Sleeping isn’t ordinarily an issue for me. It may take me a few minutes to get to sleep, but I rarely have trouble staying that way.
Waking up, on the other hand, can be a bit of a challenge.
Does this look familiar to anybody?
If I really need (or want) to wake up at a certain time, I need to set a series of consecutive alarms starting ~30 minutes before said time and hope that I have the presence of mind to actually get my ass out of bed somewhere during that sequence. I know I’m not the only one who does this.
Before I describe the app I want, let me be clear that I’m fairly sure this isn’t possible with iOS (for reasons I’ll get into in a second). The bonus is that this idea could be easily massaged into a separate device that has nothing to do with smart phones.
The App
Essentially, I want an alarm clock that makes me think. My theory is that if I have to do something more involved than just clumsily slap at a button a couple of times to shut it up, the greater the chance I’ll have of actually, you know, waking up.
I’d love to see an alarm clock app (or, as I mentioned, a regular alarm clock could work as well) that forced me to perform some type of mental exercise before the infernal beeping and buzzing stopped. A few examples of what I mean:
- Key in a randomly-generated numeric passcode (of configurable length, but it’d need to be sufficiently long to satisfy the “mental exercise” requirement).
- Arrange a series of words alphabetically.
- Sum up a single column of numbers.
- Match up a bunch of names with their Contacts.app photos.
Any of those would be fine. And, of course, the alarm would continue to sound until I’d completed whatever task was on the screen.
That’s the part I don’t think iOS could do. As far as I know (and other than music playback apps like Music.app, Rdio, Pandora, etc.), pressing the Sleep/Wake button on the top of the device immediately dismisses any sound coming out of the device. There might be some way to hack around this by making the app act like one of the playback apps I mentioned, but otherwise it’s probably a no-go.
Wouldn’t that be a sweet app? I’d buy the crap out of that app.
Alarm Clock Pro HD has the ability to make you solve a math problem before it shuts off if you enable that feature. That said, I’ve disabled the feature more often than enabled it.
I, too, would buy the crap out of that app.
Hey Brett,
Here is an android app that is exactly what you’re looking for. I’m not sure if there is a iOS version though.
Funny as all heck! I’ve tried putting a traditional alarm clock across the room but that got old quick and funny thing….I always found my way back to the bed.
Now, I rarely use an alarm. Only when I absolutely have to be up before I naturally wake up and then I immediately grab something to read. Because it engages my brain, I am sure to be fully awake in seconds.
Crazy – read puts you to sleep and wakes you up.
As far as your APP – crazy good idea…. I knwo so many people that would be all over that.
Isn’t there a website where you can partner your app ideas with programmers? I like the idea. It’s what I do with my phone’s 3 alarms. I’m going to try the Alarm Clock Pro HD to see if the math problem helps me.
I understand your problem. I’m currently trying solution #200,000 : an electric mattress pad set to high and on a lamp timer plugged in well out of reach. It turns on shortly before my alarm clock goes off. I can only tap and snooze until it sweats me out of bed. Ask me in a couple weeks if it’s working….