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Comment on Trying to hack a good night's sleepparent

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I'm trying something new at the moment, to deal with that. It's actually working pretty well so far.

The key realisation is that there are several aspects of me that can be brought up. Daniel-the-heavy-sleeper doesn't give a damn about alarm clocks, work, commitments, etc, and will stay in bed at every opportunity. Daniel-the-hacker, on the other hand, has no problems doing difficult stuff that requires a log of willpower. So the question is, how do I get Daniel-the-hacker to wake up, rather than the other guy.

My latest solution: set up a TED talk as an alarm clock. Since those talks are almost all very interesting, it immediately brings out the higher Daniel in me, who likes to pay attention to the interesting points being made. This Daniel has no problem making a decision to stay awake long enough to have a caffeinated drink (a Red Bull at the moment, but I might switch back to coffee, depending), which pretty much guarantees I'll wake up fully.

And of course there is the secondary but important advantage of watching one new mind-expanding TED talk every day...

How did you set this up? I'm interested to give it a go ;)

Using a Mac app called "Awaken", though I've heard good things about "Aurora" too.

atd

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