Let’s talk about one of the most frustrating moments of each day — time when you have to wake up. Some of us are night owls. Some of us are early birds. But most of us need to get out of bed at a certain time unless you want to hear something like that.

Many studies, tutorials and zen techniques have been developed to help people control their internal alarm clock so it would kick them out of bed on time. I do understand that going to bed at the same time builds a habit of getting up at the same time. I do believe that it might be a matter of motivation which I need to build before going to sleep so it would trick my mind to wake up later. And I do know people who let their body tell them when to wake up because if it doesn’t want to, then you haven’t rebooted yet. All is good except for this is not the case. My internal alarm clock just doesn’t work this way.

So I rely on an external one.

How I gave up reading scientific non-sense and started living

A while ago, we in Trikita agreed that simple things rule the world and we swore to God of Simplicity that our products would be as minimal and elegant as a single-function tool could be. This is when Talalarmo alarm clock was brought to life and all former ones from stock or Google Play vanished into oblivion.

Anyhow, I wouldn’t be honest with the large Android community if I talked about the alarm clock I don’t even use myself. So I do. Every day since its first stable release. And I’m going to tell you why it’s worth it.

What in your alarm clock do you like the most? Customization, snooze, bizarre puzzle to dismiss it, fancy look?

I love free time that the alarm clock saves me for doing something I really want.

3 alarm clock anti-patterns that ruin your life

Snooze. It is the biggest delusion of self-control that works exactly the opposite way you expect. This situation may seem pretty appealing to everyone. An alarm has just gone off right in the middle of a dream and you think — it’s OK to allow five more minutes. You start falling asleep and oops! — time to wake up again. It gets into a vicious circle until you finally realize that time is lost, you gain nothing of it.

So, my motivational mantra is simple — if alarm clock goes off, face it with dignity! When Talalarmo breaks the silence, no snooze is given and no excuse is accepted.

Multiple alarms. It’s another side of the anti-pattern #1, but with less faith in your own powers. People believe that it will be extremely hard to wake up tomorrow and they will fail. So, to increase their chances they set up several alarms supposing that two is better than one, three is better than two, etc, etc. I foresee that in the future scientists will even give it a name. “Alarm addiction — irresistible hunger for keeping a big number of alarm clocks on to feel safer.” This is surely the best way to train immunity to any disturbance while sleeping.

Another thing is that alarm clocks are normally recurring and one day you won’t need some of them. You will have to cancel as many alarms as you have set. Be ready to waste some time before going to sleep.

Talalarmo is designed not to be abusive in this sense. It supports a single alarm and helps to turn one’s weakness into a strength. So, it’s more like “get up or die trying” than “come to the Dark side”.

Alarm dismissal. This is the most irritating in my opinion because typically done in a way that makes people suffer. Why on earth do I have to solve puzzles, jump on one foot, tap on some narrow area of the phone screen to cut it out? If the first thing I’m forced to do in the morning is to take up an inhumane challenge, I don’t want this day to happen.

Waking up may be stressful. I always try to overcome this moment of denial thinking positively. All I want from the alarm clock is to trigger such thoughts leaving intelligent reasoning of a wake-up to myself. With Talalarmo I don’t concern myself about dismissing alarm. I can do it by tapping anywhere on the phone screen. Let me show you how I usually dismiss alarm..

…with an entire palm of my hand without even looking at the phone.

Two taps or not two taps

How many steps do you think you need to take to set up an alarm clock? In the perfect world, it would be one for hours and another one for minutes. Well, I may say I’m living in the perfect world.

So, it takes me two taps on the large easy-to-hit widgets. I don’t stumble over annoying dialogs, pop-up settings, irrelevant switchers. It is my strong opinion that the most popular action performed within any application should be the most intuitive and fastest thing to do.

We gave a lot of thoughts to the Talalarmo main screen look so that it would be aesthetically pleasing, minimal and yet exposing utterly practical way to set the alarm clock. Two non-overlapping circles for hours and minutes seemed pretty much meeting our high expectations.

As time passed by, we came to the flat material UI theme, but left untouched the core concept of the clock presentation. I like using the dark theme as it is less disturbing for my eyes in the darkness when I normally set the alarm clock.

Admirers of minimalism would agree that not only do simple tools derive aesthetic pleasure, but they are likely to be more trustworthy in practice. It’s easier to get a minimal function flawless. So, if your alarm clock is not stable at this and lets you oversleep from time to time, then throw it away and have a cat instead. It’s fluffy at least.

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On a side note, Talalarmo is Free³: free of charge, free of ads, and it’s a free open source software. So, if it’s not Talalarmo waking you up yet, think about it ;)