Why I Don’t Set an Alarm Clock for the Morning

It’s 11:30 pm. I just got back from an offline event I organised. I had a few beers. By the time I’ll post this it’ll easily be 1 am. So I’m sitting here on my bed thinking: “should I even start writing?”.

Then I thought: “well, it’s not like I have an alarm in the morning”.

Why not? Lemme explain. 

Reason #1: I like to live healthy 🌱

I’m the type of person that likes to live healthy – at least, my version of healthy. That means oat meal in the morning, two pieces of fruit a day, a good amount of exercise and 8 hours of sleep.

It’s 8 hours, because every time I sleep even 1 hour less, I feel it in the morning or at the end of the day. And if I try to sleep more than 8 hours, I’m usually just too awake to even want to stay under the sheets.

So yeah, 8 hours feels right to me.

And what feels right to me is important. Because contrary to popular belief, research shows that the ideal amount to sleep is 7 to 9 hours for adults – not 8. That’s just what it happens to be for me.

Setting an alarm clock would mean I sleep less than I need, so naturally, I don’t like it. 

Reason #2: It’s a horrible way to wake up 😵‍💫 

I have yet to discover an alarm sound that’s actually nice. Some are less horrible, I agree, but still horrible. This scene from Groundhog Day (one of my favourite movies of all time) illustrates what I mean perfectly.

I think that anything that’s trying to probe into your mind when you’re in a different world is horrible by definition.

But you know what’s worse?

The freaking ‘snooze’ button. I mean, hearing the alarm once is already horrible, so why go through it twice, three times or even four?

I know I could be in the minority for this, but I just don’t get it. That extra bit of “sleep” just doesn’t way up to hearing that sound again.

Setting an alarm affects my mood, my peace of mind and just get me into a state where I force myself to do things – a kind of pushing. I’d much rather be in a state where I’m being pulled towards doing the things I like doing.

Having no alarm sets a neutral mood for my day.

Reason #3: I don’t have to 🤷

The nice thing about being my own boss is that I make my own rules. That includes whether I set an alarm or not.

So if it doesn’t feel healthy to me and I don’t like it: why set one?

Sure, I might have an important early meeting some days and on those days, I actually do set an alarm (guilty as charged). But… on those days, I also go to bed at least 8,5 hours before the meeting starts. And in pretty much 10 out of 10 cases, I wake up well before my alarm goes off.

So I still count these instances as not setting my alarm, because I don’t count on it to wake up. It’s more of a back-up plan in case the sleep program in my body is a little slow because it’s going through an unscheduled software update. And I still get to have that beautifully peaceful wake-up.

It’s easy to forget that we can change little things in our lives that have the potential to create a big impact.

I actually never realised myself that I don’t need an alarm clock until I read a blog post by Noah Kagan in which he said that he never sets one. I was like: “damn, I would actually love that”. So I immediately made the change.

At first I was still a little worried that it would affect my business or my motivation somehow, but it did the opposite.

It gave me more confidence that I can build the life that I want to live today. It’s a daily reminder – something that I’m even proud of – that I can live however I want to if I just try stuff out and make the change.

And that’s a great way to start the day, isn’t it? I look forward to it already.

But first… sleep! Good night, and many great mornings 😉☀️