Early Risers

The early bird gets the worm, right?  Yeah, but who gets up for a worm?

Most of us have ditched the designated alarm clock for an app on our smart phone, and the number of options there seems endless. You can awake to the sounds of music (soothing or otherwise, depending on your preference), the sound of a puking dog (guaranteed to get every pet owner moving!), or the sound of nails on chalkboard or a fire alarm.   

Most alarms are designed to be, well…alarming. The developers of the FirstUp app have a different strategy. Dubliner Ruaidhri Finnegan and his Cork partner Dan Moriarty have taken the unusual approach of incentivising the act of getting up early.  The pair, in their 20’s now, met while travelling around Australia as teenagers.

At the time, neither of them were natural morning people. Finnegan worked as a DJ, keeping late nights, but he wanted to get up early so he could go to the gym.  Moriarty worked at a pharmaceutical company that made drugs for people with sleep issues.

They decided that there needed to be a new way to think about alarm clocks and making yourself get up early.  The essential problem is that people frequently don’t want to leave the comfort of a cozy bed, especially on cold dark mornings.  Staying in bed can be so much more appealing than getting up. But what if there were a way to turn that around? What if there was some kind of incentive for you to get out of bed on time?

Enter the FirstUp app, launched in December of 2017. Instead of noisy sounds that jolt you awake, FirstUp uses soothing sounds like bird songs or waves. Users who get up without pressing the snooze button earn various rewards, including food, coffee, and taxis.

Pieta House and Electric Ireland have partnered with the FirstUp app to offer €5 mytaxi (formerly Hailo) vouchers and deals at the popular healthy restaurant chain Cocu to their users who wake up using the FirstUp alarm.

Their intention is to use FirstUp as a channel to celebrate Electric Ireland’s successful partnership with Pieta House’s Darkness into Light event, a worldwide movement that started in Dublin in 2009. An annual 5km walk that starts at dawn, the Darkness into Light events raise money to increase awareness in the global fight against suicide and self-harm (they’ve raised over €20 million as of 2018). In 2018 alone, over 200,000 people in 150 locations, in 16 countries across 5 continents thought that cause was worth waking up early for.

Rise and shine!

Sources:

• https://www.dublinlive.ie/news/ingenious-irish-alarm-clock-rewards-13020187
• https://www.irishexaminer.com/breakingnews/business/app-to-reward-those-who-get-up-early-in-the-morning-848000.html
• https://irishtechnews.ie/irish-duo-reward-you-for-not-hitting-snooze/
• https://www.darknessintolight.ie/