How do you wake up, quick, slow, gently
 

I have some members of the family that need to be very gently and gradually woke up in the morning. If it's not super gentle, then it puts them in a crap mood for the rest of the day.

I've been waking up with an alarm for a long time. There's nothing gently about it. When I get up, I'm up. I don't have time to gradually do anything, I've got crap that I've got to do. I'm a night person, so I don't wake up 2 hours before I have to be somewhere or I have things to do so I can do anything gradually.

I suppose it could be something about chemistry or something, but I can't help but feel like it's more mental and about attitude.

Waking up is so different for some people. All my life and to this day the second the alarm goes off I bound out of bed. I actually throw my legs out of bed and stand up 100% awake and ready within a few seconds of the alarm. I do my bathroom routine and get on with life. I learned many years ago to not even talk to my wife in the morning until she says something to me first. I just don't understand it.

When it is time to go to bed I put my head on the pillow and I am sleeping in a few minutes. When it is time to get up, I get up. It is simple.

I use to sleep beside the "General Alarm" speaker so when I'm a wake I'm ready to go...

I usually wake up with my 3 year old daughter shoving a toy in my face or begging me to put on elmo music.......anything but gently lately


I dont know if its wierd or not but I don't want to eat anything for at least an hour or so after I wake up. The most delicious breakfast could be waiting for me and I have no want to even have a bite.

that's pretty much me.

I wake up to dogs. They are not subtle.

When I lived in Atlanta I was bolt upright out of bed and got an instant adrenaline dump when my alarm went off. Every minute later I left resulted in 2-3 minutes more of driving. My manager was also an @$$hole who would make my life miserable for being late (if he was actually in on time).

Before and after living in ATL it takes me almost an hour to wake up. I fall asleep in the shower multiple times. Leaving 5 minutes later will result in getting to work 5 minutes later. There is no real traffic to speak of. I'm the first one in on my team and don't have any real work to do until I've been in for several hours. There's just no hurry in the morning.

Since adopting a dog. Face licks and I'm wide awake. I get him out back ASAP.

When i was younger i was prone to oversleeping, and had one of those classic ones with bells.

I had to put it in another room, cause if it was within 2 meters i'de get to it half a sleep and it would be smashed up and dead before you can say 'alarm clock'

These days I wake up before the thing goes off.. like i set it to 05h55
I wake up at 05h50 to preempt the bastard

I've been having issues sleeping lately so getting up has become a problem.

I used to jump straight out of bed well before the alarm went off. Not anymore.

One of my former co-workers had a siren like an old time air raid siren. It would slowly get louder. He kept it in the bathroom down the hall. He knew he had about 15 seconds to hustle down to that bathroom to shut it off before it was painful loud. That got his heart rate up and since he was in the bathroom he would pee, and go ahead and take a shower and be awake for the day.

I never could understand him.

At mu age, I'm just glad to wake up. On the plus side, at my age, no alarm clock...other than my bladder.

When in college had my stereo hooked to a timer. Set the phonograph on Pink Floyd Dark Side of the Moon, Time...where all the alarms go off. It would blare all the alarms at an unnatural audio level.

When the amp came on it would make a very quiet click, then after it warmed up for a couple of seconds it started playing. Got to where that very quiet click would wake me up so I could dash to the stereo and shut it off before the phonograph started blaring the alarm clocks.

i would be curious as to age in relationship to the Q.

51 now and most of the time I wake up before the alarm and on weekends its hard to sleep in. mostly in part to the bed hurting my/our back.
when I was a kid it was a different story. could sleep all day.

weekdays I get up, straight to the shower, dressed and out the door.

weekends its a little harder to get motivated to "work" early in the morning.

I am generally waking up a few minutes before the alarm (set to 5:10 every morning) and turning it off before it goes off, For the last 3 months, I have been working 10 hour days and waking up at 4:00 to be working by 5:00, and for the most part jump out of bed into the shower and get going with the day.

I think needing the alarm to go off 4-5 times to wake up and roll out of bed, is just plain wasteful, and slightly lazy. It's not like you are going to get any quality sleep in between alarms (10 minutes).

I'm 52 years old, and usually out of bed by 8:00 on weekends.....too much to do to lounge around.

Up and at 'em early

I have always been an early riser and wide awake when I awaken! i am retired but usually up by 5 a.m.....when i wake up i get up! now if i have a project on my mind i might be up at four a.m.

Generally I am awake before the alarm goes off. But for the times I'm not I use a gentle alarm sound and get up within 5 minutes of it waking me. My wife prefers the snooze feature so when she has to rise before me I tend to rise 15 minutes before her.

My son, now 20, needs 15 separate alarms to get his butt going. That's the price paid for staying up until 3 AM doing homework last minute and/or goofing around on social media.

These daze....I go to bed when I used to go out, and get up when I used to get home :). I'm a very light sleeper, and after 4-5 hours, if I wake up...I'm up for good. But even when I was a music loving "show hound", staying out half the night, if the phone rang at 4 am, I was wide awake, alert, and ready to process information, answering before the second ring....unfortunately, I had lots of practice :(. An alarm clock....what is that? I've seen the sun come up many times from being out/up all night....now I can't remember the last time I've slept past the first hint of daylight....damn birds :)

As many I dont get enough sleep. I had to move the alarm away from my bed or I sometimes hit snooze or sleep through it. Once I'm out of bed I'm up, but getting up some days...

