Your Morning Routine Toolkit174a schedule or a Wi- Fi app, set the fan to run a minute or two
before your wake- up time.
Of course, you can also use a sound machine, but I’ve found
the air- conditioning fan is a simple solution that many people
already have access to in their homes. It does a wonderful job
of adding plenty of white noise so any sounds you make are
masked sufficiently.
If getting out of bed is difficult for you, one way to guar-
antee your emergence from the coziness of your cocoon is to
use two alarms. I have one alarm on my watch that I set to go
off first. It’s a vibrating alarm (I sleep with my watch on). I like
it because it only wakes me up. But because some mornings I
need more than a gentle buzz to rouse me from sleep, I set a
couple of backup alarms on my watch, all five minutes apart.
Then I set a couple of alarms on my phone, each with increas-
ingly annoying alarm sounds. Fortunately for my husband, my
vibrating watch alarm usually wakes me up, and I turn the
others off once I’m out of bed.
Having those backups helps me to be consistent, knowing
that there is no way I’m going to sleep through all the alarms,
and I might as well just get up when the first one goes off.
Now if you have children and want a foolproof alarm, set
your second alarm and put it by your kids’ bedroom door. I
promise you’ll fly out of bed when your first alarm goes off. No
one wants their kids to lose a minute of precious sleep— partially
for their health and partially to secure our solitary morning time.
Prepare for Obstacles
As you think through some of your biggest morning
obstacles, whether that’s a cold room or an alarm that’s too