Gadgets and gizmos

Alarm clocks, for most of the reasonable people in the world, are badly designed. They go off, you momentarily wake up to hit snooze or disable it completely, and then fall back to sleep. Despite your best intentions when drifting into slumber it’s always the same. Two alarm clocks just means turning two off before you go back to sleep and putting the clock on the other side of the room means finding suitable projectiles first thing in the morning.

The Shape Up alarm clock not only helps you beat this potentially damaging habit, but it (sort of) helps you get fit too. Set the dumbbell shaped alarm clock as normal and go to sleep. When it wakes you in the morning, the only way to shut it up is to do 30 reps with it. Then, and only then, it will cease its early morning warbling.

By the time you’ve either a) done 30 reps or more likely b) tried to find another way to turn the damn thing off and then done 30 reps because it’s the only option available to you, we’re betting you’d be awake.