I’m a night person. I used to think I was a morning person, but my night personness has been confirmed by a recent observation: I don’t want to get up in the morning. If I was a morning person I’d wake up and think, “Oh hell yeah, it’s the morning, let’s do this!”Instead, I think, “Morning? What the hell happened to all those hours I just had? How’d they go by so quickly?”I think most people in the world are night people. In fact, maybe it’s controversial, but I’ll go ahead and say it: morning people are not to be trusted. If it weren’t for school and work, I’d think the day began at 10:00 a.m. What the hell are you morning people trying to pull over on me by getting up so early?It seems, however, that I might be in the minority on this. Two of my kids attend the local elementary school and they start at 8:10. I’m expected to be at work at 8:30. I live an hour away from my work! Ain’t no time to be sleeping until 10:00 a.m.Since I didn’t start writing this post until after midnight, it’s obvious that I like to stay up late. The only problem with staying up late is the morning. Oh you dreadful, wicked sonofabitch morning. You come so quickly.Turns out the only way I can face the morning—well maybe “face the morning” is the wrong phrase. The only way I can start the morning before it’s half over, is to employ an alarm clock.I suspect that alarms clocks in all formats were invented by the devil. Do you have evidence to dispute this? No, of course you don’t. So just agree with me. Alarm clocks were invented by the devil. Lucifer. Jerk.However, since we live in the 21st century and we have to make everything all fancy, many people don’t even use alarm clocks. Instead they set alarms on their phones. And by “they” I mean me.I wrote a blog post not too long ago about how I didn’t even have a cell phone. But now I’ve caved and not only do I have a cell phone, but that damn thing wakes me up every morning. No wonder I avoided getting one for so long!I’ve thought about getting a rooster to act as my alarm clock, but I pity that damn bird the first time it wakes me up too early on a weekend, so I’ve refrained. I don’t want my kids to grow too attached to it and then have to explain what happened the first time it woke me up at sunrise on a Saturday.So I’m left with the alarm on the phone.One thing the phone has going for it is that it allows me to pick my poison. If I had to listen to the incessant buzzing of a regular alarm clock every morning I think I’d end up stabbing someone. Is there any sound in the world worse than that buzzing? No.My phone knows this, so it provides a wide variety of noises to ruin my sleep. And they all have these fancy names like Clarity, Flutter, Glow, and Tribute. I scroll through the noises as if any one is better than the others. They all suck though. They’re all ruining a perfectly good night of sleep.I’ve chosen Clarity as my alarm sound because it’s obtrusive enough to wake me up, but not so annoying that I want to throw my phone against the wall when I hear it. Instead, I calmly swipe up to turn off the alarm, and the phone gets to live another day.Now, there’s one more issue we have to resolve. The snooze button.I don’t know who invented the snooze button. I suspect it wasn’t Lucifer, but maybe his assistant. But whoever invented it wasn’t doing you any favors.If you’re a fan of the snooze button, let me explain why you’re wrong. Don’t worry, you’ll thank me later.So right now you probably hear the alarm, hit the snooze button, and think, “Yes, I have ten more minutes of sleep.” But guess what! That additional ten minutes is going to be the crappiest ten minutes of the night. You’ll be lucky if you even fall back to sleep, and if you don’t then you’ll become homicidal because you were shortchanged ten minutes of sleep.I advocate the Sleep Until the Last Minute method.Here’s how it works. We all have a go time. This is the last minute at which you can wake up and still make it to school or work on time. This is the time you should be setting your alarm No snooze. No “ten more minutes.”No! The alarm sounds and you spring out of bed and you’re good to go. Yes, waking up and going will be a challenge at first, but it’s more than offset by not waking up earlier than necessary. Stop wasting valuable minutes to substandard sleep. Squeeze every last minute you can out of it.Morning’s going to come no matter what. You might as well manage it the right way.And whatever you do, don’t buy a rooster!IF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: A Few Thoughts About SleepPREVIOUS POST: My Son's Orchestra Performance Near-DisasterType your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.