How I Wake Up On Time
For as long as I can remember, I've always had a hard time waking up in the morning. Being a self-employed web developer didn't help the situation because there weren't really any penalties for not getting up at a specific time (I wasn't going to get fired because I wasn't at work on time).
Getting up on time is something I've been trying to fix in my own life for a long time (measured in years). I tried everything from placing multiple alarms around the room to trying to exercise excessively the night before to make sure I would be tired before I went to bed. Everything I tried was never successful for any signifcant period of time. It might work for a few days but it would eventually fail.
One night, I decided enough was enough (I'd decided that many times before without results) and decided I needed an accountability partner to hold me accountable. I got in touch with my brother to see if he could call me in the morning to make sure I was awake if he didn't get a text message from me by a certain time. I noticed that having accountability definitely helped me get up on time for about a week (which was major progress), but eventually it failed when I got to a point where I would answer his phone call and then immediately go back to sleep.
I realized that the accountability helped but I needed something to make sure I was awake without having to have him call me each morning. I also realized that the first few minutes of waking up were crucial. If I didn't have a specific plan, I would typically crawl right back into bed. It was almost as if what I did in the first minute of waking up would actually determine whether or not I would get up. If I told myself that I was just going to lie down for 5 minutes, that would actually mean I was going to fall back asleep for 2-3 hours and I would vaguelly recall waking up in the first place. If I could get myself to actually do something in that first minute, I was more likely to stay awake.
I was just learning about programming phone systems, so I decided to create a system that would read me step-by-step instructions over the phone that I would have to press a button to confirm that I had completed the step. For example, the first system I created used instructions like these:
- Good morning! You have 30 seconds to get out of bed and press one.
- Glad to see you are up. Now you have one minute to turn on the lights and press 2.
- Great! Now you have one minute to walk to the bathroom, begin the shaving process, and press 3.
- Glad to see you are up! Goodbye.
I figured if I could make it to the last step, then there was a pretty good chance that I wouldn't try to crawl back into bed for 5 minutes. I designed the system so that if I didn't answer the phone, pressed the wrong number, or didn't respond to a step in the allotted time, then the system would send my brother a text message letting him know that I did not get up.
The amazing thing for me is that the system worked! At the time of this writing, I've been using the system for over a month and I've gotten up each morning at the time of the wakeup call. I had been trying to fix my sleeping habits for years and I finally fixed my sleeping habits with a simple wakeup call system that reads you instructions over the phone and notifies an accountability partner if you don't complete the step-by-step instructions.
I realized that this was a system that could help others so I took my system that was basically some programming code that I wrote that I would manually update and developed the WakeupQ.com website. The system costs $15 for a month of wakeup calls. I hope that you find WakeupQ.com as valuable as it has been for me.
If you have any feedback, suggestions, or questions, please don't hesitate to send a message on the contact page.
- Anthony Graddy
