I need some help.

I have near zero luck with alarm clocks. My body has somehow adapted to the point that it will give me enough energy to disable my alarm clock devices... and then return to sleep. I have an alarm clock, a phone alarm, and a computer alarm.

The sickening part is that even with the computer alarm, I have the ability to adapt. If I unplug my keyboard before I go to bed (which is hard to reach), I'm able to realize that while I can't shut off my speakers (there is no button), I can shut off the equalizer hooked up to the speakers. And then I'm off to sleep.

I need two things:
1 - Alarm software that requires more than a button press to shut off. Please give me some links!
2 - Ideas for getting up.

If you had something to live for, it wouldn't be so hard to get up.

1.1 Reorganise your bedroom so all noise-making equipment require getting up to reach.
1.2 Make your room as quiet as possible. Suddden noises wake you up better when there's no background noise to begin with.
2. Go to bed at a reasonable time.

I have the same problem. I have two mobile phones (mine and missis's), a wake-up-light, and a phone-shaped alarm clock (which is kinda cool, when you answer it, it says "This is your wake-up call. If you would like another one in five minutes, press 5 now." in a deafening volume). All of them are set to wake up at ~2min intervals. But still I oversleep.
I've thought of buying this next, and see if it works good.

I've also thought of the wake-up-light thingy "What a sissie lamp", and I should buy some 1.21 Giga Watts light bulbs and wire them to a cheap alarm clock somehow.
Quick-EDIT---
As jhuuskon said, the quiet room works quite well. When I was ~14 years old, I put my stereos to alarm setting to play Clawfinger at high volume (which I don't personally really like in the morning). I though that since we live a few hundred meters from nearest neighbours, it wouldn't upset anyone. "Good morning, mom!"

Drink 3 pints of water before bed...you'll either wake up in time or p*ss the bed, in which case you'll probably wake up anyhoo.

What do you call that thing you plug into a power outlet that has a clock than can be set to switch the attached device on at a certain time?

There's your answer.

Or get inspiration from Flintstones and start building. No, honestly, what wakes me up best is someone taking my blanket away. Sure, I'm not happy about it, but I then have to dress up to keep warm, and I'm making coffee in no time.
(Did Flintstones have a blanket eating dinosaur?)

3 pints will wake you up in a couple of hours, not a full night's sleep. (Though generally that's a good idea, maybe switch it to a couple of glasses. (200ml glasses ))

How about you attach the alarm clock to the ceiling and keep a ladder in the next room?

Now, when you say that by itself in America, there's a little implication that it's three pints of beer.

When there's noise around, I tend to want to block it out by going back to sleep. How about setting up some food? Candy? Something to entice you out of the dream world.

My alarm is set so that it is quite mentally disruptive. It makes this beeping sound that is quite harsh and pisses me off all to hell. It's got all the wrong harmonics :-) When I really need to get up I set it on that instead of the radio mode.

Get a clock that has a "snoozle" feature.

I'm slightly disappointed you haven't rigged your alarm to set off your car horn.

That would wake you up. That or the neighbors yelling at you to turn your car off.

I've set my alarm each night for the past week or so, and I haven't needed it once

Of course I've set it for 8am, and been going to bed around 3-6pm (and wake up around 3-6am ) I'm hoping this pattern will stick for a while. I actually get stuff done.

In my experience, alarm clock adaptation can usually be defeated by placing the clock at enough distance from your bed that you have to get up to turn it off. Well, that and putting a box of caffeine pills on top of it...
I find it more disturbing that I eventually get a Pavlovian conditioning to my alarm clocks - the adrenaline rush from being brutally awakened eventually gets associated with the sound itself. The sound from a clock I had for ~6 years occasionally pops up in movies and TV series, and every time I hear it it still causes me actual physical discomfort.
This is why my alarm clock is currently set to a sample of an air raid warning from the national civil defense sirens. If I'm going to get a fight-or-flight response to any sound, I might as well make it a sound that should make me run...

In my experience it doesn't really matter how far away the alarm is so long as you're tired enough. One time when I was younger I managed to snap my classic yellow walkman in half before I found the alarm and went back to bed. I didn't start actually waking up till I laid back down.

If I'm really tired but need to get up, my mind tries to play tricks on me to get me to sleep. I start to imagine/dream that I'm getting up and getting ready or that I'm doing work until I either notice that this is happening or am back asleep.

Try a bunk bed if you can.

The ONLY tune I'm able to use to wake up and not develop a Pavlovian condition to is a music from the game "Knytt Stories", even though I've been using it for months. I find it so peaceful that I'm not angry to hear it in the morning, which is probably why I can still listen to it nowadays without feeling unease.

