Skip the Snooze: How to Have a Productive Morning

My mom barges into my room screaming, “Do you know what time it is? Your brother’s going to leave for school without you!” Glancing at my clock, I realize instead of hitting snooze and “resting my eyes,” I fell back asleep for 45 minutes after pausing the Black Eyed Peas singing “Imma Be.”

That’s my cue to jolt out of bed and throw on whatever clothes are in reach. By the time I get in the car — which my brother has been impatiently backing out of the driveway for two minutes — I often realize I only packed a granola bar for lunch and my phone is still sitting in the kitchen.

These recurring frantic mornings lead to dozing off in my morning classes and not being able to ask teachers questions before school. So when a YouTube account called Be Inspired and their videos “What Happens to Your Body When You Hit the Snooze Button” and “The ‘1 Billion Dollar Morning Routine’” appeared on my suggested videos, I urged myself to try out their tips for the week. How could I say no to a morning equivalent to a billion dollars?

Following the steps in the video about not hitting snooze gave me more energy throughout the day and allowed my mornings to be more relaxed by having extra time to make breakfast and get ready. However, the unnecessary two-hour time commitment on the “‘1 Billion Dollar Morning Routine’” made it more of a $10,000 morning routine.

The “What Happens to Your Body When You Hit the Snooze Button” video directed me to plug my phone in outside of my room when I go to bed and to not hit snooze. The  “‘1 Billion Dollar Morning Routine’” video was more instructional — meditate for 20 minutes, take a cold shower, journal for 20 minutes, read and make a “brain smoothie” consisting of blueberries and avocado. For someone whose full morning routine is usually 10 minutes and a piece of peanut butter toast, these instructions seemed a little excessive.

Both videos were concise, professionally made and used effective visuals of people performing the routines, prompting me to watch other videos by Be Inspired about how procrastinating small deadlines will eventually lead to you putting off self-started projects and careers.

I decided to combine the two morning routines into one schedule on a late start Thursday morning, giving myself some extra time. At 6:30 a.m. the familiar synthesizer beats of “Imma Be” blared while I tried the “Five Second Rule” that the first video suggested, slowly counting to five before forcing myself out of bed.

Then I attempted to take a cold shower as a form of cold therapy. Cold therapy is supposed to increase alertness, improve circulation and ease stress. Although the cold-enough-to-put-Kansas-winters-to-shame water immediately shocked me awake, the constant shivering and goosebumps inclined me to turn the water back to hot within two minutes.

After getting ready, I went back to my room to meditate, journal and read. While meditating, I constantly checked how much time I had left (definitely not worth signing up for a 7-day trial on the meditation app Calm). I couldn’t fill more than five lines while journaling since nothing significant had happened before 7 a.m. After journaling, it was already 8:20 a.m. and I didn’t have time to read or make a “brain smoothie” so I reverted back to my usual peanut butter toast and left for school.

However, in the car I was much more talkative than usual, humming along to the songs on 101.4 and didn’t take my typical 10-minute car-ride power nap — even without my daily coffee.

After arriving at school I quickly noticed a difference — I wasn’t as stressed as usual, wasn’t nervously tapping my pencil during my math test and ended up receiving the highest grade on a math test that I’ve gotten all year. I also wasn’t dozing off in my morning classes, even though I’d still only gotten my usual five hours of sleep.

By not hitting snooze and avoiding the state of sleep inertia, I was ready to start the day right when I arrived at school.

If you have many frantic slept-through-my-alarm mornings, the tips from the “What Happens to Your Body When You Hit the Snooze Button” video will help you be more productive and focused in the morning. But, the directions from the “‘1 Billion Dollar Morning Routine’” video seemed long, especially if you have to be at school at 7:30 a.m.

Now when the voices of Fergie and Will.i.am start playing in the morning, “Imma Be” getting out of bed.