day. I'm upping the amount and power of the LEDs in our house slowly, though I feel my wife still isn't convinced that I really mean it when I say that I. need MORE LIGHT to function.

(And none of the "warm light" crap, that just makes me sleepy even if I'm awake. Neutral or cold only. I'd go for high-CRI ones if I could find them in LED strip format.)

I've had some luck with an alarm clock that must be flipped over to be silenced. Every night, I set a cup of water on top of it, and every morning after I've silenced it, I'm left holding a cup of water—with which I can't return to bed!

I'll then drink the water, because it's easy, and if that's not enough to get me on track, at least I'll have to pee sooner.

Do you have a model/brand for such an alarm clock?

We have ones made by Lexon. A non-radio-controlled version of this: https://lexon-design.com/en/product/flip-plus/

It's a nice concept, though the execution isn't perfect. The biggest flaw, which may have been fixed since, is that the power supply decoupling isn't good enough, such that when the batteries get low and the alarm tries to make a noise, the clock detects it as a touch, which instantly snoozes the alarm. We haven't had it since the original batteries though, which were ironically the ones Lexon supplied.

N.B. These are only just big enough to put a glass of water on top, and it might not play well with the touch sensitivity.

That's a cool clock. Do they make one that is radio controlled by US transmitters? If not, maybe txtempus[1] and a Raspberry Pi Zero W can help. Or pico_dcf77_tx[2] and a Pico W.

1: https://github.com/hzeller/txtempus

2: https://github.com/elehobica/pico_dcf77_tx

Harness this power for good, put “P =? NP” on your alarm clock.

> Fun fact: turns out I'm really good at mentally adding and multiplying 2 and 3-digit numbers while unconscious.

You'll be fully conscious - you just don't retain the memory. Its like driving on a route you've driven thousands of times or tying your shoe laces - both activities require conscious effort at the time, but no (detailed) memory is retained about the effort afterwards.

Have you looked into shock watches? I use Pavlok, and while the technology is NOT there, it does wake me up. They have a long way to go, and honestly I'd recommend a different brand, but it does help those of us who can do puzzles in our sleep.

Shock clock also has puzzles you can use, or I have a QR code In my kitchen that I need to scan to stop being zapped.

I wish I had the problem of sleeping too deep. I don't even set an alarm because I wake up at 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8 even if I want to sleep until 8:30. And yes, I go to bed at 11.

I remember stuff like this when I was in university.

I remember getting apps that made you solve maths problems before the alarm would go off.

Crazy to think.

Now I've got kids and it's the opposite, even if I'm away from them I'll wake early. And I never have deep sleep like that, I think I've been trained to come to attention quickly from night time wake ups.

> I’d like to be able to blame this on some kind of medical problem, but I think mostly I just stayed up late playing Counterstrike too much.

I love this quote! I wish I could blame my poor sleep hygiene on anything but myself lol

I had a similar experience and was left wondering whether I could add progressively larger units of work to the alarm clock task to get things done while still "asleep". :)

Add whatever challenges you are currently working on at work or your side-hustle to your alarm. Soon, you will see your productivity skyrocket all while getting a few more minutes of much needed "sleep".

Alarm shuts off when unit tests pass and the change has deployed to prod.

I also had the turn-off-the-alarm problem, what seems to have solved it for me is building "snooze" into my schedule. My alarm is always set 10-15 minutes before I actually needed to get up, with a 5-minute snooze, and ever since I haven't had issues getting up at the intended time.

Best guess is it helps with waking up slowly over 15 minutes instead of being jolted awake when the alarm first goes off.

Those are rookie numbers. I have often set my alarm for 40+ minutes before I "need" to be awake because I know that I will snooze the alarm several times before being conscious enough to force myself out of bed.

I set mine for an hour or more, before I need to be up. Sometimes two hours. And sometimes even that is not enough.

I have picked up my toddler who fell off the bed twice in the same night and woke up and had no memory of it, until I was reminded by my wife.

I have had kids thump loudly onto the floor falling out of bed in another room with the doors closed. Loud enough that it woke me up. But they didn’t wake up. I check on them, and they are sound asleep on the floor.

Same way i solved it as an adult who needs to wake himself up for work.

Similar experiences where i wake up on the floor bc i must have rolled out of bed over to my phone in my sleep.

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