A New App: The Rock Clock™

I was occupying some time checking out the social media and came across a plug for "The Rock Clock". It is simply an alarm clock app that is supposed to help the user get up earlier. As early rising can be a struggle for me on occasion, I thought I would give it a try.

The app is free from your preferred app distribution channel (App Store or Google Play). It is simple to use. The app first has you pick a goal, something you want to accomplish. A project. I wrote "get up early" (well duh, why else would I be doing this), but I suppose "go to the gym", "stretch", "beat my co-worker into the office", "minimize harassment from the cat wanting to be fed" or even a longer term goal such as "take over the world" (if you're going to go, go big) would also work.

After the modest amount of goal setting and self delusion you can elect when you want to get up. You can pick a time or choose to get up when The Rock gets up. For the latter it warns you that he's a morning person, very much a morning person, the morningist of the morning people. In fact his alarm was set for 4:45am ON A SATURDAY. I opted for the former, choosing a slack-tastic 6:30 am.

Once set came my favorite part of the app, choosing the alarm tone. I think the tones are why the app has a good probability of success. They all contain some Rock antics and are cheeky-funny in their own ways. Humor does often serve as a great motivator. That "spoon full of sugar" (side note: the family watched Mary Poppins on Thanksgiving). So as to not give up the magic of app exploration, I'll leave it to you to check them out. I will mention that I selected "classic alarm" which consisted of The Rock verbally making the "beep, beep, beep..." sound in a crescendo becoming not just louder, but annoyed at my slacking. It was something comedic right out of bed; a fresh change.

I was up and out of bed before 7am. So there is one data-point suggesting the app helped. Granted there are a lot of variables. Every once in a while I find myself up unusually early. Thus, I'll be taking more data before drawing any firmer conclusions.

In summary, "The Rock Clock" is a simple and fun alarm clock app. The addition of motivation with a little Rock-esque humor I believe could be a winning combination; at least in the near term. I'll try to write an update in a month and let you know how it all goes.