Do you ever hit snooze?
If you do, apparently you are in good company. According to a new study, using data from the sleep analysis app Sleep Cycle, and looking at 21,000 people, “The snooze button was pressed in close to 56 percent of the 3 million nights studied. Around 45 percent of study subjects hit the snooze button on more than 80 percent of mornings. These heavy users snoozed, on average, 20 minutes a day.”
To which I say…whoa. I must admit that I do not understand the appeal of the snooze button at all. It strikes me as the worst of all possible worlds. You’re not up and going about your day, but you’re not also really enjoying your sleep when you’re getting it in short chunks. You jolt yourself awake a second (or possibly a third) time. Why not just set your alarm for the time you actually intend to get out of bed, and enjoy every last second of deeper sleep until then? Perhaps people who use a sleep app are somehow different than the average but if people are really hitting snooze more than half the time, this suggests a lot of mismatch between the “Evening self” who sets the alarm and the “Morning self” who decides whether to get up at whatever time the evening self assigned.
Anyway, it is Memorial Day weekend, which is the unofficial start of summer, but it’s been a cold and rainy week and it will not be a warm weekend. I’m headed to a college reunion (not a major one) and have an extended family get-together. Here’s a round-up of this week’s content:
At Before Breakfast, I shared the advice to “Sweat it out to get it out” and to “Keep the old” when it comes to friendships (one reason to go to a reunion!). I interviewed Jenny Wood, who is the author of the book Wild Courage, about how to act a bit more courageously in life.
Over at Vanderhacks, my Substack newsletter, I suggested people “Rename it to reframe it” — changing what you call something that is less-than-obviously-appealing can sometimes change how you feel about it. I gave advice on “How to work — and relax — in a mess.” Life does not begin when you put your house in order. Life is going on regardless. Behind the paywall I shared “How to leave work at work” and how one might “Upgrade your summer morning routine.” Please consider either a free or paid subscription.
Early next week also marks the 15-year anniversary of 168 Hours being published. If you’ve never read my first time management book, please consider picking up a copy. Some things have changed but a lot has stayed the same. We still have 168 hours in a week! Thanks for supporting my work.
I’m 100% with you on the snooze button! Although I do like using my Fitbit’s Smartwake feature. It claims that it can wake me up at the best time within a 30-minute window, and I do generally feel better when I get woken up towards the beginning of the window rather than getting jolted awake at the last minute!
Some of us just need that extra time to wake up and the snooze button is a safe guard mechanism in case we accidentally fall back asleep. Do you think night-owls are more likely to be snooze-button users?
@Ana – interesting – maybe? But if you think you will fall back asleep for a long time that suggests maybe needing more sleep overall? I know easier said than done!
I’m the same! If I turn my alarm off, the chances are I’ll fall back asleep for “too long” and mess up my whole morning. I need the repeated disturbances to make sure I get all the way awake.
I never ever hit snooze and am always up before the clock turns to next minute. 365 days a year. This is a rarely-admitted habit as it makes me sound insufferably rigid and self-disciplined, which I am. Not something I want to model to my children. I cannot easily enjoy evening events as I’m so tired by 9pm! That said, my youngest mini-me daughter aside, I have never shared a bed or bedroom with anyone who doesn’t regularly snooze. I am surprised the number is so low.
@Jennie Kay – waking up before an alarm is usually good. I don’t get tired at 9 p.m. but I know plenty of people do – chronotypes are real…
I used to hit the snooze button in the past. And now that I have evidence of how poorly I manage my time through my use of snooze buttons, we can discuss what to do with that history of mine, Ms. Laura Vanderkam. But that was 7 or 8 years ago, and I don’t hit the snooze button nowadays. Nowadays, I have some days when I set an alarm and then get up with the alarm, while on other days, I don’t set alarms at all.
I think the snooze button in my case is more of a mismatch of my 6-months-ago self who set up my home pod to play music at 6am every day. Now I have to say “hey siri stop” every day before rolling my back over and sleeping for another hour. waking up at 6 made sense at the time and doesn’t work for me now, but i’m too lazy to figure out how to change the homepod automation. it probably would take less time than leaving this comment though… 🤔
*roll back over.
Also I just turned the automation off. It took 2 seconds.
@Lizzy – problem solved! I think you’ll sleep better 🙂