Since about two weeks ago I’ve been using the Sleep Cycle App on my phone to wake me up more gently.
The app is measuring the movements in my sleep through the accelerometer in the phone to calculate the right moment to wake me up – preferably at a time when I’m in a time of light sleep anyway. And while some clever scientists found (Spiegel Online in German) that the whole thing is not really working at advertised, I have been quite happy with it so far.
There were only two slight problems I encountered – for a while every time I was in a light sleep/dream phase, I couldn’t enjoy those because for some reason I was thinking that any moment now that stupid thing would wake me up. The other problem was a bit later in the night, just before getting up – I get up a bit and usually I’d turn around and sleep another half an hour or so. But now I’m too scared to make that stupid machine think that I’m in light sleep and start beeping and was just trying to lie there as still as possible until the normal wake-up time.
By now I’ve adjusted to it and unlike that article said – I’m pretty happy with it. I wake up at a good time1 and don’t feel too tired, too.
- Placebo effect or not, I don’t regret buying the app. [↩]