I have reinstated the alarm clock. An overlooked mechanism in today’s technologically-synced， your-phone-does-everything world， it tells the time， it wakes you up， it is decentralized from a phone. It is marvelous. Why？ Because before I brought an analogue1 clock back into my bedroom， I was averaging two hours and 56 minutes of screen time per week， and my phone told me this every Monday， moments after my alarm would sound.

我重新用上了传统闹钟。在如今这个科技日新月异、手机无所不能的时代，传统闹钟是个被忽视的机械装置，但它能显示时间，能把人叫醒，而且不必与手机关联。传统闹钟很了不起，为何这样说呢？因为在我把指针式闹钟摆回卧室之前，我平均每周消耗2小时56分钟看手机，而我的手机在每周一闹钟响起后不久就会向我报告一周的屏幕使用时间。

And， every morning， while only trying to tap “snooze，” I’d be confronted by a flurry of notifications piling up behind one another like a card game of solitaire on the screen. My phone would tell me that my friends were feeling chatty last night with 34-plus WhatsApp messages; there would be Instagram alerts and dozens of emails from multiple accounts. The notifications would fill me with dread and stress about the day ahead before I’d even had my morning coffee.

每天清晨，当我只想点一下手机上的“稍后提醒”键，迎面袭来的却是一连串消息通知。它们在屏幕上一个叠一个，好像玩起了单人纸牌游戏。我的手机会用超过34条的WhatsApp聊天记录让我知道，头天晚上朋友们聊得起劲；此外还有“照片墙”的通知以及从多个账号发来的大量电子邮件。还没喝上早晨的咖啡，所有消息通知就已经让我对即将开始的一天充满恐惧与焦虑。

I didn’t realize it at the time， but my old analogue clock—a compact， travel model—was a low-key luxury. Its design would have paled in comparison to the latest iPhones， but it did its one job very well; its punctuating and shrill screech was effective at waking me up every morning. Pertinently， it wasn’t filling my mind with chatter， bad news and deadlines before the day had begun.

我的指针式旧闹钟属于小巧便携款，以前没意识到，它真是个低调的奢侈品。与最新款的苹果手机比起来，它的设计可能并不起眼，但它却很好地发挥着自己的功能——那断断续续的刺耳铃声每天清晨总能轻松把我唤醒。关键是，它不会在一天还没开始的时候就让闲言碎语、坏消息和截止日期塞满我脑袋。

Changing habits

不断变化的叫醒方式

I made the switch from alarm clock to phone about 10 years ago after I told someone what I thought was a funny story about how my alarm clock had once gone off in my suitcase while in the trunk of a taxi， forcing us to pull over so I could retrieve it. The story provoked bemusement. “You use an actual alarm clock？” they asked， as though it was a fax machine. “Why don’t you use your phone！” Oh， I thought. Why don’t I？ I probably didn’t even know I could at the time. But I succumbed to peer pressure and did away with2 my old clock. And that’s when the luxury of waking up without notifications ended， and the misery of glancing at them in the middle of the night when I checked the time on my phone began.

我大约是从10年前开始用手机闹钟代替传统闹钟的，那时我跟别人说起一段我自以为滑稽的经历：有一回乘出租车，我装有闹钟的手提箱放在后备箱里，闹钟突然响起来，我们不得不靠边停车，好让我关掉响铃。