I am a heavy sleeper, and I do not mean I just have some trouble waking up in the morning. I mean I wouldn't even wake up with the fire alarms blaring a couple feet away from me. I have a very loud and annoying alarm clock that I put several feet away from my bed to force myself to get up and shut the darn thing off. There have been too many mornings where I wake up half asleep, turn it off, and go back to sleep. Then it only goes off again because I hit the “snooze” button rather than actually waking up. This process takes an hour before I finally get up. Believe it or not, my neighbors have complained about the thing! I find this to be both believable and ironic because it is loud enough for them to hear in another building, yet it doesn't wake me up in my bedroom.
Clearly I needed a better solution to waking up in the morning than what I had. In the most ideal of circumstances, I would like you to imagine waking up gradually with the first few rays of morning sunshine with the sound of roosters and someone brushing your hand gently. Of course I didn't move to Hawaii to achieve this, nor did I purchase a rooster. I also didn't get a special service where someone comes to my home to wake me up in the morning.
What I did get were two gadgets. One is called the Philips Hue and the other is the Fitbit Flex. The other item I purchased was a rooster ringtone for my cellphone. The Philips Hue is a smart led bulb that I can control from my phone or through IFTTT. This isn't the only such smart led bulb, but what is nice about this one is that it has a cool alarm feature. It gradually brightens the lights to simulate the sunrise. It is clinically proven that our bodies naturally wake up when they are exposed to gradually increasing light, so this method wakes me up in a more natural and effective way.
The Fitbit Flex is an activity tracker wristband that has a nice alarm feature. It is a silent alarm that activates the vibration feature on the wristband which wakes me up in the morning without making a sound.
In the end, this is the best solution that I have found. If I want to wake up at 6:30 AM, I set the Philips hue to start to brighten at 6:00. Then the Fitbit Flex will start vibrating at 6:15, and the roosters start crowing at 6:30. This gives me a much more pleasant and effective wake up solution than that old annoying noisy alarm clock.
