When your phone rings at 3 o'clock in the morning

I believe the scenario is familiar with everyone: You go to to bed after a hard-working day, and you set the alarm clock to make sure you don't oversleep the next morning. Just when you are having the sweetest dream ever (either you win the lottery or being in a vacation enjoying the sunshine and the beach), the phone rings! You thought it was time to get ready for school, but just when you are about to get up, you noticed something's wrong: Why is the sky so dark?

Then you go from "it might be raining" to "wait, this is too dark for an 8 o'clock!" before you realized that it was not the alarm clock. It was simply a text message you just received or an email that just went into your mailbox. And it was 3 o'clock in the morning!

This actually happened to me so often that I did not get disturbed at all and could go right back to sleep. I can do it because I'm still young, but what if this happens to my parents or older people who cannot go right back to sleep once they get interrupted?

The mobile technology has brought us many benefits that the previous generation could not even imagine decades ago, but it also changed the way people coordinate the everyday life. We hear mobile phones ring during the movie, during the lecture, during someone's presentation, or even during our sleep.

You might not get mad for the first time when someone's phone rings in a movie, but what if the same thing happens again and again?

Similar to the disruption in the theater, my biggest interruption of sleep comes from my iPhone application. I downloaded the CNBC news application so i could follow the latest news. However, I soon realized it woke me up in the middle of the night way too often. This application not only sent out breaking news alerts but also made a very loud, fire-alarm-like sound. For over a year, I've tried to figure out if I could turn off the application sound while leaving the phone on so I could hear the alarm clock the next morning. But I never found the way to do so. Then I realized that being interrupted during my sleep was the price I had to pay if I wanted to enjoy the convenience of having everything reachable in my phone.

On the scale of convenience and uninterrupted sleep, I soon chose the later one. And I'm very glad that I made such decision to ensure my high quality sleep.