8 creative alarm clocks to rouse you earlier

I used to be an early riser—rise at 4 a.m., get to work by 5 a.m.—and experienced all of these benefits. But today I could no more get up that early than I could stop using the serial comma. Getting out of bed to go to work is excruciating.

I’ve tried going to bed earlier. I’ve tried not reading before I go to sleep. I’ve tried drinking water first thing in the morning. But none of this seems to make a difference. The alarm goes off and it starts. I snooze, where I never snoozed before. I lie to myself so I can stay in bed longer. “Traffic won’t really be so bad today. It’s Thursday and I’ll bet a lot of people are taking off to get an early start to the weekend,” or, “I’ll sleep 10 minutes longer and just drive 80 miles per hour to work.”

So now, it’s time to try some gimmicks. Apparently, there is an entire industry built around getting people out of bed in the morning.

Here are some noteworthy products:

1. Moving alarm clock. At the allotted time, this alarm clock “shrieks annoyingly” and then rolls away. You have to chase it to turn it off. (A simpler solution may be to put your alarm clock across the room so that you have to get up to turn it off.)