How To Wake Up at the Time You Want To Wake Up at

At one time or another, my web-surfing landed me at one of those how-to sites, like eHow.com. While some entries provide useful, step-by-step instruction for some complicated process, others are just outright comical. In the attempt to cover every possible scenarios, the entries would spell everything out, from the subtle to the ridiculously obvious that any sane person should already know. Here's my own concoction on the topic of How To Wake Up at the Time You Want to Wake Up at.

• Use an alarm device. This can be a regular desk alarm clock, a clock-radio, or common these days are cell phones or smartphones.
• The louder noise the device can make the better. I no longer have trouble getting my son out of bed for school ever since he started to use the train locomotive clock his aunt sent him. It can wake the dead, supposedly.
• If you use a cell phone, be sure it is not set to Vibrate mode.
• Make sure the alarm device is properly charged or has reliable batteries.
• It helps that the alarm device is out of reach so that you have to get out of bed to shut it off.
• Sometimes we just ignore the alarm and instead want to know what time it is. In this case, it helps to have a time device nearby.
• If you are nearsighted like me, wear a watch to bed so just a flip of the hand and you know the time.
• If you normally share the bed with a spouse/partner, if the thing you want to do in the morning is important enough, consider sleeping separately just that night. If not, it might happen that neither of you have a headache that night, one thing leads to another and you end up staying up late.
• It definitely helps to go to sleep early if you want to get up early the next day.
• Do not drink coffee, tea, or energy drink before going to bed.
• Do not be On Call at work - you might be dragged out of bed any minute of the night.
• Read a book, newspaper, or magazine. Traditional, wood-based kinds, that is.
• At the time you are supposed to sleep, do not log into Facebook etc. One game, one email, one status update... they all can translate to many hours into the night.

There you have it! Now it's time for me to sleep...