I’ve always been decent at math, but my ability to do snap calculations was always met with the normal wait time for my brain to remember all the steps it needed to take in order to perform the calculation in question. I am also a hard sleeper and not at all a morning person-a cup of coffee helps but its a band aid on the fact that I just don’t do very well when I first get out of bed. Both of these led me to start using the math alarm, that is my alarm clock requires me to do some basic math problems in order to just turn it off. Its also loud, really lout, but that mostly just helps me personally and doesn’t really have anything to do with the math portion.
I’ve seen a few different version of the software (I’ve only used the phone versions) that serve as an alarm with math problems, and for the most part they all seem similar. If this is an idea you want to try out I only have two recommendations: 1. find something with adjustable levels of difficulty and 2. try it before you “buy” it. Beyond that find something that works for you as an alarm. My wisdom from the road here does say that you should try it by setting the alarm before using it and see how long it takes you to do the problem during the day. Plan on this being slower in the morning, and plan on having an angry significant other if your alarm doesn’t silence itself while you do the problem or you’ve picked a difficulty that your fresh-to-consciousness brain isn’t ready for.
When I tell most people about how I’ve been doing this for a while now they are either shocked and express their dismay that anyone would do math that early (or at all), or they express that this is exactly why we have computers and calculators for this kind of thing. I am under no pretense that I will never beat my computer at any kind of mathematical computation-in either speed or accuracy. Similarly the exercise isn’t designed to be something masochistic or intentionally torturing.
For starters I actually like math, and so while the exercise is a test in my patience (and my wife’s patience) in the morning, its not something that I just see as awful all around. I also actually like being able to do most basic calculations in my head fairly quickly. Beyond it being useful at the DnD table, I also find being able to do some of the smaller problems where it would be more costly to bring up a calculator and type in the numbers. The truth is that some problems are just easy to solve and don’t require the overhead of using some electronic tool to solve them.
Its gone pretty good so far I guess-not the most useful thing but it has mostly solved the problem and does get me out of bed. I just turned up the difficulty before sitting down to write and my daughter impresses family we haven’t seen in a while or people we meet by showing off how for the problems she can conceive of, I can get the answer on the order of one or two seconds. My DnD math is almost instant and at work I generally don’t boot up a calculator unless the problem is sufficiently difficult or I need to be completely certain that my calculation is accurate (luckily it almost always is).
As a last note I’m not here to say that you must try this if you want to get better at math. For most people this would actually do very little to extend their conceptual limits as far as how they conceive of math. (Something like learning how calculus is a part of every day life would be far better for most people as far as extending their overall understanding of math.) This will do little more than help you perform snap calculations and extend the set of problems that fall into this category. If you find that useful then great, and if you enjoy waking up to a problem to solve then even better. I will however say that if you’re a hard sleeper and need a better way to wake up or you want to get better at simple math then I highly recommend giving the math alarm a try!