I have a love/hate relationship with Pokémon Sleep

I have used pokemon sleep for a week. I hate playing it but I feel better physically than I have in months so I guess this is my life now.

It’s not that my sleep has improved; that is it pokemon sleep makes me actually wake up in the morning, instead of hitting the snooze button to the last possible second. The experience of playing pokemon sleep in the morning is very irritating, but it definitely wakes up my brain.

The premise of pokemon sleep is that I help a Pokémon researcher to track the sleeping habits of different Pokémon. This means that every week I find a Snorlax and sleep next to it. (In other words, I leave the app open on my phone with it lying face down next to my pillow while the Snorlax “sleeps” and I’m asleep.) When I wake up, I notice that a lot of other Pokémon have passed by as well to sleep next to the Snorlax, and I take pictures of each of their sleeping positions. Then they wake up and I can give them a treat to persuade them to be part of my collection; once I give them enough little cookies or whatever, they join my team and help me collect berries that I can feed to Snorlax to increase its “Drowsy Power” (which encourages more Pokémon to come around). to sleep).

This whole experience requires me to tap my phone a lot with my finger. First, I tap sleeping Pokémon to take pictures of them before they wake up. Once that mindless job is done and the Pokémon have woken up, I tap them again to make sure they give me berries for Snorlax. Then I tap all the berries, which magically float in a collection basket. Why does this process require you to tap so often? Don’t know. It’s annoying. But it does wake me up!

Of course, the process is not over yet. I have to tap Snorlax to cook breakfast for it. This includes choosing a recipe and waiting for it to cook. I also have the option to cook Snorlax lunch and dinner at other times of the day, but who has the energy for that? Snorlax is lucky enough to get me breakfast, especially before I’ve eaten some of it myself!

Image: The Pokémon Company via Polygon

As if all that wasn’t enough phone tapping for one morning, I then have to tap through various menus to level up my Pokémon, and spend the Sleep Points I’ve earned during the night to buy more treats and incense. luring more Pokémon into my clutches. By the time I’m done with that, it’s been five to ten minutes and I’m annoyed but also wide awake.

My sleep is the same as always, except now I’m not dozing off until I absolutely to have to get up, because I’m too busy clicking those stupid little Pokémon. That means I wake up in time to workout before work starts — something I successfully did every day last week, and again this morning. Morning is the only time I ever exercise as I can never bring myself to exercise after work; at that point, the appeal of cuddling my girlfriend while playing video games on the couch is just too strong. Exercising in the morning helps me get it out of the way and feel great for the rest of the day.

pokemon sleep doesn’t do a particularly good job at tracking my sleep. It’s also not a very good alarm clock. I already have a Fitbit that I wear on my wrist, which does a significantly better job at both sleep tracking and alarm setting (not to mention tracking my workout, which was admittedly much more sporadic until recently). I’ve tried pokemon sleep because I was curious how it would perform compared to other sleep apps I’ve tried (poorly), as well as how it would hold up as a game (annoying but effective).

Like I said, I hate playing pokemon sleep. But here’s the thing: when I play it, I wake up. I’m not happy this works. But I have to admit that working out every day felt great. Much more amazing than playing pokemon sleepbut I can’t deny the impact.