Alarm, Meow Meow, Snooze Alarm, Meow Meow, Snooze Alarm, Meow Meow, Snooze Alarm, Meow Meow, Snooze Alarm, Meow Meow. I get up, feed the cats.

I wake up the same way every day, ready to fight, fuch or be friendly. It's your call.

Not sure how I wake up. I'm just certain it happens too many times throughout the night.

She has been getting better at shutting off the alarm before it goes off at 4:30am. I've never needed one, except for rare occasions.

So, if it goes off, she has to get up and turn it off, sometimes after a nudge, or a pinch on the arse. I usually lay in bed until 5:50-6:00, which is when I normally would rise without an alarm clock.

a couple of years older than you, but hasn't had a job with a standard wake up time in years.

Most of my life, I struggled with insomnia. Got up a the last minute. Inhaled some coffee and out the door. The last couple years I have not had to to get up at a certain time. I found that I could get to bed after midnight and actually sleep. Around 7 or so I will sort of wake up, open one eye and look at the clock and go back to sleep. After 3 or 4 times, around 8, I drag myself to the shower and then sip some coffee. May be functional by 9.

Usually just before my alarm, one min or so. Then out of bed and getting at the day.

Alarm sounds and hit snooze button until it goes off again. Get up and out of bed, jump in shower, grab keys, get in and go. Have coffee down the hill at coffee shop. No wait, no newspaper, no breakfast.

Depending on where I need to go, so my get up time is a little different daily but I am usually up by 7

65 years old, retired and I don't sleep that well all of the time. If I hit the sack early like 10 PM I'm awake at 3 or 4 am. I usually hit the sack by midnight and my eyes just pop open 7 am-ish.

I do best when I wake up on my own. If I have to get up early for some reason, (work or plans, etc) then I usually don't sleep well the night before because I'm worried I won't get up in time. The 'click' sound the alarm makes before it goes off usually wakes me up! I HATE getting up early. I am a night person for sure. Usually go to bed around 1:30-2:00am and get up @9:30-10ish. There is NO reason for any human to get up before 9am!! lol..

My sleep habits began to change at about age 60. I used to go to bed & fall asleep quickly. I would wake up hungry and horny every morning, eat breakfast, have sex, get to work.
Now - sleep is unpredictable and unreliable. The line between awake and asleep is blurred. I fall asleep slowly and sporadically, somewhere between 8 and ten. I often wake up at 2 AM and I'm up until 8 or 9 that night unless I take half an Ambien, then I'm good for 4-5 hours of sleep. About one night a week I can't get to sleep until one or two AM. I cannot take an Ambien on nights like this. If I do I'm up all night.
On the nights I sleep all night I wake up slowly, it takes an hour to get moving. I use a CPAP machine which helps me get into deep sleep when I do sleep. I'm seeing a doctor about it again this week. It's driving me nuts.

Most days it's kinda' like that. Some (like today) I get the "ook ook ook blorghf" which could jolt the dead out of their sleep. Nothing like groggily trying to figure out if the cat is in the bed with you about to throw up, or just on the floor so you can step in it as you rise to go get cleaning supplies.

Cats. I love them but sometimes...

How many hours do you sleep in a night?

I alternate between falling asleep in 5 minutes - or 45 minutes. Haven't figured out what the pattern is yet.

It takes me an hour to be fully awake. House rule is no one talks to Dad before coffee #2. No one listens to that rule. :D


FOR THOSE THAT JUMP AWAKE: How many hours of sleep are you getting?

7 or 8 usually. I can get by on 6-7, but prefer 7-8 if I can get it. When I was younger, it didn't much matter, but these days I prefer a decent night's sleep.

There are times when I lay there for a while before conking out, but that's very rare, and there's usually some circumstance that has my brain buzzing (either stress or excitement good or bad) that does it.

coffee.. 2 cups and I'm ready to go..if I sleep with my CPAP on I sleep 7-8 hours solid no pee breaks. Without it I toss a bit and get 6hrs with a couple pee breaks.

Complete opposite. I did not start sleeping good till I was 60. Life sucks when you are tired all the time. I started improving at age 50. Got sinus surgery that I needed for 30 years. Became healthy after the surgery. If you have breathing problems, see an ENT Dr. At some point I started dealing with the things that cause stress in life and finally started to get some rest.

Doesn’t matter if I sleep for 3 hours or 10, I hate getting up in the mornings! I usually have 3-4 alarms set and we keep an old school loud wind up alarm for the days when one of us has to get up earlier than about 6 am. I’m usually pretty groggy for an hour or so after waking up too.

I've been under a lot of stress this past year which has dramatically affected my sleep. I don't really have much trouble falling asleep, but I wake up too early and then can't fall back asleep. Some nights I average 4-5 hours of sleep. I feel pretty tired most of the time. I'd give anything to have my sleep back......
I've always been a light sleeper and never been much of a napper....arghhhh

5-6 hours is a full night's sleep for me. Naps....can't do them either....no way can I fall asleep on a plane, or as a car passenger. Well, once I did on a plane....was up for 40 hours straight working before boarding though.

I'm an early riser - I have the most energy in the morning. Its full on I gave up coffee a year ago -I do like iced tea. Going to bed isn't difficult. During the week I go to bed early. I usually read for about an hour before I turn the lights off.

The biggest change for me was removing the TV from my bedroom. When I was married, we had the TV in the room and my wife fell asleep with it on. I would wake up 2 - 3 in the morning because I could hear the sound from the TV. I would turn it off and she would wake up to tell me she was still watching. Very frustrating. When we split, the first thing I got rid of was the TV in the bedroom.