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I often use two alarm clocks to wake myself up (to try to wake myself up anyway), but lately I have been using using them differently—one to generate an annoying beep that I feel compelled to stop immediately and one to play music or banter or whatever else happens to be on the radio at the time. So far, this seems to be working much better than my previous system of having two beeping and buzzing alarms with the more annoying of the two far enough from my bed to require me to get out of bed to stop it; that system sometimes failed because in my tired state, I would sometimes just turn off both alarms (actually turning them off, not just using their snooze modes), dive back into bed, then fall back asleep.
The radio is irregular enough to keep me awake, but without being so annoying that I feel compelled to turn it off immediately, so I leave it on and allow my morning mind and body to adjust to being awake instead of fighting it. A battery-powered beeping travel alarm rouses me just minutes before the radio turns on, preparing me to notice the change in ambience, then—if I have put the beeping alarm into sleep mode—it beeps again after the radio turns on, reinforcing my message to myself that it is time to rise and start my day. I have been getting up much more quickly and reliably this way.