Being able to use a MP3 as an alarm is priceless! (thanks iPhone)

I'd like to repeat and emphasize this. Figure out how much sleep you need if your alarm doesn't wake you up. Then time accordingly.

When I tried that, I realized that my apartment wasn't THAT big, so it was entirely possible for me to get up, turn the alarm off, then go straight back to bed.

... that only works if you're a morning person (yes, there are fundamental biological differences between "morning persons" and "night owls"). If not, no amount of sleep the night before is going to make you think that 06-fucking-30 is a good time to get up.

And that is why the coffee table was invented. Blunt force trauma to the knees wakes you right up.

Word. I support this clause based on experience, and I've got the scars to prove it.

I wish there was an alarm clock that asked you a math question that you have to get right to be able to turn it off. I need something to force me to think just a little to help me wake up. Even if the alarm clock is on the other side of the room, I can get up, turn it off and get back in bed without ever waking up.

What you need is motivation, find something productive to do, obviously, try staying away from the computer as sitting your ass down is not good for your health. Go to bed on time, and wake up early. Eat good healthy foods and treat yourself well

If you have a Windows Mobile based phone, try G-Alarm and set up an alarm that will not shut off till you clear one ore more mazes and or math questions. Does the work for me.

I have never heard of these differences - please explain. I had understood that circadian rhythms can be rescheduled to allow sleep at a different time of day after two weeks of adaptation. And, it would seem to be generally harder to get restful sleep during the day for all types of people.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin#Light_dependence

I have the same thing from my cell phone ringing (not physical discomfort, but my senses perk up if I hear the slightest sound that resembles my cell phone ringer in the background).

To wake up, tell yourself before you go to sleep that when your alarm goes off, you will get up. When your alarm goes off, stand up with both feet squarely on the floor and wait for your head to clear. Remember, waking up and turning off your alarm is something that you can control because it literally is all in your head.

If you are actually sleeping through your alarms, then set multiples. But remember to tell yourself to actually wake up when the alarm goes off. And this is the important part: actually mean it when you say it.

Marry someone you can't stand. Then you'll be so glad to get away from him/her you'll run out of bed.

I'm not sleeping through alarms. They just aren't waking me up on a conscious level. If I toss my phone in a random place before I go to bed, it'll ring, and I'll find it.

...

and then I'll go to bed.

And sleeping 10-12 hours still doesn't result in me wanting to get out of bed.

If you have a shitty bed, try getting a new one. Its helped me quite a bit.

When this sort of thing happens, the alarm clocks need to be set away from the bed so you have to get up to turn them off. It sucks, but at least you'll get up in time.

The smell of coffee wakes me up in the morning. That.....and napalm.

Really though, I have such an addiction to coffee in the morning, that no promise of sleep could keep me from it. Plus, I really enjoy drinking coffee and reading the news every morning. The thought of it pulls me out of bed.

Who needs an alarm clock when you don't sleep? Seriously I've been know not to sleep for about 2 days, crash for 8 hours and then repeat, no alarm clock needed, mostly only do that during school though.

When I do need to wake up though I usually set my iPhone to some random ungodly sound that scares me awake.

I was having a problem with my alarm clock not getting me up. I tried setting my phone alarm as well, placing the phone across the room. That didn't work. I tried setting the alarm clock across the room and on top of a large wardrobe where I had to stretch to reach it. That didn't work.

I even tried having a friend give me a wake up call. I woke up three hours late, with my phone on the floor with the battery out, and an angry friend.

I think my problems were based more around not being able to get to sleep at night than not being able to get up in the morning. But I understand what you mean when you say your alarm clock doesn't get you up.

Have you tried one of those alarm clocks for deaf people, that physically shakes your head when it is time to get up?

How violently does it shake? I've had people shake me so hard I fell out of the bed before, without waking me up.

I'm nearly impossible to wake up if I've been asleep for between two and four hours. Except when suddenly I'm not.*

_{* Any type of emergency will wake me up. Also, something will invariably wake me up if I'm having a dirty dream.}

IMHO, this is a serious part of it. For me, I dream basically every night and often I'm seeing people that I don't get to see in real life anymore. I don't want to leave that world in the morning and I have a hard time forcing myself to. Conversely, when those people were in my life, it was much easier to get up knowing I would see them. At one time I got so used to it I would wake up automatically on time and turn off my alarm before it had a chance to go off.

This is irrelevant. I have my alarm on the other side of my room. I need to get up to turn it off. And I usually do so in an insomniac state where I'm thinking of which combination of UNIX commands will shut the goddamn thing off. And my alarm is an ordinary clock radio.

