For you chronic snoozers out there...

...stop hitting the snooze button!

For years, I have been setting the alarm for the time I think I should be getting up the next day, and then hitting the snooze button in the morning to get a little extra sleep. I would often hit it up to six or seven times, because I was just too darned tired to get up. I got an extra hour of sleep, but that hour was totally unrestful and as a result I felt tired and groggy all day. Now that the semester is over (I'm a grad student and teach classes) I have no fixed schedule, so I've been allowing myself to skip the alarm and just wake up when I feel like it. I end up waking up at almost exactly the same time as before, but that last hour is solid and uninterrupted. The result? I feel ten times better in the morning and throughout the day.

A friend of mine who is an expert in the art of sleeping says to skip the snooze button altogether. Just get up when the alarm goes off. And if you wake up a few minutes early, don't go back to sleep. Same goes for naps. If you take a brief nap during the day, get up when you first wake up and you'll feel recharged.