[japhyr]

I stopped using an alarm.

I grew up before smartphones, so the alarm was a clock radio. I would hit the snooze button for about two hours, almost every day. I'd set my alarm early because I wanted some time before having to be anywhere, but then I'd hit the snooze button repeatedly until I had to get up. This made a vicious cycle where I set the alarm early because I knew I'd hit snooze repeatedly.

I tried moving my alarm clock to the foot of my bed. It worked for a couple days, then I could hit snooze there without waking up. Then I moved it across the room, and learned to walk across the room and hit snooze without waking up. I got as far as physically removing the snooze button from the clock, taping over the hole, and putting the clock on a high shelf where I had to stand on a chair and a desk to reach it. In about a week I could climb that desk, reset the alarm for nine minutes later, and go back to bed without waking up.

That led me to just not setting an alarm. I figured I would probably wake up later than the time I was setting my alarm for, but earlier than when I needed to be up. It worked; I was not late for anything that first week or so. As I got used to having no alarm, it made me pay way more attention to my bedtime routine. I went to bed earlier, because I knew I needed sleep in order to wake up. Instead of being jolted out of deep sleep, I woke up naturally during lighter sleep cycles when it's easier to get up.

That was 30 years ago now. With smartphones I set an alarm in order to be up in time to get my kid ready for school, but it rarely goes off; I now have a habit of getting up when I wake up before the alarm. I set alarms when I'm trying to make a 6am flight, but I have also chosen to not set an alarm for important events like exams and conferences and such.

[fatnoah]

I haven't used an alarm for over 10 years at this point. I realized that I was almost always waking up about 5-10 minutes before the alarm went off. Some experimentation showed that by thinking of a time before I went to bed, I could wake myself up around that time, even it was 2 or 3am.

Now, I only set alarms for early times, and only as a back-up. Unless I'm very sleep deprived, they're not needed.

To answer OP, over the past year, I've been on a quest to wake up earlier, and the answer has been a dull one. I've very slowly started going to sleep earlier. I started with an average "asleep" time of 1-2am, and am now at about 11pm. That's shifted my normal wake time from 7:30am to 6:30am. Those good at math will note that's actually more sleep, which has been great, too.