This is something I never do anymore because I can't shut my brain off and don't like what I'm stuck thinking about anymore. During the day, I distract myself with computers, cars, music, and occasionally a basketball. During the night, there's nothing to distract me anymore. So I avoid going to bed as long as I possibly can. It really doesn't feel good, but I guess it still feels better than thinking about it that much more...

That would probably work for me as well. I'm not comfortable without covers. Which is a problem when the room is too hot...

The radio would never wake me up. I never even bother with it. Usually when I'm visiting my brother, he'll turn on his entertainment center crazy loud in the same room as me with rap music blazing and I can sleep through it no problem (unless I'm hung over... ). Music won't wake me. And radio DJs would probably just entertain me. Both would find their way into my dream.

The Wendy's fast food joint where my colleagues and I go for lunch once or twice per week has the exact same alarm as me and it drives me crazy... And it's right on the other side of the counter so customers are bothered by it too... It is not a pleasant sound (it makes you want to kill things) so I wouldn't be surprised if enough people complained for them to get rid of it because I don't remember hearing it in a few weeks.

Yeah, this happens to me too. Often many times in a morning if nothing stops me. There have been times when I've dreamed the whole day had gone by (and believed it completely) and then I wake up only to realize that I haven't even woken up yet...

I don't have a problem thinking. My brain never seems to go into power saving mode... It's hard to let my conscious mind give in. Even when I'm asleep I'm dreaming and often have lucid dreams. In the morning, my brain is doing a lot of thinking, but unfortunately all it's capable of doing is this kind of thinking:

{"name":"insomnia.png","src":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/b\/8bfeaf343ab5eae80e79455bad64387c.png","w":740,"h":237,"tn":"\/\/djungxnpq2nug.cloudfront.net\/image\/cache\/8\/b\/8bfeaf343ab5eae80e79455bad64387c"}^[1]

The things that motivate me are gone and my hands are tied.

This would work well, but unfortunately in the time it took my head to clear everybody else would be awake and furious... If I was living alone I would do this^[2].

Again, this goes back to the motivation argument. If there's something to look forward to then you'll have a much easier time getting up. The problem is that the world doesn't necessarily have to cooperate.

I don't really like the taste of coffee. I also don't like the idea of it. It seems to make everybody a mindless zombie and I like my mind...

This is my main problem. I dream regularly and love to sleep, but I have a hard time getting there. My mind is very active and I can't just shut it down... So I lie in bed thinking about things and it keeps me awake. And lately all I have to think about are bad things so I don't even like to go to bed knowing I'll be up for hours thinking about it. So I postpone even getting to that step. By the time morning comes, I've had at most 6 hours of sleep and I'm still exhausted so I don't want to get up.

What I usually do is set my alarm an hour early. I set it for 7 and then when that goes off I set it for a more correct time when I have to wake up, which is anywhere from 7:30 to 8:00, depending on how close to or over the wire I'm willing to be for the sleep. The hardest part is trying to figure out how to set my alarm while in an insomniac state... Like I said, everything in my life/dreams merge together to form an incomprehensible puzzle and my brain simply can't solve it. I'll be lying there thinking of all kinds of crazy things trying to figure it out and I just can't... I've been trying to figure out which vim command will do what I need...

This is the same thing that happens with me (although I usually don't think of bad things). In fact, 90% of my ideas for games come during these hours of tossing and turning when my mind won't stop going.

In the last few months stress has worsened this to the point that I'm awake until four or five in the morning. In the last week I've gone completely around the clock and now I'm on a normal sleep schedule (I literally couldn't get to sleep until almost 6pm the other day, despite being exhausted). Fortunately I've thought of ways to deal with all the little stresses, and the big stress of classes is over for the summer.

Of course, now I have the new stress that this lack of sleep caused me to fail every class, so now I'm worried if I'll even be in college next semester.

You need a serious heart-to-heart talk with the man in the mirror as to why you're pushing yourself so hard. What do you hope to accomplish?

I don't always think of bad things... I'm just trying to sort through all of the things that I can't seem to resolve... I used to do the same thing with wonderful thoughts and I used to love lying there thinking about them.

My mind just kind of wanders, despite my best efforts to not think of anything.

You guys are probably the largest collection of complete losers all gathered in one place.

And we gladly bow down to our Supreme Loser overlord

Lead us, oh Supreme Loser!

As soon as you wake up, put on some shorts, go outside, and jog / walk for an hour. If you cannot do that, then go find some corner to curl up and die in.

I've had the same problem since highschool. These things have helped me:

Don't set the alarm clock, and then snooze it up a hundred times till you get up. Just set it to the last possible minute you could sleep and then force your self to wake up when it goes off. You'll get used to waking up at that time. If you snooze it, your body thinks it's okay to go back to sleep when the alarm has gone off.

