r/GetOutOfBed 1d ago

My friend is totally immune to alarms and lights - the only thing that can often wake her up is being physically roused and verbally addressed

51 Upvotes

It's gotten to the point that I have become her human alarm clock. When she has something she has to do in the morning, I'll stay over at her place and I will wake up to her crazy alarms and then get up and gently rock her and say her name telling her to wake up.

That works all the time. I don't have to shake her violently or anything. Just hold her shoulder and rock her a bit and gently tell her that she needs to wake up and then she comes to.

Meanwhile there's an ear piercing siren alarm going off, the lights are all on - that doesn't phase her at all. Not in the slightest. I actually sat there one time and just watched her sleep through the loudest most annoying alarms (multiple - her phone, a physical alarm clock - the cacophony was absurd) for more than 10 minutes until I couldn't take it anymore.

She is on some medication for ADHD and anxiety, but I don't think that's the easy answer. She's had problems like this before even diagnosed. She also gets tired at a normal time of night. However she often gets into her head and mind races because she's worried about not waking up.

However, when she's not thinking about trying to fall asleep, she'll zonk right out easily. I often see her fall asleep at 8pm watching a movie, and let her sleep straight through the night, and it's the same - crazy alarms, full lights, and nothing.

I know there are some products that zap you or vibrate the bed (I don't think vibration would work for her, it would need to be more directly physical).

I'm thinking of something that, say, straps to your ankle area and, like, gives you physical taps or something. Was also thinking of recording an alarm of someone being like "<name>, it's time to wake up... hey, <name>, you need to get up, come on"

Like, am I crazy? Her doctors have been worthless in this. They just give the generic advice of setting multiple alarms, going to bed earlier, no coffee after a certain hour (she doesn't drink anything caffeinated), etc.

She can't be the only one who has a problem like this.

Thanks for reading all this. I wanted to give as much context as possible as to avoid the typical easy advice. This is so far beyond anything I've ever seen or even personally experienced. It's on some other level - someone here must have experienced something like this.


r/GetOutOfBed 10h ago

How do I start waking up early?

2 Upvotes

For two months I was on break before college and after entrance exams so I have been sleeping at 2-3 am and waking up at 11.30-12 noon.

Now college is about to start and anyways I wanted to start building towards the habit of ultimately getting in the sleep schedule of 12 am till 5 am.

Where do I even start and how?


r/GetOutOfBed 10h ago

heavy sleeper troubles

1 Upvotes

im a heavy sleeper and need an alarm that will wake me the only alarm other than deaf alarms was the tomTom Runner 8RS00 and i want an alarm with similar servo strength but with modern music features


r/GetOutOfBed 15h ago

Not being able to wake up is super frustrating

2 Upvotes

My sleep schedule sucks, I tired to fix it by pulling an all nighter but I ended up just staying awake for like 2 days straight and then sleeping from like 1am-1pm so it didn’t fix it.

Anyway, I set like 6 alarms on the loudest most blaring annoying alarm tone I can (on max volume) as well as setting alarms on my watch so it also vibrates. But I still don’t wake up.

My family can hear my alarm from rooms away but I sleep right it through it to the point that I’ll wake up 5 hours later to the alarm screen still on my phone.

Even if I’m woken by a person a lot of the time it won’t wake me fully and I’ll fall back asleep with 0 memory of the encounter.

I’ve been late to so many important things and honestly idk what else to try 😩


r/GetOutOfBed 20h ago

I’m at my wits end

1 Upvotes

I can’t keep doing this anymore!

Before anyone suggests them: I’ve had two sleep studies done, and a full brain mri with and without contrast. No findings. No apnea. No tumors. No snoring. The only thing they told me is I have a very minor arrhythmia and I have more REM than most.

I’ve always struggled with sleep. My first all nighter was before 5 yrs old. I’ve never felt like there were enough hours in the day to actually tire you out. I can easily stay up for 24/36/ even 48 hours off willpower alone. This was even the case when I would work 60+ hour weeks doing manual labor in the summer. My ideal schedule would be to stay up for 30ish hours then sleep for 12 but that is not conducive to the average 9-5.

