You know the drill: every night you swear you’ll sleep earlier so you clock in the full eight hours, but the Internet has other plans. Suddenly, it’s midnight, and you have to wake up early to beat the traffic. That’s when the snooze button becomes your best friend.
Behavioral scientist Dan Ariely says hitting the snooze button doesn’t just mess up your morning routine, it also literally makes it harder for you (and your body) to wake up: “In general, our bodies do better when they can get used to a single clear rule: Get out of bed the moment the alarm sounds.” By doing so, your body learns to associate the alarm with the act of waking up, which eventually makes it less of a struggle.
But hitting “snooze” disrupts this mental link. Ariely claims, “Our bodies get a confused message: Sometimes we hear the beeping and get up, sometimes we hear it and stay put for 10 more minutes, sometimes we lie there for another 20 minutes, and so on.”
Besides, constantly interrupting sleep won’t make you more restful/less tired, so it isn’t very productive. We suggest training yourself to put your phone away by a certain hour so you can get the recommended seven to nine hours of sleep.
This article originally appeared on Cosmo.ph.
*Minor edits have been made by the Femalenetwork.com editors.
