Originally Posted by chephy

I found that getting up as soon as I hear the alarm is a bad idea for me - too sudden a change from soundly asleep to up on my feet. I set the alarm for a bit earlier than my projected get-up time. This way the alarm sort of wakes me up and after silencing it I have a chance to gently ease myself into waking up fully. And the snooze feature is a safeguard in case "easing into waking up" turns into "falling back asleep again", which it often does.