You should buy a normal alarm clock

The $17 purchase that changed this writer’s sleep habits. The incessant ring of my iPhone's alarm is the first thing I hear every morning. This sound, I've learned, is called "Radar." I despise Radar, but I've grown accustomed to its threatening ring, since Apple has made it quite complicated to customize alarm tones. Every so often, though, I consider going back to an analog clock to keep things simple. My iPhone doesn't help me sleep better or get to sleep faster, so why am I so wedded to it being the tool that wakes me up every morning? Writer Lora Kelley had similar concerns once she realized the pandemic was driving up her screen time. I was delighted to read [Kelley's essay on her decision to buy a totally normal alarm clock and how it transformed her relationship to time.]( "Time only moves one direction on my alarm clock, as in life," Kelley writes. "It is humbling to know that if I miss my target minute, I have to go all the way back through all the possible times again. The gulf between 2:59 and 3 is vast, as is that between 8:05 and 8:04." —[Terry Nguyen](, reporter for The Goods   The best $17.59 I’ve ever spent: A totally normal alarm clock [illustration of alarm clock]( Dana Rodriguez for Vox At the beginning of the movie Freaky Friday (2003), the mom character (Jamie Lee Curtis) pulls on the feet of her daughter (Lindsay Lohan) as she clings to the bars on her bed’s headboard. An alarm clock blares as they start their day with a battle of physical and mental wills. The bedside clock is small and black, with loud red digits. Its face reads 6:00 as it shrieks. When I was in high school, I too engaged in a battle of wills each day with my mother and my alarm clock. My mom didn’t yank my feet, though. “I would put my face right down by your head and whisper in your ear and (try to) kiss your cheek,” she recalled in a recent text message. That annoyed me so much that I would eventually relent and get up. (I now find it sweet.) I remember lying in bed before school picturing this “Freaky Friday” scene, wondering what my life would be like if I had a headboard. I have never loved waking up early. [Though I recognize that it’s virtuous in some slices of our culture to wake up at dawn to rise and grind, I prefer not to do that.]( I famously slept through my last morning of high school. I generally strive to be responsible and on time, but waking up — especially when my apparently powerful internal clock tells me it’s not time — has historically been a challenge for me. During the pandemic it became that much more challenging. My time became silky and slick, like an eel determined to elude my grasp. I had nowhere to be any day. I let myself sleep in later and later in the name of self-care. Each night, I went to bed early. Each morning, I woke up right before my workday needed to start. As time went on, I started to wonder if maybe I wasn’t being a little too kind to myself. Maybe I would feel better if I got up at a regular time each day and didn’t spend the 30+ minutes before and after sleep funneling blue light into my eye bulbs via my phone. [Read the full story »]( [Learn more about RevenueStripe...](   Might I suggest not listening to famous people about money? If you are mad at Tom Brady about crypto, you should also be mad at Tom Selleck about reverse mortgages. [Read the full story »](   Staring down 30 at the Taylor Swift dance party On finding enjoyment, and cringe, in the world’s biggest pop star. [Read the full story »](   More good stuff to read today - [How the internet gets people to plagiarize each other]( - [Why must we pay to have a slightly less miserable time at the airport?]( - [Play-to-earn gaming sounds too good to be true. It probably is.]( - [Johnny Depp, Amber Heard, and their $50 million defamation suit, explained]( - [Why gun control feels out of reach — and why there’s still hope]( [Learn more about RevenueStripe...]( Manage your [email preferences]( or [unsubscribe](param=goods). If you value Vox’s unique explanatory journalism, support our work with a one-time or recurring [contribution](. View our [Privacy Policy]( and our [Terms of Service](. Vox Media, 1201 Connecticut Ave. NW, Floor 12, Washington, DC 20036. Copyright © 2022. All rights reserved.