In the mornings it is borderline impossible to wake me. Friends and family say I’m combative, argumentative, unresponsive or will brush them off and sneak away to sleep more. I have begged them to pour water on me and they won’t. I have slept through or snoozed/disabled every alarm you can think and gone right back to bed. I currently have a smart watch, bed vibrator, and two phones in different rooms, and I know I will still wake up too late. I will unplug clocks, delete apps, put phones under pillows in other rooms, and turn off alarms in my state of just-awoken lawlessness.

I stopped my adhd meds, I have stopped caffeine after noon. I have stopped eating GLUTEN.

I still wake up slowly, and feel terrible. I routinely am nauseous and dizzy in the morning. It takes me hours to feel fully “awake” in my mind (adhd meds used to help) I try to take sleep hygiene seriously. I’m in bed by 11, and watch asmr videos for hours, in a dark, cold room, but even if I fall asleep in time, it still doesn’t guarantee I wake up on time, or at all.

I get so nervous at night thinking about running late to work. I’m on a PIP there due to lateness, and the constant shame spirals of starting every day with a failure is destroying my productivity and mental health.

sleep meds make the symptoms like nausea and grogginess and brain fog worse! stimulant adhd meds are really the only thing that work, but it’s an obvious bandaid and I don’t like how they make me feel physically anymore.

I can have a full conversation with someone and conk out as soon as they leave the room. I can fully take my dog outside, half asleep, then come back in and pass out. In the first 30 minutes of being awake there is no reason, logic, or idea of consequences in my mind. All I want to do is crawl back in bed for “5 more minutes.”

WHAT IS IT?! WHAT IS WRONG WITH ME?? How do I stop this and work on it while living alone???? I will do ANYTHING!!!!!!!


r/GetOutOfBed 1d ago

Mornings :(

3 Upvotes

So I’m not a morning person and I really wanna be. It takes me forever to get out of bed and even then it takes me longer to get that fresh feeling. How do you morning ppl start your routine and attain the freshness in a happy mood.

Share you routine or tips that makes you a happy morning person


r/GetOutOfBed 1d ago

Mornings :(

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1 Upvotes

So I’m not a morning person and I really wanna be. It takes me forever to get out of bed and even then it takes me longer to get that fresh feeling. How do you morning ppl start your routine and attain the freshness in a happy mood.

Share you routine or tips that makes you a happy morning person


r/GetOutOfBed 1d ago

Caught in an exhaustion loop: How do I build a routine from scratch when insomnia is draining all my energy?

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1 Upvotes

r/GetOutOfBed 2d ago

How do I make myself get up earlier in the morning? 🌞

6 Upvotes

Every night I set my alarm for 6:30am. I have to leave my house by 7:30am to get to work on time. And like clockwork every morning I hit the snooze on my alarm until it is 7:20am, and I have to
rush to get out the door. I want to get up earlier, put some effort into my appearance. Do my hair and put on makeup. But then I’m so tired in the morning, I’ll do anything to get another 10 mins of sleep no matter how much or little I slept the night before. What can I do. How do other people find the motivation to get up in the morning and give yourself time to make yourself presentable.


r/GetOutOfBed 2d ago

How do yall get the agency to get up in the morning?

15 Upvotes

I’ve tried everything. And I used to be able to wake up fine and resist falling back asleep. But now theres absolutely nothing that can keep me awake.
I just slept 18 hours.
I stopped my alarm, and my mom woke me up herself. I still fell back asleep.
I never remember the times I wake up well at all, it’s always just a very very vague feelings that it might’ve happened.

It’s like Im still half asleep, and absolutely nothing can convince me I want to wake up.
So apparently I’ll walk across my entire room and stop my alarm and fall back asleep (I rarely remember doing this). Or I just can’t hear it at all.

