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I Went A Week Without Hitting Snooze—Here’s What Happened

Every night before I go to bed, I set two alarms: my SleepCycle alarm and my iPhone alarm for ten minutes later. (I’m a little paranoid about oversleeping if you can’t tell.) And I typically hit snooze on the latter alarm at least twice. Because I know this about myself, I set my alarms way before I actually need to get up. But apparently there’s another way, one that doesn’t require you to live and die by the siren call of the snooze button. Apparently there are people—nay, unicorns—out there who don’t hit the snooze button at all. And their lives are better for it. The problem with hitting snooze is that it disrupts your sleep cycle and makes you feel groggier than if you’d gotten out of bed after your first alarm went off. Your sleep cycle starts over again after you hit snooze and fall back asleep; when the alarm goes off again, you’re woken from a deeper part of your cycle. Plus hitting snooze is very confusing for your brain. Curious—yet nervous—to explore this lifestyle, so vastly different from my own, I embarked on a quest to give up the snooze button for an entire week. Here’s what happened.