[wpietri]

This is really interesting. I may have to start tracking on my own. But I'd do it a bit differently.

One is that I don't think happiness is exactly the thing I'd track. I'd also want to track sleep cycle, not just sleep amount. My experience is that too little sleep or a disrupted sleep schedule has a negative effect on my mood stability. If I sleep enough and at roughly the same time every day, I'm more emotionally resilient.

One sleep hack I recommend to everybody is to try to avoid waking up to an alarm. I now adjust my wake time mostly by adjusting my bedtime. This certainly makes my mornings better, but it also means I fret less about getting the right number of hours, in that I trust my body to generally self-regulate on the right amount of sleep.

[oftenwrong]

I also do not use an alarm if I can avoid it. I have not used one regularly in over 15 years. Regrettably, my partner uses an alarm, so I am sometimes unable to avoid being woken by an alarm. Some thoughts on this:

1. Being awoken by an alarm is stressful. Waking up naturally, when my body is ready to wake up, feels great, and is easy. I have no trouble energetically hopping out of bed when I awake naturally. When I awake to an alarm, it is a struggle to get out of bed.

2. If I am awoken by an alarm during deep sleep, I consider that a waste of restful sleep potential. Returning to sleep for a brief period ("snoozing") does not make one less tired in any significant way. Deep sleep is what really matters, so it should not be wasted.

3. Like you said, the easy way to wake up on time without an alarm is to go to bed early. I allocate more hours for sleep than actually needed. If I wake up earlier than needed, that is no problem. If I have trouble falling asleep, or have poor sleep quality for any reason, the extra time can smooth out the impact. Having a time buffer prevents oversleeping.

4. I use an eye mask or blackout curtains to keep light from windows or electronic devices from disturbing my sleep. Most people think that small amounts of light do not bother them. I used to think the same, but I have come to believe it makes a significant difference. Complete darkness makes for high quality sleep. Light can disturb sleep just as much as noise. If you live in a fairly populated area, like I do, the sky is quite lit up at night. Like many people, I avoid screens and light in general close to my bed time.

[nradov]

Why is being awoken by an alarm stressful? It never bothered me. In fact I find it more stressful to not have an alarm set due to the fear of being late for work or an appointment. If I wake up before the alarm it's easy to turn off.

[alleyshack]

Not OP, but for me, it's the jarring-ness of the alarm. A year or so ago, I noticed it's easier to wake up at 6:30am during the summer, when the sun rises and I'm waking up to sunlight. During the summer, I'd usually wake up on my own anywhere from 5-20 minutes before my alarm went off, and it was a comfortable waking up. However, in the winter, I'd be jarred awake by an alarm to a pitch-black room, often smack in the middle of a sleep cycle, leaving me groggy and sluggish.

Once I realized that, I bought a $30 light alarm. It starts to glow softly about half an hour before my desired wake-up time, and except for once or twice when I was too buried under the covers to see the light, it consistently wakes me much more smoothly and pleasantly than getting jarred awake by a jangling alarm. (It has a back-up audio alarm that plays at your normal wake-up time, which shuts off when you turn off the light part.)

[wpietri]

Yes, exactly. A jarring alarm will wake me up wherever I am in my sleep cycle, and I get the same grogginess. A light alarm gets me to wake up when my body is ready to wake.

I found off-the-shelf light alarms not bright enough, so I used a bunch of Hue lights to get it brighter:

https://github.com/wpietri/sunrise

I was surprised to discover that the more valuable part was auto-dimming the lights in the evening. I'm much more likely to go to bed on time if there's been a virtual sunset over an extended period. I miss it when I travel.

[nradov]

I'm not sure what the sleep cycle has to do with it. I feel the same way regardless of when the alarm wakes me up.

[oftenwrong]

Like the other user said, it is jarring. Observe a person in deep sleep waking up to an alarm. They will have a brief moment of panic as they are abruptly jolted out of sleep. An alarm that gradually increases in volume is better, but still aggravating. A light-based alarm is significantly better. The best, by far, is allowing oneself the time to wake up naturally, when the body is ready, with no artificial sleep interruption.

[nradov]

I guess it varies by person. I don't find alarms jarring or panic inducing.

[Broken_Hippo]

One sleep hack I recommend to everybody is to try to avoid waking up to an alarm. I now adjust my wake time mostly by adjusting my bedtime. This certainly makes my mornings better, but it also means I fret less about getting the right number of hours, in that I trust my body to generally self-regulate on the right amount of sleep.

