Alarm clocks are bad. How to wake up properly:

Waking up abruptly by the sound of an alarm clock is an inherently unnatural thing to do. Sometimes you can wake up after 8 hours and feel like crap. Other times, you can wake up after 6 hours and feel completely rested. The problem lies in what you're doing when you're suddenly woken up from your slumber.

Here is how to wake up properly:

1.) Set an alarm to go off before the latest time you want to wake up. Make the alarm really quiet radio or music.

2.) Set a second alarm to go off at the latest time you want to wake up. This is your regular alarm that will wake you up no matter what.

The whole point is that the first alarm should be so quiet that it will only wake you up if you're in "light" sleep. Waking up in "light" sleep should leave you feeling more refreshed than waking up in "deep" sleep. The second alarm is the back up to make sure that you wake up in time.

[This advice was taken from Vincent Cheung. Note: he is not a doctor.]