In Defense of Snoozing
“If you snooze, you lose” isn’t always true.
I snooze every morning where my alarm goes off. Something about getting up at a time unusual for me, or adjusting to a new sleep schedule is uncomfortable by nature, and I know for sure I wouldn’t wake up without the alarm in the first place.
Sometimes, I will wake up and feel awful. I might drink some water, drink some coffee or take some caffeine, then go back to bed for 10 minutes. Sometimes I feel like a new man. Sometimes I still feel pretty sleepy and tired, but I feel better than I did before.
Simply put: I can’t imagine my life without snoozing. In an ideal world, I wake up 10 or 20 minutes before the alarm goes off.
I try not to snooze because I know it’s bad for me. Snoozing gets a bad rep, in the scientific literature and in pop science. According to the National Sleep Foundation, a better solution is to go to bed earlier. Dr. Stuart Farrimond. at The Guardian, an alarm clock shocks you awake and triggers a fear response in the amygdala. Every snooze is triggering this fear response and contributes to the clogging of blood vessels and later health problems.
But Business Insider reported on one sleep expert, Dr. Davis Dinges at the University of Pennsylvania, who says snoozing can awaken the mind gently. The key is not…
