The loudest noise today is the ringing of the wake-up call. When you hear of a young friend who’s had a heart attack, you know it’s a wake-up call for you to start that jog, to get on to the treadmill and to get back into fitness mode.

When you hear of the crash of the biggies on Wall Street, you know it’s a wake-up call for Indian banking majors who’ve been busy spamming mobile phones with ‘please may I offer you a noquestions-asked loan’ calls.

When you hear of smells-like-Enron controversies, you know it’s a wake-up call for company boards and CEOs to take corporate governance seriously.

When you read about how the distance between an argument and the divorce court is getting shorter in metros, you know it’s a wake-up call to pay more attention to your relationships, to work on making your marriage work.

And when you hear about the New York i-banker (he of that fancy fat bonus last year) suddenly going into depression following a pink slip, you know it’s a wake-up call to get your priorities right and find balance in your life’s goals.

But hey, wait a minute! What do we do when we hear these wake-up calls? Our typical response to all these signals is something like this: We talk about it animatedly with our friends. (Oh yes, these make for excellent bar conversation!) We then resolve we must do something about it immediately. Soon. Tomorrow. And, of course, tomorrow never comes. Yet, despite the constant blaring of all these wake-up calls, why is it that most of us don’t really do
anything about them? Two reasons, I suspect. First, a false sense of invincibility, the ‘it-can’t-happen-to-me’ syndrome. We always think it only happens to others.

The heart attack. The bankruptcy. The pink slip. The broken marriage. We don’t realize that ‘they’ too are people like us. Or were, at least.
Second, ‘hit-the-snooze-button’ syndrome. The temptation to put off action until a bit later. And then a little later. The exercise regimen you promised yourself doesn’t quite get started. The day you hear about your friend’s heart attack, you say you will start the next day. That doesn’t happen. You then promise yourself you’ll do it after the Diwali binges. Then, after you come back from that business trip. Then
from the first of January, promise! It never, never happens. Until it’s too late!

CEOs and company boards are like that too. Must set it right next quarter, they say. Not this one, the next. One good quarter, and we’ll take care of it. Next financial year … And so on... . The truth is, we’ve all got used to the wonderful snooze button on our alarm calls.

To get up at 6.30 a.m., we set the alarm for 6 a.m. We wake up, stretch hand, reach alarm, hit snooze …6.10 a.m. We wake up, hit snooze … 6.20 a.m. Ditto 6.30 a.m. Finally wake up. Research shows that those thirty minutes are a complete waste. You don’t really sleep in those three ten-minute intervals. And you don’t put that time to productive use either. All that the snooze button does is to give us a feeling that it can wait. And we start thinking that everything can wait. Our minds develop their own versions of the snooze button.

So what happens is that every time we hear a wake-up call, we reach out for the snooze button, which isn’t really there. But it’s taken permanent residence in our minds.

Do yourself a favour. Cut off the snooze button. From your cellphone, your alarm clock, your mind, your life. Get up when the alarm rings. Don’t hit snooze. When you hear a wake-up call, wake up.
Make it a habit.
You’ll find many benefits of this one change in your behaviour. You will sleep well. You will create more time for yourself every morning.
And most importantly, when those critical wake-up calls come along in your life, you’ll take action.

You’ll wake up. Before it’s too late.