Secondly, I've been changing my diet lately, drinking more water, and I find that it's easier to get up in the morning when I'm better hydrated and less full of carbon dioxide. I read somewhere that your body needs more rest if you're full of co2 cause the blood will bind to that instead of oxygen. Could be BS, or placebo, but I think it works.

Blood prefers carbon monoxide (CO) not dioxide.

The problem is with going back to sleep before one is awake enough to do something like that. I like the idea mentioned earlier of having to do some sort of math or logic problem to turn off the alarm. If something can make me take conscious action before I get the alarm turned off, then I will be awake enough to not get back into bed.

No, the problem is that you are a complete loser if you cannot get out of bed. An alarm clock will in no way change that.

Fine. I'm a complete loser.

I always wake up before the alarm rings and I switch it off (and it's always within my arm's reach), then I just lie in bed for 5-10 minutes to clear my head and I get up. I never had any problems with it.

Don't get into Dungeons and Dragons. You'll become a loser and then you won't be able to get up in the morning.

What's wrong with D&D?

It was just the first thing that came to mind that was commonly associated with losers.

What's unfortunate is this can change. Some people start out this way and then start sleeping through their alarm clocks. Maybe they're becoming losers or maybe they don't have anything to wake up for.

I'm a heavy sleeper, I can sleep through construction work or sitting upright in the back of a vehicle. My brother is a light sleeper. When we shared a room, my loud snoring would keep him up. He'd get so mad that he would come over and punch me in the stomach. I'd wake up not breathing. I got used to it and could sleep through a punch to the stomach.

So I've always had trouble waking up to my alarm. Not having a job that I have to get up for isn't helping either.

I definitely have a problem with this. I think the best solution I've come up with is really thinking hard about how important it is to wake up at a given time while I'm trying to go to sleep. If that makes me have troubles going to sleep, I'll try to think how important it is that I go to sleep so I can get up at the right time. If I'm still having troubles going to sleep, I'll consider a sleeping aid as long as I have at least 7 hours to sleep (any less and the aid may prevent me waking up on time). If I have less than 7 hours, then I probably won't get much sleep.

I don't have anything to wake up for And the exams are nigh. Still, nothing ever stopped me from waking up before, and I've been waking up before the alarm rings for 6+ years now. Sure, I did oversleep a couple of times, but usually when I slept for two or three hours (I tend to do that a lot these days, which is probably not the healthiest thing to do).

I guess I'm just lucky.

I've slept through having a glass of water poured on my face. And a vacuum cleaner running right next to me. I even slept through a scroll saw cutting wood right next to me. If you want to know why a scroll saw was cutting wood in my living room, or why I was sleeping in there, well... it's because that was where dad set up the scroll saw, and where I fell asleep.

You people are screwed up.

Maybe you should go to the doctor. Perhaps you have a sleeping disorder?

I probably do, and I think it's related to stress.

I've always been hard to wake up when I was tired, but it used to be if I got seven or eight hours I wouldn't be very hard to wake up at all. In the last eight or nine months I've noticed that I've become harder and harder to wake up, even when I'm getting up to go do something that I want to do. I've also noticed an increase in stress over that time period.

If I'm afraid of oversleeping and feel the need to set multiple alarms (knowing I can turn all of the ones I own off without waking up) I always make sure they're not going off at regular intervals. My brain adjusts to that and just treats it as background noise. Breaking the pattern makes it easier to wake up.
Along similar lines, changing alarm clocks helps too (different sounds and all), although my brain adjusts to that fairly quickly too.
I also wake up due to increase of the ambient light level.

All of that said, the only times when I feel the need to do any of those is when I need to get up at some weird hour because I have a plane to catch at seven in the morning. The light-thing helps me wake up in winter (I can wake up without it, but feel much more tired).

Ambient light has never effected my ability to sleep. At worst, I'll throw my arm over my eyes to block it out. But I usually don't care if it's light or dark.

Get yourself a gf/wife who'll literally kick your a$s outa bed.

My wife beats me on the head with a baseball bat and I still don't wake up. Woe is me. I went to the WebMD doctor and it said I suffer from first class loseritis.

FTFY

Girls don't like losers. I guess I should just give up.*

_{* normally I wouldn't just give up, but since I'm a loser, I'm incapable of trying to better myself.}

HA! My grilf drags me back into bed!

Better yet, get yourself a kid or two, they're much better at it than wives.

Maybe you need a band with your alarm.

Set the Sound Grenade app on the iPhone (or some similar high-frequency sound generator) to get you up at the right time.