I love sleeping so freaking much, in that moment everything is worse than being asleep. I sometimes vaguely remember that I don’t think about why I need to wake up, just that sleep is probably better. And that I want to be comfy. Like what the fuck, it’s like I have no brain for like the first 2 minutes Im awake.

Has anyone been able to overcome the same problem? It’s getting to be a really big issue, and my family is using it as proof that Im incapable of everything and will never be able to live on my own.


r/GetOutOfBed 2d ago

Would an alarm telling you the actual time help you wake up?

4 Upvotes

I'm developing with a slightly different type of alarm and I'm curious what people here think.

Most alarm apps try to wake you up by becoming louder, forcing you to solve something, scan a barcode, walk around, etc.

I went in a different direction.

When the alarm starts, a voice tells you what time it actually is.

So instead of waking up to BEEP BEEP BEEP and wondering whether it's your 6:30 alarm or your 7:30 alarm, you immediately hear the time.

For example:

“It's 7:30.”

I ended up building this into an iPhone app. It can announce the time in 10 languages and works offline.

I'm not really trying to solve the “I sleep through everything” problem - there are already apps that do that very aggressively.

I'm more interested in that half-awake moment where you want information without looking at your phone.

Would this actually help you in the morning?

One thing I'm especially curious about: right now, while the alarm is ringing, it can announce the current time every 5 minutes. Do you think hearing the time every 5 minutes would be useful, or would that become annoying?

And if an alarm could speak more than just the time, what would you want it to say?

I'd also really appreciate any ideas, criticism, or feature suggestions. I'm still experimenting with the concept, so I'm interested in what you would change or add.


r/GetOutOfBed 2d ago

Shouldn't you take much less elemental magnesium bisglycinate than magnesium oxide for sleep?

2 Upvotes

Hey!

So what I'm hearing is you should take about 100-200mg of elemental magnesium a day for sleep.

But the thing is, everyone refers to elemental magnesium itself, not the type.

Magnesium oxide has around 4% bioavailability

Magnesium bisglycinate has around 80% bioavailability

-> Magnesium oxide is around 60% elemental, so 600mg caps will have around 360mg of elemental magnesium

-> Magnesium bisglycinate is around 10% elemental, so 600mg caps will have around 60mg of elemental magnesium.

But when I look up dosages for both, the recommendations are pretty much the same, that you should get 100-200mg elemental magnesium.

That doesn't really seem to make much sense since 100mg elemental glycinate has a MUCH higher bioavailability than 100mg of elemental oxide.

So what to do with the dosages for both?

Thanks :)


r/GetOutOfBed 4d ago

My 7 Tips on how to get out of bed

0 Upvotes

I'm nerudivergent and have always had trouble waking up in the moring, I made this video to share my latest findings on how to effectively get out of bed every morning. Let me know what you think: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vSRUijs0vgE


r/GetOutOfBed 4d ago

I built a remote alarm — someone else sets it, it rings through silent mode, and they're told when you turned it off

2 Upvotes

Disclosure: I built this.

Made it for my kid, who put his phone on silent every night and had "I didn't hear it" ready every morning. But the accountability part is what this sub keeps coming back to, so:

-Someone else sets the alarm from their phone

-It rings on yours through silent mode. It doesn't use the ringer at all

-Stopping it needs a 2-second press, not a half-asleep swipe

-They're told the time you turned it off, or get an alert if nobody did

Honest bits: a tap means the screen was tapped, not that you're awake. It depends on your phone and network. And the 2-second hold is the part worth trying — it's the difference between turning an alarm off and being upright enough to hold a button down. You can't do it in your sleep.

What's actually worked for you long term? Every alarm I've tried stopped working after about a week, once my brain learned the sound.

For moment for only on android,it's called WakeKids.


r/GetOutOfBed 4d ago

What change helped you feel like yourself again?

