I’ve
been thinking about alarms the past few days. And, as I debated
work schedules and time changes and things to do and places to
be, I arrived at a single and simple question.
Why
set an alarm?
Ok,
ok, yes. I know. I literally just mentioned—barely a dozen words
ago—that I gave lots and lots of thoughts to the reasons we set
alarms. The practical reasons we set alarms. We set them to wake
up. We set them as reminders. We set them to acknowledge a schedule,
respect a commitment, organize our movements and on and on.
Simple
stuff. Basic stuff. I understand.
Still.
I
ask.
Why
set an alarm?
Because,
let’s face it, the vast majority of the time we have an alarm
set we don’t react to it with purpose and immediate action. We
stall. For nine minutes.
(Do
you know why most snooze settings default to nine minutes? It
has to do with the hour hand and the gears and the minute hand
and the springs and all of the other operating parts of a mechanical
alarm clock back in the day when snooze features were being considered,
designed and constructed. Evidently getting everything to work
properly with a snooze setting length of ten minutes couldn’t
be accomplished with consistency or accuracy. Nine minutes could.
So, nine minutes. Anyway… wake and snooze and…)
Do
you hit snooze when the alarm goes off? Why? Or more precisely,
why did you pick the original time? If you set the alarm for 7am,
hit snooze when the alarm goes off which set it to go again at
7:10am, why not just set it for 7:10 in the first place?
What
is the purpose of the snooze button beyond the physical gesture
of hitting it becoming a “but I don’t wanna” statement from you
that is supported by pulling the blankets over your head?
I’ve
placed phones all over the place to force me to get out of bed
when the alarm goes off. (And I know most of you have as well.)
If it’s next to me, I might hit snooze. If it’s on the other side
of the bedroom, I’ll have to get out from underneath the covers
and begin moving.
Over
the years, I’ve watched my dogs react to the day by the way the
sun appeared. Never mind what the clock said. Forget what happens
when the clocks moved forward. Didn’t matter what happened when
the clocks moved back. Once the sunlight snuck around the blinds,
they were up. Never mind an alarm set to go off placed on the
opposite side of the room. A crying, whining puppy that is determined
to do anything possible to jump on the bed will get you moving
in the morning. Begrudgingly moving, but chances are good that
as you hit the snooze button you were already in a begrudgingly
kind of mood anyway.
The
stories involving alarms are endless. Setting it for 7pm instead
of 7am. Accidentally turning it off instead of hitting snooze.
Adjusting the alarm time but not turning it on. Having it ready
in the bedroom and then falling asleep watching television in
the living room, so you never made it to the bed and didn’t hear
it.
It
all has me wondering, what’s your process?
The
current clock on my nightstand has two alarms. I regularly set
both of them, placing five to ten minutes between them. Kind of
a safety-snooze, if you will. But generally, once I wake up for
an alarm, I’m up. Turns out, though, I may just be in the minority
with that.
People
I talk to set their alarms in all sorts of ways. Clocks. Phones.
One person even sleeps with the bedroom door open and runs a timer
on the microwave in the kitchen. They set up multiple alarms.
Friends and family and co-workers call each morning. And they
hit snooze.
Tomorrow
morning, a golden retriever that slept in a crate and has no clue
the clocks were adjusted last weekend is going to again wake me
up at 5am instead of 6am. This will happen even though tomorrow
morning I don’t really need to wake up at any particular time.
I’m kind of wondering if we could forget about the creation and
adjustments of snooze features on clocks and invest our efforts
in designing one that works on her.
Nighty
night.