I thought I would get up early to write this, like I think I’ll get up early to do something every morning. I set the alarm, full of sincere intentions, but when it goes off I just lie there for about half an hour. It has been this way every morning for 40 years. I’m not resting, I’m not rising, I’m not doing anything worthwhile, unless you consider doomscrolling while listening to the radio worthwhile.
What an appalling waste of time. Forty years multiplied by 365 days multiplied by 30 minutes comes to 438,000 minutes, which is 7,300 hours, or 304 days. Scandalous. Nigh-on a year of my life thrown away neither sleeping nor doing anything useful.
And it’s not just me. I’ve checked this out with the two young people sitting next to me in a coffee shop in Stourbridge. The bloke does something to do with protein bars and the woman works for a supermarket. They’re both the same as me in the getting out of bed department. She says she sets her alarm half an hour earlier, but that kind of misses the point: the half-hour is still going to waste. I berated them for this. Young people just love it when, unbidden, I give them the opportunity to drink from the font of my wisdom.
I’ve tried to change my ways, putting the alarm in the next room and so on, but to no avail. I just can’t break the cycle of despair. I read a fellow sinner’s suggestion that the answer might be an alarm that makes a noise guaranteed to get you on your feet. In her case, this was the sound of her dog retching. Someone else in this self-help group said what might work for him was the sound of the recycling lorry approaching, although obviously that would only be any good if you had forgotten to leave the bin out again.
For me, no sound will do the job. It’ll have to be physical. A sprinkler system perhaps, or some kind of electric shock. Or a bed that slowly raises to a vertical position, tipping me out feet first, so I can walk right into my more productive, waste-free life.
• Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
