My tryst with the snooze button
How I broke the vicious cycle.
The cycle
For the longest time, I would make plans of waking up as early as 5AM so I could finish off all the tasks that were left on my task list (had procrastinated to the next day). Come 5AM the morrow, I would hit the snooze button that I had set to 30 minutes. Why? Because waking up at 5:30AM sounds more “organised” than 5:05AM.
This vicious cycle would repeat roughly 6 to 8 times and each time my hypnagogic hallucinations of live music would be acquainted with the reality of the peppy alarm tune that had been blaring in my ears for one whole minute.
The result
I would be extremely tired from the repeated disruption of my sleep. Nothing kills the prospects of a productive morning like your groggy self.
Days became weeks became months and my self-esteem started taking a hit. I started believing I was good for nothing, that I wouldn’t amount to much in life and how could I? I couldn’t even wake myself up on time!
This entire process created a negative feedback loop that further prevented me from waking up early. My alarm shifted to later hours under the rationale “I’m going to do the same thing again. I’d rather sleep well and avoid those dark circles.” All of this was accompanied by other points of stress in life that kept adding to my deepest fear at the time — “I would amount to nothing”.
The resolve
However, along with this fear was a growing sense of guilt of not doing justice to myself. There wasn’t a “one fine day, I changed” moment- it was a series of events that happened that started changing my outlook towards life, and more importantly, towards myself. Eventually, the guilt overpowered my fear and one fine day, I decided to tackle the mammoth obstacle on my path to self growth — the snooze button.
I took a pen and paper and started pouring out my thoughts — a ritual I now indulge in every now and then, something I fondly call, my mini breakdowns. After all, self-reflection is meant to burst your bubble.
I broke down the “Why” and wrote down some Call-To-Actions. Over the next few days, I tried and tested a few approaches. This is the story of how I finally broke up with my snooze button.
Facing the enemy Part 1
Talking to myself is one of my guilty pleasures (or a sign of insanity?). Over the course of my battle with the snooze button, I played the role of my therapist, and, well, myself.
Therapist Geetika (TG): Yo! So you keep hitting the snooze button. How do you feel about that?
Me: You’re a terrible therapist.
TG: You’re right. Let me go back. Why do you set an alarm for 5AM?
Me: So I can complete my work/readings I hadn’t finished the previous day, early in the morning and start my day afresh with new tasks.
TG: Why were they not finished? Did you over-do your to-do list?
Me: Nope, I procrastinate a lot.
TG: Okay, so you’re a procrastinator. What goes on in your mind in the morning, when you hit the snooze button?
Me: I have a to-do list in mind for the day. I start calculating the average time it would take to do each task. Combined with the previous day’s carry-over, I underestimate the time it would take to finish everything off, while overestimating my abilities and focus during the day. And then I tell myself how an extra half hour of sleep wouldn’t hurt my goals.
TG: Why does the cycle repeat 6–8 times then?
Me: I adjust my calculations. Sometimes, I strike off some tasks on my day’s to-do list on grounds of importance.
TG: Good. Now go research on procrastination.
Me: Okay, I’ll do it.
TG: RIGHT NOW!
So I read a lot on it. Tim Urban’s blog posts on this topic and his TED talk were my favourite — I was listening to advice from the horse’s mouth. I dabbled around with his advice. Found some success in achieving my tasks for the day. But nights, ah! The nights were always tough. My brain would always convince me to sleep early and carry over some tasks.
One day, I came across a quote by APJ Abdul Kalam, former President of India, that roughly said “Real dreams are the ones that don’t let you sleep”. I started giving myself affirmations on how I owed it to myself to get things done, when I had decided to get them done.
I had almost entirely overcome the night-time battle with procrastination. So my morning alarm had different motivations now. But I was still hitting the snooze button.
Facing the enemy part 2
I decided to watch some intense motivational videos before going to bed. I got so pumped each time, I’d have willingly put my fist through the wall if the video narrator asked me to.
Next morning, I was a different me. You know how the story goes.
Next, I read up on neuroplasticity, or, the ability of the brain to re-organise synaptic connections in response to learning/stimulus. Basically, your brain starts going on autopilot mode when it encounters the same situation every day. It forms neural pathways that light up each time the same event occurs. All these months, I had repeatedly trained my brain to snooze the alarm. All I needed to do now, was to rewire those pathways.
So just watching motivational videos wasn’t going to be enough, I needed to repeatedly tell my brain one line before sleeping: “You will not hit the snooze button”.
The subconscious mind is good at remembering such things, apparently. The next day I didn’t hit the snooze button. I sat up in my bed smiling. I had done it. And then I proceeded to do what I shouldn’t have done. I patted myself on the back and told myself I deserved just a little more sleep on this big day. I dealt with shame when I woke up next and decided this was not going to repeat. And it didn’t.
Today, I wouldn’t go as far as to say “I never hit the snooze button anymore guys, call me Sensei G”. I can confidently say, though, that I don’t do it ~90% of the time. And that’s an achievement of sorts for me.
