gwillen comments on Solved Problems Repository - Less Wrong

25 Post author: Qiaochu_Yuan 27 March 2013 04:51AM

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Comment author: Kaj_Sotala 31 March 2013 04:21:56PM 13 points [-]

At least for me, getting up when the alarm clock rings used to be almost impossible and I kept staying in bed for 12 hours a day unless there was something that I absolutely had to get up in time for. Anders Sandberg's caffeine pill trick solved that problem for me, and it has worked for over five years now:

This week I have experimented with a new way of getting up in the morning. My problem is that Anders-Sleepy has different goals than Anders-Awake, and is quite adept at resetting the alarm clock. Now I, Anders-Awake, has found a way around this self:

I set my alarm to 6:00 and 8:00. At 6:00 I go up, take a 50mg caffeine pill, and go to bed again. Then I sleep and wake up rested and energetic around 8.

In my case the time for the pill to start working seems to be 1.5 hours. A dose of one pill ensures that I wake up (but still yawning) while two pills makes me start the day much more quickly. The added benefit is of course a regular sleep schedule.

I ran into the problem of a late night one of the days, where I remained awake until 3:30. In this case I adjusted the program slightly, taking the pill at 7:00 and sleeping to 8:30, this seemed to work and the rest of the day was efficient. I became tired earlier in the evening, which was fixed by going to sleep earlier.

Using caffeine to combat sleep inertia is not my idea; a study has shown that it works for naps. Music may also help.

Comment author: gwillen 25 July 2013 03:19:00AM *  1 point [-]

For me, the problem of waking up when my alarm goes off has been totally solved by using an alarm (Alarm Clock Plus for Android) which requires me to do complex mental math before it will shut off.

This doesn't solve the related problem of getting out of bed when the alarm goes off; only waking up and not going back to sleep.