Waking up in the morning is hard. Sometimes very hard.
At least once a week I end up setting an alarm for an early-morning wakeup with the best intentions, only to hit snooze repeatedly until I end up waking up seconds before I *have to*.
SnoozeYouLose is a service that is attempting to help people like me change that habit by putting more at stake than just missing that morning run.
The concept is pretty simple. You tell the service what days you plan on getting up early, and what time that wakeup is supposed to be. For instance, maybe you want to wake up at 6am Tuesdays and Thursdays so you have time to go on a longer run before work. You’ll also wager an amount of cash, think a few dollars, that says you’re going to do it.
Once you’ve set things up, at 6am on Tuesday and Thursday you’ll receive a text message from the service with a small math problem, riddle, or puzzle you need to answer. You have to respond to that message with the correct answer to mark yourself awake for the day. If you don’t then you’ll lose whatever you wagered on that wakeup.
The idea, of course, being that you have to actually wake up a bit to mark yourself awake with this, rather than just hitting another snooze button.
SnoozeYouLose will give half of your wager to Charity Water, and keep half.
There’s no win, besides keeping your cash and getting the joy of waking up early, for actually meeting your goal.
That said, if you’re having trouble with waking up, it could be a decent way to give yourself enough of an incentive to make it happen.