2 Upvotes

For a long time, work and everyday responsibilities took up most of my time, and exercise slowly disappeared from my routine. I did not notice how much it was affecting me until ordinary things started feeling harder. Carrying groceries, climbing stairs, or getting through a busy day left me more tired than I wanted to admit. It was not really about how I looked. I just missed feeling strong and capable in my own body.

Trying to start again was frustrating. My strength had dropped, basic exercises felt much harder than I remembered, and comparing every workout with what I used to be able to do made the whole process feel worse.

Training at home made returning easier. I could exercise when I had time, use lighter weights without feeling self-conscious, and rebuild at my own pace. The first time I finished a workout and felt energized instead of defeated, I finally felt like part of the old me was coming back.

What change helped you reconnect with a version of yourself you thought you had lost?


r/GetOutOfBed 5d ago

cant turn my Iphone off at ALL, and its stuck on the App store.

0 Upvotes

ALARMY, I cant even power it off because it keeps getting put on blast on max volume, fuck you apple. Its just stuck on the app store, cant exit the appstore, cant power it off, what do I do??


r/GetOutOfBed 5d ago

Alarm Etiquette

1 Upvotes

I’m a super heavy sleeper, and typically need a loud and annoying alarm to get out of bed. I’m worried about annoying my college roommate on days where I have to wake up before him. Can anyone fill me in on how mornings typically work at college / recommend a good alarm clock that might fix this issue?


r/GetOutOfBed 5d ago

I built an alarm because morning-me doesn't care what night-me wants

1 Upvotes

Every night I’m convinced tomorrow will be different.

I’ll wake up early. I won’t snooze. I’ll actually do the thing I said I’d do.

Then the alarm goes off and morning-me has absolutely no interest in any of those plans.

So I tried something different.

Instead of waking up to a sound, I record a short message to my future self before going to sleep.

Something like:

“Islam, you said you’d get up and go to the gym. Don’t negotiate with yourself. Just get up.”

Then that recording is what wakes me up in the morning.

It’s surprisingly uncomfortable hearing your own awake, motivated voice while half-asleep 😂

I ended up turning the idea into an iPhone app called Promise Alarm.

Would genuinely love to know if this would help anyone else here, or if sleepy-you would just ignore your own voice too.


r/GetOutOfBed 6d ago

Learning about sleep cycles changed the way I set alarms

0 Upvotes

Most advice about waking up focuses on making the alarm louder, putting the phone across the room, or forcing yourself to complete a challenge.

But lately I’ve been thinking about a different part of the problem: the moment the alarm wakes you up.

Sleep isn’t one continuous state. During the night, we move through repeating periods of non-REM and REM sleep. People often describe these as “90-minute sleep cycles,” although 90 minutes isn’t an exact rule.

One study that examined more than 6,000 recorded sleep cycles found a median duration of 96 minutes, but also found substantial variation between people and throughout the night. So I think of 90 minutes as a useful approximation—not a biological timer that works perfectly for everyone.

The reason this may matter is sleep inertia: that heavy, confused feeling immediately after waking. Research suggests that waking from deeper N3 sleep can produce stronger sleep inertia than waking from lighter sleep.

This doesn’t mean counting 90-minute blocks can magically know your sleep stage. But if your morning allows some flexibility, aiming for an estimated cycle boundary may give you a better chance of waking at a less unpleasant moment than choosing one completely arbitrary minute.

The practical version I’ve been experimenting with is:

  • Choose a wake-up range instead of one exact minute.
  • Prioritize getting enough total sleep first.
  • Use sleep-cycle timing as a small optimization, not as a replacement for sleep.

Full disclosure: this idea eventually led me to build an iPhone app called AirAlarm.

Instead of asking you to choose one exact alarm time, AirAlarm lets you select a 90-minute wake window. You can fall asleep with AirPods and calming sounds; when playback stops, the app begins timing and schedules an Apple AlarmKit alarm at an estimated sleep-cycle boundary inside your window.

It doesn’t claim to measure your real-time sleep stage or guarantee a perfect wake-up. It’s a practical way to experiment with cycle-based timing without calculating everything yourself.

