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Is the Snooze Button Ruining Your Sleep?

6 tips for breaking your snoozing habit


spinner image a hand reaching for an LED digital alarm clock that reads six a.m.
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The snooze button should be charged with false advertising: It sells us more sleep and a brighter day but often delivers worse sleep and a drowsier day. Still, we fall for it. According to one survey of 20,000 people who wore an activity-tracking watch, 50 percent hit snooze at least once every morning.

“Hitting snooze can be harmful, because the sleep you get between alarms is usually fragmented and low-quality. Instead of getting restful sleep, you’re dipping into lighter sleep stages, which can make you feel even groggier when you finally get up,” says Shelby Harris, a licensed clinical psychologist and director of sleep health at Sleepopolis. “Over time, this can lead to poor sleep hygiene and feeling more daytime sleepiness, which can have a negative impact on your overall health and energy levels.”

That’s why she and other sleep experts tend to encourage people to skip the snooze and just set the alarm for the time they actually need to get up. “If you do the math, you see, wow, because I am getting my alarms to go off for two hours, that shorts me on two hours of sleep,” says Alicia Roth, a clinical health psychologist at the Cleveland Clinic.

But breaking any habit is hard — especially one that’s performed while half-asleep. Here’s what pros recommend.

1.  Understand your body’s needs 

Not everyone needs to disrupt their snooze button routine. One 2023 study in the Journal of Sleep Research, for instance, found that the people drawn to snoozing tend to be younger or have later chronotypes, meaning they’re most alert later in the day. For them, snoozing doesn’t seem so harmful — only resulting in about six minutes of lost sleep, with no clear impact on morning sleepiness or mood.

Snoozing may even be beneficial in this group, the study authors write, since it can help overcome sleep inertia, or that disorienting, groggy period right after waking that makes rousing feel impossible. “Sleep inertia is this physical feeling of ‘I can’t physically get up,’ ” Roth says. “It’s not laziness. It’s not because you’re not motivated.” Typically, it passes in 30 to 60 minutes.

2.  Improve your sleep hygiene

If you keep hitting snooze because you don’t feel rested enough — rather than as the occasional bridge between sleeping and waking — start by evaluating your sleep hygiene, or the habits that promote good sleep, says Jocelyn Y. Cheng, M.D., a neurologist who specializes in sleep medicine and epilepsy.

For instance, a checklist from Harvard’s Stress and Development Lab recommends that you try to avoid screens for at least 30 minutes before bed, reserve the bedroom for the three S’s (sleep, sex and sickness), maintain the same bed and wake-up times, sleep in cool and dark conditions, and eliminate caffeine and alcohol at least four hours before bed.

Cheng also suggests trying to get some sunshine right away. “Exposing yourself to bright light in the morning is … a natural signal for your brain to wake up.” As your sleep hygiene improves, the allure of the snooze button should diminish.

3.  Consider the cause

If you’re occasionally snoozing because you enjoy a little extra window to wake up, it’s not necessarily something you have to change. “If you’re not in a rush and need a little extra time to wake up slowly, hitting snooze might help you mentally prepare for the day,” Harris says. “But it’s more of a temporary mental boost and shouldn’t be something you rely on all the time.”

But if you’re snoozing on repeat because you’re utterly exhausted when the rooster crows, there’s more to investigate. Maybe you’re not sleeping long enough and should prioritize getting to bed earlier (or setting the alarm for later, if possible). Maybe your sleep quality is lackluster, which could mean you should brush up on your sleep hygiene. Or maybe you have an undiagnosed sleep disorder like sleep apnea, which can interrupt your sleep without you even knowing.

"I think a lot of people who snooze assume that everyone else just jumps out of bed all bright and shiny, like a Disney Princess. But the reality is, everyone kind of takes time to wake up."

—Alicia Roth, sleep psychologist

“Sleep inertia in general, if you feel like it’s starting to interfere with your life, then that’s the time to talk to a doctor,” Roth says. “If you’re consistently missing work, missing school, getting there late — that’s a time to speak with a doctor or a sleep specialist.”

Pinpointing an underlying cause isn’t only important for your day-to-day-functioning; it can also affect your longer-term health and Alzheimer’s risk, says Cheng, vice chair of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine’s Public Safety Committee.

4.  Don’t force early morning productivity 

Do get up, but don’t get up and pressure yourself into a laborious task immediately. “I think a lot of people who snooze assume that everyone else just jumps out of bed all bright and shiny, like a Disney princess,” Roth says. “But the reality is, everyone kind of takes time to wake up. Very few people are saying, ‘The alarm goes off and I’m happy and thrilled, and I’m out of bed with gusto and I’m productive right away.’ ” On weekends, for instance, Roth — a night person — likes to take her dog out, enjoy coffee on the sofa and maybe watch a show she couldn’t catch during the week. It’s good enough, she says, “to get out of bed and signal to your body you’re done with sleep.”

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5.  Enlist tricks and tools 

Harris suggests putting your alarm clock across the room so you’re forced to get up and turn it off. “You can also consider using a sunrise alarm that wakes you up gradually with light instead of a jarring sound,” she says.

Some apps and wearables also claim to track your sleep and rouse you when you’re in a lighter sleep phase, but sleep experts are skeptical. Use them, as well as those that say they pick up on sleep disorders, with caution, Cheng says.

“These are not diagnostic; you cannot rely on them. The data is not necessarily accurate,” she says. “But what it can do is stratify your risk, so that if there is something that looks concerning on it, you know that you should go in and get a fuller evaluation.”

6.  Taper the habit

You don’t need to break your snooze habit overnight. If you usually hit the button five times, try four, then three. If you usually hit it daily, aim for just a couple of snooze-free days a week. Ultimately, Roth says, “give yourself some grace. There are times that you have to be up — and there are times where you don’t have to be up.”   

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