The snooze of shame

I took this personal. Ever since I moved to the North West of the United States I had to significantly change my habits. No more relaxed 8 AM Italian styles wake ups, my alarm is now set to 6.30 AM and God knows how many times I hit the snooze button. But maybe, eventually, I’ve found a solution to get up straight away. It’s called Okite (which means “wake up” Japanese) and it’s a “nasty” iPhone alarm clock that is connected to your Twitter account, and is programmed to tweet embarrassing messages every time you hit the snooze button.

Basically you get “punished” publicly every time you post-pone your wake up by nine minutes (provided your friends wake up as early as you do…).

Togofu, the blog where I spotted this app provides a few examples of messages that get tweeted but also has an interesting explanation of how the “shame factor” in the Japanese culture can be a powerful trigger to change behaviors.

(Huh? 30 centemeters isn’t normal?)