Wake Up Productive

Alarm Clock Annoyances

If you’re anything like me, you absolutely hate waking up to the sound of a shrill sounding beep from the alarm clock.  I got to the point where I seriously despised the sound, to me it’s a mix between Fran Drescher’s voice and a nagging woman.  This obviously isn’t the optimal way to wake up every morning, so I did a little searching and I came across a better way to wake up to an alarm, and that’s what I want to share with you here today.

A Simple Solution

For this tip to work, you need to have a computer with speakers loud enough to be able to wake you up and close to where you sleep.  Even a laptop with a cheap set of speakers connected to it suffices if you will keep your laptop running in sleep mode over night.  The goal is to find an alarm program for your computer that gives you the option of opening sound files.  A quick search on the internet for “Computer Alarm Clocks” will bring up a list of many different alternatives.  The alarm I chose to use is from: 

http://download.cnet.com/Alarm/3640-2350_4-10791753.html 

I found it’s a simple, no hassle program that’s reliable for me, however I’m sure there’s software out there that provides a lot more functionality, although I haven’t done much comparison searching to this point.  Any program that offers the capability of playing MP3’s or other audio files is what you’re looking for though.  

How to Throw it Together

Read a little bit of the help to figure out how to set up the alarm program to play a certain MP3 at a certain time.  It shouldn’t be too difficult to set up and by tomorrow you’ll be rising up for the day

Image via Wikipedia

to your favorite songs or the sounds of birds chirping rather than Fran Drescher nagging at you to wake up.

A Couple More Tips

At the moment, my wakeup song is John Legend’s “Good Morning” off of his new album.  I find it’s a nice lightweight tune that does just enough to get me outta bed in the morning gently.  Play around with it and find out what works for you.  If you’re nervous about the program not working or not being able to wake you up, my suggestion is to set the program to start 10 to 15 minutes earlier than you would normally get up and set your alarm clock as a backup at the normal time.  At the worst, you’re getting your day started 10 minutes earlier and we all know the early bird regurgitates the worm first or something.  Also, if you’re dorked out like me and want to optimize this wake up experience to the max, check out songs that have ascending qualities to it, much like:

http://www.vth.biz/secure/system/xcart/product.php?productid=16140

which is a program that starts with very soft playing classical music and slowly elevates the volume to gently wake you up.  Now, these are all just suggestions and I’m new to using the computer alarm clock myself, so I’m more than willing to hear any criticisms or suggestions, in fact, you got some good info to share, I urge you to throw it down in the comment list.  Thanks for your time, I hope putting this little tip into practice makes your mornings just a little bit better like it did for me.