I used to set four alarms. I hit snooze on every single one. I had a morning routine that was basically ten minutes of sleep, panic, ten minutes of sleep, panic. By the time I actually got up I was angrier and more tired than if I had just woken up the first time.

Snoozing does not give you useful sleep. The chunks between alarms are not restorative — your brain never reaches deep sleep in nine-minute increments. You are just borrowing misery from later in the day. Here is what broke my snooze addiction.

The across-the-room rule

Your phone charges on the other side of the room. Not on the nightstand. Not within arm’s reach. Across the room, plugged in, alarm volume set to maximum. When the alarm goes off you have to physically get out of bed to turn it off. By the time you are standing, you are awake enough to make a better decision.

This is the simplest trick and it has a near perfect success rate. The hard part is not getting back in bed after you turn it off. I put my robe on the chair next to my phone charger. I put the robe on immediately after silencing the alarm. The robe is a commitment — you cannot get back in bed wearing a robe. It is too much fabric.

The countdown method

When the alarm goes off, count down from five. Five, four, three, two, one — feet on floor. Do not think. Do not negotiate with yourself. The countdown bypasses the part of your brain that wants to argue. Mel Robbins wrote a whole book about this but honestly the Wikipedia summary is enough. You just count and move.

Give yourself something to look forward to

I am not a morning person. I will never be a morning person. But I make my morning less terrible by having one genuinely nice thing waiting for me: coffee I actually like, a podcast I am excited about, ten minutes of reading something fun. The thing has to be specific and it has to be something you only get if you get up. If the first twenty minutes of your day are enjoyable, the alarm becomes less of a punishment and more of a starting gun.

Fix your sleep to fix your morning

If you need five snoozes you are probably not getting enough sleep. Go to bed earlier. This sounds condescending but it is the actual root cause for most people. An adult needs seven to nine hours. If your alarm goes off at six and you went to bed at midnight, you are running a two-hour deficit before your feet even hit the floor. No trick fixes a sleep deficit.

Also: no screens for the last thirty minutes before bed. I know everyone says this. I also know it actually works and nobody does it. Try it for three nights. The difference in how you feel when the alarm goes off is noticeable.

I still do not leap out of bed smiling. That is a different species of human. But I get up on the first alarm now and I do not hate myself for the first hour of the day. That is my version of winning.