I’ve put the alarm clock back in place. A forgotten mechanism in today’s technologically advanced, everything-is-done-by-your-phone world, it wakes you up, tells the time, and is decentralised from a phone. It is wonderful as reported by CNN.
Analogue clock
Because before I brought an analogue clock back into my bedroom I was averaging two hours and 56 minutes of screen time per week, and my phone told me this every Monday, moments after my alarm would sound.
And, every morning, while only trying to tap “snooze,” I’d be confronted by a flurry of notifications piling up behind one another like a card game of solitaire on the screen.
My phone would tell me that my friends were feeling chatty last night with 34-plus Whatsapp messages; there would be Instagram alerts and dozens of emails from multiple accounts.
The notifications would fill me with dread and stress about the day ahead before I’d even had my morning coffee.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but my old analogue clock — a compact, travel model — was a low-key luxury.
Changing habits
I made the switch from alarm clock to phone about 10 years ago after I told someone what I thought was a funny story about how my alarm clock had once gone off in my suitcase while in the trunk of a taxi, forcing us to pull over so I could retrieve it.
“You use an actual alarm clock?”, they asked, as though it was a fax machine.
“I probably didn’t even know I could at the time.”
But I succumbed to peer pressure and did away with my old clock.
And that’s when the luxury of waking up without notifications ended, and the misery of glancing at them in the middle of the night when I checked the time on my phone began.
As our use of cell phones continues to grow (a 2018 report by Deloitte found that American smartphone users check their phones 14 billion times a day, up from 9 billion in the same report from 2016), wellness experts say it is having a negative impact our morning routines.
“When you wake up first thing, the ideal is to wake up and spend a little bit of time within your own mind before you’re bombarded with everything else in the world that’s going on.”
His design would only go off once at 4 am, his preferred time to wake.
Hutchins never patented or manufactured this clock.
And in 1876, a small mechanical wind-up clock was patented in the US by Seth E. Thomas, which prompted major US clockmakers to start making small alarm clocks.
Shopping for clocks
Today, alarm clocks come in any number of designs.
A quick search on Etsy reveals novelty designs in the shape of robots, owls or even rabbits.
In orange and blue, the design is based on the brand’s classic BC02 alarm clock which, strikingly simple, had been originally conceived by Dieter Rams and Dietrich Lubs in the 1980s.
And I got one from the local home goods store nearby for £8.50 (just over 10 dollars).
The first night I used it, I felt oddly excited as I physically wound the setting as opposed to swiping on a screen.
The next morning, in somewhat of an anti-climax, I woke up before the alarm.
According to Silverton, “Technology exploits our psychological weaknesses.”
“It’s managing that and creating a routine that works for you.”
My first utterance of the day is no longer blaspheming about an email and feeling my blood boil, I find myself gently considering what I might have for breakfast.
Which has given me a sense of control and calm.
And what can be more luxurious than that?
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Source: CNN
