#791 Why Your Snooze Button Sucks

… the Life out of Your Day

Continuing our trip through Mel Robbins’s great book The 5 Second Rule, let’s talk about why your snooze button sucks the life out of your day. (Seriously. Science says!)

But, first, quick context: As we discussed a couple +1s ago, before she came up with her 5 Second Rule, Mel’s life was more than a little wobbly. In addition to struggling with her marriage and finances and drinking too much, she was hitting the snooze button on her alarm way too many times.

The ONE Thing she decided to change was getting up and out of bed IMMEDIATELY after her alarm went off. She used her 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… countdown to BLASTOFF and changed her life.

There’s something magical about taking control of your life from the moment you wake up that has ripples throughout the rest of the day.

(Of course, we talk about your morning actually beginning the NIGHT BEFORE with good shutdown complete and digital sunset routines but that’s a separate chat for now.)

Today I want to talk about the SCIENCE of why your snooze button sucks the life out of your day.

Get this.

Mel tells us that for peak productivity we should NEVER hit the snooze button. Here’s why.

She tells us that we all know getting a good night of sleep is super important. But, “how you wake up is just as important as how you sleep. Scientists have recently discovered that when you hit the snooze button it has a negative impact on brain functioning and productivity that can last up to four hours!

Short story: “We sleep in cycles that take about 90 to 110 minutes to complete. About two hours before you wake up, these sleep cycles end and your body starts to slowly prepare to wake up. When your alarm rings, your body is in wakeup mode. If you hit the snooze button and drift back to sleep, you force your brain to start a new sleep cycle that is 90 to 110 minutes long.

She continues: “When the ‘snooze’ alarm goes off 15 minutes later, the cortical region of your brain, which is the part of the brain responsible for decision-making, attention, alertness, and self-control, is still in the sleep cycle. It won’t be able to snap awake—it needs 75 more minutes to finish what that snooze button started.

Which leads us to the fact that “It can take four hours for this ‘sleep inertia’ condition to wear off and for your cognitive functions to return to their full capacity. That’s why you feel so darn groggy when you get up after hitting the snooze. It’s not because you didn’t get enough sleep. It’s because once you hit the snooze button, you started a new sleep cycle and then interrupted it. On days when you hit the snooze button, there’s no way you’re at your best.

In conclusion, she says: “So, I’m dead serious about this. The alarm goes off. No snooze button. Get up. Not negotiable.

That’s Today’s +1.

If you’re a little snooze-button happy, how about we snooze the snooze button tomorrow morning?!

Better yet, let’s work toward getting rid of our alarm clocks altogether. We’ll save that for tomorrow morning’s +1—right after we 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… GO to start our days! 🤠 🦄 🚀

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