The snooze button can be so tempting. When you hear your alarm go off in the morning, it’s so easy to press that button and drift back off. However, that extra 10 minutes you’re getting is a light sleep, and it’s not going to help you feel any more rested.
Your body’s natural sleep-wake cycle, your circadian rhythm, is essential to your health and sleep quality. That means the goal is to go to sleep at the same time every night and wake up at the same time every morning — with no snoozing necessary. Your health thrives on routines like this and will help you feel more energized during the day, and can even help your metabolism (via NBC News).
Meanwhile, hitting the snooze button is going to leave you feeling more groggy than if you woke up the first time your alarm went off. If you rely on hitting snooze a lot, each time the alarm goes off, your body will get a jolt of cortisol, and it’s unlikely that you’ll fall back into a restorative sleep (via The Sleep Council).
REM sleep is essential for your sleep quality and helps you feel well-rested during the day. Often, this restorative sleep cycle happens more toward the morning (via NIH). When you set your alarm early so you can hit snooze, you could be interrupting your REM sleep, causing you to feel groggy during the day (via The Thirty).
How to stop hitting snooze
If you habitually press snooze, there is a trick to get yourself to stop. First, if you set your alarm a little early so you can snooze a bit before getting up, reset your alarm for the time you actually want to get up. Then, put your alarm clock or phone across the room and out of reach so that when your alarm goes off in the morning, you have to get up and walk over to it to turn it off, as The Thirty advises. Doing this will also help wake you up in the process. You’ll feel groggy for the first few minutes, and it’s not pleasant, but it will go away quickly.
Another way to achieve healthier sleep patterns is by going to bed and waking up at the same times every day, as Namni Goel, a research associate professor in psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine, told NBC News.
When you stop slamming that snooze button, you may notice that you feel more rested and energized during the day. You’ll never want to go back to hitting snooze ever again.
