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Early Bird Alarm Clock?
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Popularity Score: 11
This app was mentioned in 16 comments, with an average of 3.00 upvotes
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Simple repeat doesn't always suit peoples' real schedules. IE I have off every other Monday and come in late on every Monday I work [I work 9 hour days], Android's alarm clock is woefully ill equipped to deal with this schedule despite it being consistent and predictable.
Ended up getting an alarm app called Early Bird Alarm Clock, allows me to set up complex patterns, limit the number of times I can snooze, and set up challenges for dismissing alarms to force me to actually be awake, among a bunch of other features I don't use as much. Now the Android alarm app is only used when I set an alarm with Assistant.
I used to struggle with that, but I've found a great solution. I found an app called Early Bird which has a lot of great features, including adding challenges to turning off an alarm. Every morning at 5:45, the alarm goes off. I have to complete 3 basic math problems (just simple addition/subtraction) then go to my bathroom to scan a QR code I have printed out and hanging on the wall. By that time, I'm already physically out of bed, my brain has done some work, and the bright light from the bathroom wakes me up the rest of the way.
The only way I screw it up is if I forget to charge my phone, unlock it after a restart, or if I start a short snooze timer for 10 minutes lol
These days I use Early Bird Alarm Clock
I usually have 3 alarms set to get my lazy butt up.
- 20 minutes before waking - Chirping birds, with gradually increasing volume. Gives me a chance to wake naturally.
- 5 minutes before waking - Short, randomised tones from a selection of 20+ riffs/loops, with gradually increasing volume.
- Final alarm - Harsh, randomised tones (e.g. military trumpet, air raid siren etc.), with talking clock set for 1-minute intervals. Snooze disabled. Have to scan barcode in bathroom to turn off alarm.
Works great!
If you're on a stimulant, set an additional alarm 45 minutes before you need to wake up - take the stimulant on that alarm. (If you're on Android, you can even use an app like this so that you dismiss the alarm by scanning the barcode on your bottle!) It'll be much easier to wake up when your "real" alarm goes off.
Challenge yourself to lie down with your eyes closed for five minutes before you procrastinate on sleeping. Like when you feel like hopping on YouTube or whatever, say you'll do it after lying down for five minutes. If five minutes is too hard, do 3 or even 2 minutes. The idea is to increase your willpower a little bit at a time, and also get your body familiar with the sensation of shutting down purposefully.
When you can't/don't want to sleep, get out of bed. Even if you go lie down on the couch, it's better than staying in bed while awake. You want your brain to only associate sleep with your bed.
A wake-up light absolutely changed my life. I don't even need the stimulants anymore!
Make getting out of bed comfortable. A nice robe or slippers, music you like... If your coffee maker has a timer, use it! Make it so that getting out of bed has a bit of excitement to temper the disappointment of losing all that comfort haha.
For anyone looking for a similar thing but for your local songs, then Early Bird Alarm does it.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.funanduseful.earlybirdalarm
You can choose more than one ringtone as the alarm ringtone and it will randomly play one of them every morning/every alarm.
I haven't tried it, but there are apps that make you scan a QR code before you get up. Something like this might work:
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.funanduseful.earlybirdalarm&hl=en
Put a QR code in your bathroom mirror (or further if necessary). Once you're already up, I'd imagine you'd start getting ready for work.
Early Bird Alarm Clock has a function that tells the time when the alarm rings. It has a calendar + weather feature too but there's no voice function for that. I think it's a pretty nifty app, do give it a try!
I'm using Early Bird Alarm Clock for quite some time. I enjoy its features (weather and calendar display after dismissing the alarm), with voice to notify what time it is. Also, I am quite dependent on those mathematics features since I am not able to wake up with just an alarm alone.
So far some useful features I found are sentences writing, mathematics (multiple levels), QR code scanning, and speaking into phone based on the sentences displayed to dismiss the alarms, and these features are stackable. The QR code was particularly useful since I set the alarm not to be dismissable unless I scanned it. I printed the code and stick it somewhere far away from the bed.
The first thing you will want to consider is shifting your entire schedule to fit with your "golden hours", though for most of us various obligations (job schedule, children, partner's schedule, etc.) this is difficult to accomplish.
The second thing I would look at is to use multiple timers in order to get enough sleep and built your routine around your sleep schedule and not the other way around. I have three timers that go off for me every single day.
Late evening timer at 9:30 p.m. This alarm indicates that it's time to stop working and to relax. I have found that I need to force myself to stop working on projects at least an hour before going to bed or else my thoughts are racing and falling asleep becomes extremely difficult. I use the default clock app on my android phone for this but any alarm app will do the job.
Bedtime alarm at 10:30 p.m. during weeknights an sometimes later - such as 11:30 p.m. or midnight - on weekend or vacation nights. Once this alarm goes off, I need to stop whatever I'm doing and go brush my teeth and then head to bed. I allow myself to read a book once I'm in bed and I'm usually asleep by 11:00 p.m. most nights Again, I just use the clock app on my android phone for this alarm.
Morning alarm at 5:30 a.m. This was the hardest one for me to set up. I struggled for years with getting up as early as I wanted, as I would repeatedly hit snooze for up to 30-45 minutes each morning. I finally realized that this was a complete waste of time; those 30-45 minutes are wasted every day, as you're not using them to be productie, enjoy life or to even sleep. So I looked for a solution that would force me out of bed. I settled on using the Early Bird Alarm app. I have it set up so that the only way I can turn off the alarm is to scan a printed QR code with my phone camera. I've placed the QR code in my washroom cabinet so, once it goes off, I can "snooze" the alarm so I don't wake up my partner but I only have a few seconds before it goes off again. The cycle continues until the QR code is scanned, so I have trained myself to just get up once it starts going. I rarely hit snooze more than twice, so I'm typically up and getting ready within 30 seconds of the alarm going off. This routine was brutal at first but my body rapidly got acclimated to the routine after about 4-5 days. On Friday evenings I'll typically consider how late I want / need to go to bed (I might need to go to bed later than 10:30 p.m. due to being at the cinema or a concert, for example) and gauge my energy levels. Then I'll set the Early Bird alarm app for a bit later on Saturday. I'll do the same evaluation again on Saturday evening but I'm much more strict with being up early on Sunday because sleeping on that day will have knock-off effects on my Monday morning and then throughout the next week.
I use this app. It has an option that will force you to scan a QR to turn it off. Works like a charm.