How to Stop Hitting the Snooze Button

Guilty of hitting the snooze button about a million times? To kick the bad habit, our friends at All You have shared some advice on what to do so you no longer feel the need to get some extra zzz's in the morning, but rather feel rejuvenated and ready for the day!

Bad news for chronic snoozers: Hitting the snooze button actually leaves you feeling more tired than if you'd just forced yourself out of bed when your alarm first rang. The reason? Fragmented sleep is poor-quality sleep, and by hitting the snooze button repeatedly you're messing with your natural sleep rhythms. Plus, the average 10- to 15-minute snooze cycle doesn't allow you to fall deeply enough asleep to feel rested when you wake up . . . again . . . and again . . . and again.

The good news: You can break your morning snooze habit in seven easy steps. Ready to stop snoozing your mornings away? Start here.

You may have every intention of getting up early enough to meditate, hit the gym, prepare and eat a great breakfast, shower and dress, help get the kids ready, enjoy your morning coffee while reading the news, and still have plenty of time to get to work. But if your fantasy morning routine is padded with too many good intentions — and you'd need to get up at dark-thirty just to fit them all in before 9 a.m. — it's easy to fall back into the snooze-button habit. ("I'll just skip the meditation . . . and the gym . . . and breakfast . . . and the kids can go without brushing their hair one day . . . and if I leave late enough there'll be no traffic . . . ") There's no reason your morning routine shouldn't include a workout or a family breakfast, but measure your morning activities so that you can be realistic — and precise — about how much time you really need to budget for those good habits. Then, set your alarm to go off when it needs to, and not a minute before. You'll get the maximum amount of quality sleep and be ready for a more productive morning.

Now that you know exactly what time you need to get up, work backwards to find exactly what time you should go to bed. When it comes to how many hours of sleep an adult needs, there's no magic number, but the National Sleep Foundation recommends 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night. So if you've calculated that you need to get up at 6:17 a.m., then plan for lights-out no later than 11:17, allowing enough time for a restful bedtime routine.

After dinner, set the coffeemaker, pack the lunches, and put out your workout clothes, so that morning prep steps don't push back your bedtime later in the evening. Need motivation? Think about it this way: Every minute you spend at night prepping for the next morning buys you at least one more minute of sleep. (And possibly more, if you're an especially slow-moving zombie in the mornings . . .)

It's a no-brainer, but if you have to get out of bed to hit the snooze button, you're less likely to roll over and go back to sleep. If possible, put your alarm clock far enough from your bed that you'll need to take a few steps to reach it — more movement equals greater blood circulation equals a smoother wake-up. (If you've resisted this tactic because you share a bedroom with someone who sleeps in, consider it additional motivation to get up and get moving, fast — before your alarm wakes up your partner.)

An outlet timer costs about $5 at Target and can act as a powerful snooze-defuser: Set the lamp in your bedroom to automatically turn on at the same time your alarm goes off. Then as soon as you're up, open the curtains: After 7 to 9 hours of darkness, light stimulates brain activity and will help you feel naturally more alert.

Let's face it: It can be hard to get excited about getting up at dark-o'clock if your only reward for not hitting the snooze button is being able to fit a workout in. (Sorry, most of us just don't love working out that much.) Reinforce better sleep habits by rewarding yourself every morning that you don't hit the snooze button. Eat a healthy breakfast you love, take a walk in the park after work, or find some other way to give yourself a pat on the back. (Rewarding yourself with extra time on the treadmill doesn't count.)

Marathon late-night TV show watching and lazy weekend lie-ins both disrupt your body's sleep cycle and make weekday mornings tougher. Try to go to bed and wake up within an hour of your calculated bedtime and wake-up time — even on the weekends. Because if you're going to put in the hard work to kick the snooze-button habit, you don't want to let it go to waste.

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