Not everyone has the luxury nor the natural sleep cycle to be able to do this, though, not at times society expects us to be awake.

I've had luck getting good sleep waking about 8 or 9 with an alarm, but if I do not use the alarm, I oversleep. It doesn't matter what "healthy sleep habits" I use. Anything before 8 or 9 is impossible without an alarm, even with healthy sleep habits and reasonable bedtime - when I can get to sleep early enough to do such a thing.

I can train myself to wake around 10 or 11 most, but not all days, and the alarm is really more of a backup than anything. I can usually trust myself to wake by noon on my own, though.

You see, I am naturally a night owl. It isn't age: I've been like this since I was young and I'm nearly 40. As in, I chose sleep over santa presents. But additionally, my sleep needs change through the month, corresponding with a female hormone cycle. of course, that same cycle makes it harder to sleep earlier in the evening during times I need more sleep.

[wpietri]

I was also naturally a night owl, but that switched for me once I a) automated my lighting so there was a consistent day-night cycle in my bedroom, and b) I took up running, so that I get a fair bit of regular cardio. No idea if that will work for you, but it may be worth a try. I also dropped regular caffeine as a habit, and spent a while paying down sleep debt.

I will also use a sleep-cycle sensitive alarm on the rare occasions I need to be up unusually early, which I think helps minimize the disruptive effects of an alarm.

If you can't you can't, of course. But I definitely recommend it if you can.

[Broken_Hippo]

I've tried nearly everything, largely because I am generally afraid of losing a job due to being tardy.

I used to drink little to no caffeine (didn't do coffee, nor soda, etc). I now drink coffee regularly with no effect, still no soda. I've tried getting regular exercise, though running is actually painful. I still run into the same issue: A couple nights of going to bed at a decent time, then by the 3rd night I am awake 2 hours later. There is no point in lying in bed when I can't sleep, though I've tried that too.

Consistent day-night cycle helps very little - I'm too far north. Winter days are 4.5 hours long, and midsummer you can read outside at night. I didn't always live up north, but it didnt help much then. The sun coming up is a non-issue for my sleeping. I do find that dimming the front room lights a while before sleeping helps to an extent, but not enough to wake at 6-7am and get enough sleep during the week. The main concern is that sometimes I simply won't wake to the alarm. At all. Or phone calls... I slept through 17 phone calls once. Physical shaking helps.

Part of my issue is that the actual quality of my sleep suffers with early wakings, even when I can get drowsy early. I generally require between 7 and 9 hours sleep per night to feel well-rested: 6 hours is too little, but doable for one night. But even that changes: Sleeping from 12am to 6am produces poorer quality sleep than 2am to 8am. I've often considered simply going to the doctor. I've quit jobs that started too early as well, and try not to take jobs that have early wakings too often.

[doodhwala]

I've used the "Sleep as Android" app mentioned in the link which I had started using sometime last year. This app monitors your sleep and tries to ring the alarm between the actual alarm time and half an hour before it based on when you will feel most rested.

This changed me from a 5-6 alarm with multiple snooze person to a single alarm no snooze person, regardless of how much or little I've slept the previous day. There are days when I wake up before the alarm as well.

Do take a look and see if this helps!

Edit: Read the article after commenting. The same app has been suggested and explained in the article.

[andai]

How do you wake up when you need to, if the amount of sleep you need varies? I have the opposite approach, by waking up at the same time every day, my body makes me sleepy at the appropriate time (which varies by day). Once I get into a rhythm, I wake up on my own, slightly before the alarm goes off.

[bradstewart]

I had a fitness tracker/wearable (Jawbone I think) that would track your sleep, and vibrate to wake you up at the best point of your sleep cycle within +/- 15 minutes of your set alarm time.

I really like the idea, but the thing would always fall off at night. Maybe I should try a new one...

[wpietri]

Mostly by going to bed earlier and by having a wake-up time that normally gives me plenty of time in the morning. Also by being comfortable with biphasic sleep, where I might be up for 90 minutes in the middle of the night. (That appears to be the natural human sleep cycle; an uninterrupted 8 hours became the standard only once electric light became common.) And occasionally by taking an afternoon nap.

On the rare occasions when I have something pretty early that I absolutely have to be awake for, I'll use a sleep-cycle-sensitive alarm. I use the one in my Pebble, but there are plenty of others.