Reaching for the phone first and last thing of the day is not useful.

Here I'll discuss a Mood based clock I'm learning to use

We're increasingly disconnected from ourselves in the morning. by using my phone as an alarm, i break my morning and evening routines. With all the setting, resetting, notifications, and potential distractions I'm actually missing MUCH needed sleep and meditation time.

If I wake up early, I don't want to see my phone and the cacophony of notifications, news, and low priority messaging. This amazing amount of new information only servers to stimulate my brain when i might prefer a more measured morning ritual.

I hope to gain back 20min a day by only want to know enough about the world to plan a proper day.

A traditional clock with an explicit time displayed cannot keep up with the occasional out of band meeting or international conference call. Mostly I care more about how much time i have to commit to myself vs commitments i've made with time. Naps and weekends can be completely lost on a regular explicit clock as time has hardly any meaning beyond scarcity.

Setting a morning alarm when one lives a freelance or creative's lifestyle can be a bit of a research effort. I hope to employ gCal for this. This has a two-fold advantage. Firstly, I know i'll always have an alarm for the surprise extra early morning arrangement, appointment, or cleaning. Secondly, this will encourage better sleep and gCal usage.

Moods can be triggered with color.

Green, Yellow, and Red color queues will tell you how urgently you need to engage your day. The SunDial takes data from your Google calendar to determine if you have commitments that require your immediate attention (RED) or within the near future (YELLOW).

With the right context even the most minimal interface can speak volumes. Use whatever colors, display , or queues you find helpful and intuitive. We experimented with a tone buzzer, cowbells, sms, and a servo as part of the hackathon, so anything is really possible. I'd like to use scents or waterguns, but I want to keep it simple, silly.

We aim to merge a natural sleeping schedule with our increasingly busy digitally dominated lives.

Our solution to create a healthy wake routine is to simplify the tradition clock with a more intuitive and relative notion of time.