I think one of the hardest parts of building a morning routine is getting started on the days when you don't feel particularly motivated.

It's easy to imagine a perfect morning where you wake up early, exercise, eat breakfast, and get everything done.

Actually doing it when you're tired is a different story.

I've been wondering whether simplifying the first few steps matters more than trying to make the entire morning productive.

For example, someone who wants to exercise might leave their workout clothes ready and keep a small home gym area set up so there's less preparation involved.

But other people might find that starting with something completely unrelated to exercise works better.

What's one practical change that made your mornings easier?

Did you change your environment, your schedule, or the way you approach the first few minutes after waking up?

Normally, I use Alarmy to wake up and it makes me get out of bed to take a picture of my bathroom to turn my alarm off. And this usually wakes me up, unless I turn it off in my sleep. My problem is staying awake. Once I get up to turn it off, it’s like I’m on autopilot and automatically go back to sleep whether it’s on the bed or the floor.

But recently, I was staying up late and decided to take a quick nap before getting back to work and then hopefully going to bed. So I set one million alarms throughout the night because the first few won’t wake me up and sleep on the floor. Obviously I never got back to work. But the next morning, I felt so rested? My alarm actually woke me up and my brain felt awake at a proper time. I only got like 5 hours of sleep interrupted by alarms every 15 minutes. But for some reason it was the best sleep I’ve gotten in weeks. And usually I’m tired all the time and have to nap for 2 hours when I get home in the evenings. But I wasn’t that day. I was actually able to do things in the evening.

I really want to use Alarmy, but it does not have the prevent last-minute edits feature on iOS. It has everything else I want. It would make me actually get up in the morning, but sometimes my body wakes up a couple minutes before the alarm is supposed to go off and I will turn off the alarm. is there any app or Clock that has similar features to me but also has a prevent last-minute edits function that works on iPhones?

Hi all, I figure this is the place to ask.

I never had that much trouble waking up. But, once I came home after graduating college, I slowly just, stopping being able to properly wake up. I have my phone alarm, Apple Watch, and even got a Nintendo Alarmo, and sometimes I literally just sleep right through them. I do still live with my parents, so if I need to wake up for work they will end up doing it, but it’s obviously incredibly embarrassing.

It doesn’t matter when I go to sleep. I can get a regular full night’s sleep and sometimes I will just sleep right through my alarms.

Has anyone else been here? What should I do? I am at such a loss and I don’t know why this is happening because, in my overall life, it’s a relatively new problem. I’m just so frustrated and have no clue what to do.

I've been curious about whether small changes to your environment can make mornings feel less complicated.

For example, some people prepare their clothes, water bottle, and workout space the night before so they don't have to make as many decisions after waking up.

If you have a home gym, everything can already be in one place.

You don't need to pack a bag, travel anywhere, or spend time figuring out what equipment is available.

Of course, having everything ready doesn't automatically make getting out of bed easy.

But I'm interested in whether that kind of preparation makes a noticeable difference.

Has keeping your workout clothes and home gym ready the night before helped you get moving in the morning?

Recently, I have noticed that Alarmy app has been giving me some really weird and creepy distorted videos whenever my alarm plays. It creeps me the fuck out since I have always been a heavy sleeper I installed the app. Every once in a while I get those swirly face distorted videos.. and sometimes I get videos that aren't even chosen by me, even the music is different. I don't have any screenshots as I always click on missions because those are creepy as hell. I get why I get videos because I have set up my own alarm videos. But it's too much for me handle this, I deleted it because of this. Total nightmare fuel (in the dawn of morning)

Has anyone ever faced this experience? Maybe y'all can give me explanation cause I'm never downloading that app ever it's suspicious anyways.

For some reason Alarmy decided to turn off my alarm because it tought I was driving. Good thing I always have back up alarm…

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Lifts are a place to make us realise that we are actually lost!!

Everyone is using their phone and when the door opens they start getting out thinking the desired floor has arrived. And then they realise they were so busy with the phone that its just the lift opening on a different floor.

I’m a high school student and I’ve always had immense trouble getting out of bed and being woken up by my alarms. I started taking Ritalin before going to sleep and now my alarm wakes me up perfectly fine. Feel free to use ? (not medical advice. make your own choices.) I do often wake up in a state of panic or distress but that may be unrelated ? With this hack I go to bed at around 11/12 and wake up at 7, but before I was going to bed at like 10 and my body was forcing me to sleep til 8/9.