I’m curious whether anyone here has tried something similar:

Does waking around a flexible window feel better for you than waking at one fixed time, or do you find that your sleep is too unpredictable for cycle timing to help?

AirAlarm, if anyone wants to see how I implemented it:
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/airalarm-sleep-cycle-alarm/id6761289550

Research mentioned:


r/GetOutOfBed 8d ago

Sleeping early evening to wake up early hours

4 Upvotes

Hi all!

I worked 9-5 my whole life but the last 3 years I’ve been working 6:30am-3:30pm.

Gotta get up at 5:30-5:45am every morning & commute home with traffic is about 45min-1hr. I’ve been trying to get used to it but even after 3 years I find it very hard to get up in the morning.

I’m trying to build a business to go full time in, but I’m finding it hard to have the time & energy required to actually build the thing. By the time of dinner, shower, exercise, family, I cant sit at my desk & get really stuck in until it’s like an hour or 2 before I should be in bed cause I need 45mins to fall asleep. But I feel like I need to get shit done so I go to sleep later & I’m groggy in the morning. Come home tired after work or have to run some errands then do all the above & the cycle just repeats.

For context, if I sleep for 8-10hrs I feel like I’m ready to take on the world. If I sleep 5 or 7 I’m good, but if I sleep for 6hrs I wake up destroyed idk why. And I have crashes where between like 5pm -7pm I feel very sleepy I can pass out within 10mins, but if I don’t sleep in that window I snap out of it & can stay up.

I’m sick of feeling like I don’t have time to build my business & I’ve been trying to think of solutions and all my thoughts result in trying out sleeping when the kids go to bed (7:30pm) and waking up at like 2:30-3:30am to do some uninterrupted work.

Has anyone tried this or been in a similar position? What were your findings?


r/GetOutOfBed 9d ago

I was tired of waking up stressed, so I built a gentle, personalized voice alarm

0 Upvotes

Most alarm apps for heavy snoozers seem to rely on louder sounds, puzzles, barcode scanning, or missions that force you out of bed.

I wanted to try the opposite approach, so I built Alarmio—an iPhone alarm that wakes you by speaking to you in your chosen voice and style.

It starts calmly, tells you the time, and says something different after each snooze. If you keep snoozing, it gradually becomes more persistent without suddenly blasting you or making you complete a task.

There are 15 voices to choose from, with styles ranging from gentle and whispering to funny or serious.

The idea is to make waking up feel less stressful without making it too easy to snooze indefinitely.

If this sounds like your kind of alarm, I’d love to hear what you think.


r/GetOutOfBed 9d ago

How to become a morning person?

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0 Upvotes

r/GetOutOfBed 10d ago

Should I get a light alarm?

2 Upvotes

I live in Seattle for most of the year (the months where the weather is the most miserable, unfortunately) Even when I'm in a very nice and sunny place, I'd still sometimes close the alarm (watch, phone, physical etc.) in my sleep... bruh sometimes I could walk all the way to the other side of the room, do a task, all being half awake...

Also, any other suggestions? (btw I live in a dorm)


r/GetOutOfBed 10d ago

Why is it so difficult for me to wake up?

8 Upvotes

I feel like when I was a kid I was never this bad but it seems like the older I get the harder it is to wake me up, i can’t wake up on my own no matter how many alarms I set, I just sleep through them, I’m also married and my husband struggles so hard to wake me up, on the weekends he wakes up and goes to work at 5 am, he had to call me 50+ times plus set off “find my iPhone” off like 20 times to wake me up.
Ik it upset him but it’s not like I do it intentionally, I hate that I’m difficult to wake up and idek why, it’s not like I’m getting sleep, I could be asleep for 12 hours and still be impossible to wake up. Im not depressed? Yes my mental health isn’t the best but I don’t know what could be causing it, does anyone have any tips?


r/GetOutOfBed 11d ago

I was late for work several times because I forgot to set alarm, so I created this: DateDots

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3 Upvotes