I imagine you, like I used to believe, think that you will be less tired if say you wake up 30 or so minutes before you actually need to get out, because you can "ease yourself" out of bed, correct?
That's what I used to think, and that's exactly I would do. In fact, occasionally, I'd even snooze for 45+ minutes on a weekday morning!
However, recently I discovered that this is actually even more detrimental.
Sure, if you can, the first thing you should try to do is maximize your sleep in general if you are needing an alarm to wake up, if possible. However, I imagine, for many of us this is not viable on school/work days. Still, no matter how little you sleep last night, snoozing that alarm is not the answer.
Ideally, you would do best to not use an alarm clock. The body prepares itself to awake by in the last hour by increasing its temperature, lightening the sleep, and releasing chemicals such as dopamine and cortisol. The employment of an alarm clock, however, does not allow the body to fully or at all prepare for this awakening and that's the reason you feel like crap being woken up by an alarm, don't you?
However, by snoozing, you're telling your body it's okay to go back to sleep and so it restarts its sleep cycle. Then the alarm interjects when you are likely at an even earlier and deeper part of your sleep cycle than you were the first time your alarm woke you up, and therefore, you feel even more tired and groggy, and you can see how this becomes a vicious cycle. Basically, you're confusing your body, by telling it to go to sleep and wake up over and over again.
So if you have to use an alarm clock, you do better to cut your losses and just immediately get out of bed when it rings the first time. You'll likely feel less tired this way if you wake up immediately even if you are awoken after only 4 hours of sleep than if you repeatedly snooze after being awoken 6 hours in.
I mean take your time getting out of bed on the weekends when you don't have to set an alarm. In that case, your body naturally wakes up so it doesn't feel the need to fall back asleep. Or if it does, well you don't need to get up, so you can just go back asleep.
The problem with snoozing after being awoken by an alarm is that your body feels the need to fall back asleep and so each time you snooze it restarts the sleep cycle so a second, third, fourth, etc alarm as described earlier feels even more disruptive because you're being awoken at an even worse time (in terms of where you are in your sleep cycle).
I challenge you: place your alarm out of reach so you have no choice but to force yourself out of bed. It doesn't matter what you do. You can go sit in the bathroom for 20 minutes if you want. Whatever you do, do not go back to bed. I know it's hard, but you're stronger than you think. Exercise that willpower! You can do it!
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