No Stupid Questions

1. Set even more alarms. Annoy yourself into being awake. Identify when you want to be awake, and start your first alarms at that time. Increase frequency as you approach the time you need to be awake. Make your wake up time harder to ignore.

2. Involve multiple senses. Sound alone isn't doing it? Add sight, touch, taste, or smell to your alarm regimen. There are several products that can do these kinds of things. For example, I have Home Assistant turn on my room lights to full when my phone alarm goes off, and I could easily add a diffuser, or a vibrator under my mattress. Bonus points if it takes multiple steps to reset your alarm. Which leads me to...

3. Increase alarm reset difficulty. The more you have to conciously engage your brain to reset your room to sleep mode, the harder it will be for your brain to automate the snooze button. Put your phone across the room, use an app that continues to scream until you scan a QR code in another room or solve math problems, make a deal with your partner that they get to spray you with cold water unless you correctly answer these riddles three, anything. Make it difficult for your brain to remain in sleep mode when your alarm goes off.

4. Enlist the humans in your life to help. Ask, cajole, or haggle with your parent, partner, sibling, roommate, friend, or whoever else you've got available to help you wake up. Be it pleasurable reward or punishing annoyance, whatever they can do that is hard to ignore and can get you going will be better than one phone screaming into the void.

5. #4 part 2: Involve medical professionals. Sleep is a process that involves your body, and when your body isn't working as you expect, you take it to the Body Shop. If nothing is working, talk to your doctor about your struggles with waking up when you want. They can help you narrow down the root cause and supply treatment if necessary. This treatment can range from sleep hygene coaching, to OTC medication recommendations, to prescription medication addition or adjustments, or even doing a whole-ass inpatient sleep study to figure out what's going on. If nothing else is working, present your problem to a licensed Professional Human Animal Mechanic.

6. Don't give up. This is a problem that can be addressed. It may take adjustments to your life that are unusual or unpleasant, but remember that, just like exercise, you are trading one unsustainable unpleasantness (i.e.: employment problems due to chronic tardiness), for another sustainable unpleasantness (i.e.: going to bed earlier, or changing your sleep environment)

My garmin watch has a vibrating alarm that works for me. For about a month I woke up thinking some asshole was spamming text messages, but now I know what it is. I have yet to accidentally turn it off.

Get you an app. I've been using this app for 8 years now. Coupled with the laugh from Mr. Popo in DBZ Abridged, I have no issues waking up.

There are also bedshaker alarms, and screaming meanies. The app is the cheapest option to try.

I set about five alarms.

It's a bit microtransactional but alarm clock extreme for Android is a good solution for me https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.alarmclock.xtreme.free

It was a lot better before AVG labs bought it from the original dev though. They discarded all original purchases making it like they never happened. That said, I've bought it twice because it's so good.

There are alarm clock apps which can help. You may configure how unforgiving the alarm becomes.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.kog.alarmclock

Changed my life.

It sounds really counter intuitive, but wake up slower. It's really easy for me to startle awake just enough completely turn off my alarm, not just snooze, and fall back asleep hard. If I wake up to an alarm that slowly increases in volume from barely audible, then I tend to wake up much more gently and slower. That little bit of extra time means makes it much harder to fall back asleep and by the time I reach for my alarm to silence or even snooze it. I'm clear headed enough to not either actually snooze the alarm instead of turning it off or be awake enough to not fall back asleep at all. Going from awake straight to sitting up or standing is super stressful and just makes everything awful. Being mostly awake before my head even leaves the pillow is much less stressful.

• Get a cheap old fashioned alarm clock (we're talking about something that costs maybe 10 bucks).
• Put it out of reach so that you have to physically get out of bed to turn it off.
• Configure it to go off at the appropriate time with the nastiest sound (usually they have an "alarm with a radio" and an "alarm with alarm sound" modes and you definitely want to have it in the latter mode, not the former).

It's a pretty horrible way to wake up if you went to bed late (protip: stop drinking coffee and using a computer after 11PM to deal with the whole only falling asleep late part of the problem) and that's why it works.

I have an alarm clock with two alarms on it. The first is radio, at a reasonable volume. The second is beep Beep BEEP with ascending volume. If the first doesn't wake me the second will. Unless I press the off button and fall back to sleep.

I'm amazed the clock with the bell doesn't wake you (if you mean one of the traditional alarm clocks with the bells on?). Those things are LOUD.

As sound isn't working, maybe try one of those "silent alarms" which just turns a light on to help you wake up naturally (I haven't tried these and would definitely have a beeping alarm as a backup!), or something like a Fitbit which can wake you up by buzzing on your wrist (and will adjust when it wakes you to match your sleep cycle)

2 alarms, one on the iPad, one on the phone. Full volume, spaced 10 minutes apart.

Edit: these go off almost 2 hours before I have to leave, and I'm asleep 7-8 hours before they go off. My biggest difficulty in waking up on time is not going to bed with enough time to fall asleep for 8 hours.

I have a hard-stop alarm, set 9 hours before I have to wake up, to remind myself to get ready for bed. A full sleep cycle (including morning routine) is an 11-hour time investment for me.

This might sound blunt, but you need to grow up and accept that you need to wake up on time. Missing three alarms every day is childish.

Go to bed when you need to.

Although the app's designer went and somewhat enshitified things by placing a few features under a subscription, my app for waking up is the best app I've ever come across.

Its called Alarmy and the free version is more than enough to make anyone wake up if they really need to.

Layer it so that you have 5 alarms 5 minutes apart. You might miss the first or second but generally your ass is up by the 5th

I set 3 alarms. If 3 wasn't enough, I'd set 4.

Etc.

I use an alarm captcha, simple math problems so I can't accidentally dismiss the alarm instead of snooze. I also keep a similar sleep schedule throughout the week so I'm sometimes already awake a little before the alarm and I have an alarm to remind me when to go to bed.

Despite the name being stupid, Alarm Clock Extreme is a great app. I paid for it years ago, and have recently paid for it again due to it being bought out by another company. I do not feel cheated by this fact. It's been worth it.

Get a timer controlled power outlet and hook a Hitachi magic wand to it. Place the wand under your pillow. The vibration is super intense and gets uncomfortable at the highest setting. Bonus points you can wake and bate since you have a massager handy.