I am in college and I get so comfy cozy in my bed and haven't figured out a way to will myself out of bed. I have a roommate so I don't feel comfortable keeping my alarm in a place where I can't quickly turn it off. Any tips?

I'm a project manager who works with teams from different time zones, have meeting at 1AM, pick up my daughter at 4PM and many more duties. Standard alarms just don't work because if I have a meeting, I like to sleep in a bit more or if the customer cancels the meetings, my calendar knows that but my alarm doesn't.

The built-in Clock can't handle that so you end up trying to force the alarm to fit your life. It shouldn't be like that. VariAlarm lets you setup once and adjust only the days that are different.

• Skip one day without touching the rest of the repeat. Day off Wednesday? Swipe, skip, and Thursday still rings.
• Move one day's alarm. A later start tomorrow changes only tomorrow.
• Templates for each kind of day. Save your "early shift" set of alarms and your "late shift" set, then apply them to specific dates on a calendar. You can apply a template to one date or to a pattern of dates.
• Routines that move together. If your morning is wake up, stretch, leave, they keep their spacing, so changing the start time moves them all.
• Schedule view. You can see every alarm on every date, so nothing is a surprise at 6 AM.
• Calendar and photo import. Point it at your calendar or photograph a shift roster, and it turns the entries into alarms you review first.
• Waking-up help: gradual volume crescendo, a short challenge just boring enough to stop you falling back asleep, and an "I'm Awake" confirmation after you stop the alarm if you so choose.

It's iPhone only (iOS 18+), with an Apple Watch app. It's free to use, and Pro is optional. Skipping a day is free. Moving a single day's alarm, extra templates, and a longer look-ahead are Pro.

Full disclosure: I'm the developer. I'd really like to hear from people with irregular schedules, like shift workers, students, or anyone with a rotating roster. How do you handle this now, and what would make an alarm app work for you?

Many people with irregular schedule has gained back control with VariAlarm and it brings me great joy that I can help people with similar issues.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/id6757322888

I've tried a *lot* of things, but ended up making Self Care Vampire as a free game to help motivate myself. Just in case you feel like your own 'hacks' to get out of bed are weird, you aren't alone!

any recommendation anyone to fix it?? my shift is from 4pm until 12am

trying to fix my sleep schedule, especially my wake-up time.

• set a bedtime
• set a wake-up time
• report when we actually went to sleep
• report when we actually woke up
• if we slept late, explain why
• if we missed our wake-up time, own it
• call each other out when we start slipping

i don’t need someone to motivate me every morning. i need someone who’ll notice when i keep making excuses.

if you’re serious about getting out of bed on time, DM me with your time zone and target sleep/wake times.

I turn alarms off in my sleep, including the puzzle/math ones. If the phone is out of reach, I just sleep through it completely (and yes I use the most annoying alarm sounds). I don't even wake up to the first 5 things my cat knocks off my side table and desk, so one of those runaway alarm clocks wouldn't work.

Right now I have to set multiple alarms across multiple apps and essentially stagger the puzzles so that hopefully I'll wake up while doing them if they're popping up in an irregular order (if I get used to the order then it's easier for me to completely them in my sleep).

I'm so over this. I get so tired throughout the day too - my eyes get so heavy I'm sometimes working at the computer with one eye open. I have been hard to wake up for as long as I can remember. I'm 31 now and just done with it all.

Can anyone please recommend some strategies to help me wake up and stay awake? 😫😴

I've always needed many consecutive alarms to get up in the morning and I've noticed the more years pass I need more lol

When I was younger 5 alarms were enought, now at least 8 separated by 5 minutes and a differt sound for the last one.

Everything fine on the day to day routine, the problem was when for example I need to go to work 1 hour before from normal. Not great to move 8 alarms one by one.

I always found it frustating to manually move so many alarms.

yes on Alarmy there is a way to set multiple alarms but still one by one, and tbh the amount of ads in that app is beyond my supported limit.

I've developed my own alarm app with the concept of alarm groups.

Set a starting time.

Set the count of alarms.

Set the minutes between them.

Done. I have my 8 alarms that can optionally be manually configured.

After more than 2 months of using it I've introduced the "Random sound" to wake my brain up to a different sound everytime and not get used to the same sound.

If anyone is interested here is the Android version to try: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.albaalarm.app

This is an app I made for myself primary and since I'm an android user I've not developed the iOS app yet but if someone is interested I could go for it.