The Snooze Button

Fall has definitely arrived, and (like most of my fellow Bostonians) I’m feeling a bit robbed of my summer. The few months of mild and rainy weather left much to be desired. And suddenly a telltale sign of fall—dark mornings. For the first time since spring, my alarm clock went off in the dark, leaving me a few tempting Snooze button clicks away from skipping my morning run altogether.

But I pooled a few ‘mental resources’ to motivate my way out of bed, namely:

• Running to my ‘point of no return’. I have a landmark towards the beginning of my run and tell myself that if I’m still not in the mood when I reach it, I can turn around and go home, guilt free... Though I contentedly have yet to take myself up on that offer.


• Letting music do the work. Using my phone as a second alarm (judiciously set 15 minutes later than my alarm clock), I have it set to play a high energy (and quite obnoxious) tune. If I rest my phone close to my ear, falling back to sleep is no longer an option.


• Putting my faith in my ‘alarm-setting self’. Rather than rationalizing my way through multiple Snoozes, I persuade myself that I must have been wiser the night before when setting my alarm than I am at present. And usually I’m so groggy (e.g. gullible) that it works.

While these suggestions definitely help get me out of bed, they’re by no means fool-proof (believe me, I am certainly guilty of backpedaling my way out of many morning runs). Wiki-How also has a few words of advice on the matter of over-snoozing. And if you have some early morning motivators of your own, I’d love to hear them—because for better or worse, we have plenty of months ahead to test them out.