You’re either the type of person who jumps out of bed the second their alarm goes off—or maybe even before, for some especially lucky people—or you’re someone who wishes that you could. If you’re in the second category, your alarm likely isn’t enough to wake you up come morning, or you immediately turn it off and go back to sleep, sometimes unconsciously.
Sleeping through your alarm can make your mornings more hectic because, when you finally wake up, you have much less time to get out the door than anticipated. As such, learning to wake up to an alarm is crucial for preserving your mornings, and to do this, it’s first important to understand why you may be sleeping through your alarm.
Why You’re Sleeping Through Your Alarm
If you find yourself sleeping through your alarm or unconsciously turning it off so that you can keep sleeping, these may be some reasons why:
You’re a Heavy Sleeper
If you sleep through your alarm because you don’t hear it, you may be a naturally heavy sleeper.
As for what makes someone a heavy or light sleeper, it generally boils down to how many sleep spindles you have in your brain, which are a type of brain activity completed during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, or deep sleep. The purpose of these sleep spindles is to cancel out noise that would otherwise wake you up while you are sleeping, and some people can produce more than others.
The theory is that those who produce more sleep spindles are harder to wake because they can cancel out more noise that is attempting to disturb this sleep. Sometimes, they do too good of a job, and this translates to them not hearing their alarm even as it wakes everyone else in the house.
Your Sleep Routine Needs Some Work
While some people may naturally be heavier sleepers, you may also be sleeping through your alarm because you’re not getting enough quality sleep, which can leave you too tired come morning.
This is most evident when those who are “night owls” try to get up early in the morning. These individuals typically stay up later in the day, so by the time their alarms go off early in the morning, they may be in a deeper phase of sleep than if they have gone to bed earlier. The deeper your sleep phase, the harder it is to wake up, which may be why they sleep through their alarm.
You Have a Health Condition Affecting Your Sleep
In some cases, the difficulty you have in waking up in the morning may be because of a medical condition that you have. For example, night terrors, sleep apnea, and sleepwalking are all sleep disorders that can affect your quality of sleep, making it harder for you to wake up in the morning.
In addition to affecting your sleep quality, certain conditions may affect your circadian rhythm. This is the case with cardiac rhythm sleep disorders, which keep you from developing a regular sleep pattern and can cause you to enter a deep sleep that is hard to wake from.
Poor mental health can also cause you to sleep through your alarm. For instance, those who are depressed may be too anxious or lethargic to fall asleep at night, so by the time they do sleep, it might only be a few hours until their alarm goes off, which they easily sleep through. Stress and anxiety can cause similar problems.
Tips For Waking Up to Your Alarm
If you’re tired of sleeping through your alarm each morning, give these tips a try:
Focus on your Sleep Routine
Often, the best way to make mornings easier is by creating a better sleep routine, one that helps you get enough sleep each night so that you’re not so tired in the morning that you sleep through your alarm.
First and foremost, it is best to go to bed and wake up at the same time each day. This helps to regulate your circadian rhythm so that your body is prepared for your early morning wake-up and eases out of sleep instead of being jarred awake; sleep inertia is common when you’re awoken from deep sleep—which can make sleeping through your alarm easier—so regularity is important to ensure your mornings are smoother.
When determining your sleep and wake-up times, first consider when you’d like to wake up in the morning. Then, count backward to determine your bedtime—adults typically need between 7 and 9 hours of sleep. If you consistently sleep through your alarm, you may find that you weren’t going to bed early enough.
Once you know what time you need to be in bed, stick with this routine; the more you follow it, the easier it will be to stick with it, and the better quality of sleep you’ll have.
A tip: if you have to go to bed considerably earlier than what you’re used to in order to hit your 7-9 hours, take baby steps. Bump your bedtime up by 15 minutes each night until you’re at your target bedtime; otherwise, you may just be staring at the ceiling until your usual late bedtime rolls around.
Improve Your Sleep Hygiene
Sleep hygiene doesn’t refer to how clean you are when going to bed; it’s the habits you have that help you fall asleep at night. For instance, exercising regularly, staying hydrated, avoiding caffeine late in the day, relaxing before bed, and avoiding electronics before bed are all good sleep habits.
By improving your sleep hygiene, you’ll find that falling and staying asleep is easier, which will let you get the most out of your nights.
Try A New Alarm
If you’ve done the above tips and are still sleeping through your alarm, you may need to try something new.
Some alarms are extra loud, which may be able to break through deep sleep, while others use light to help wake you up. There are even some that run away from you, requiring you to get up. As an alternative, you could simply put your alarm across your room so that it’s harder for you to hit snooze and go back to bed.
Another option is to use an alarm that wakes you up when you’re in your lighter sleep stages, such as Pillow. With Pillow, you’ll set a wake-up window and be awoken whenever you’re in your lightest sleep, which is also when it’s easiest to wake up. Not only will you feel better because you woke up to your alarm, but by avoiding sleep inertia, your mornings will run smoother.
