Online 'Breakfast Club' helps combat college laziness

An online club that encourages students at Peking University (PKU) from sleeping in and missing classes is not only getting results but growing in numbers.

Members of the 'PKU Breakfast Club' get together every weekday before school at 7:15 am for a morning nosh, admittedly finding that group motivation provides the perfect push out of bed in the morning.

Founder Hu Xiaonan, a senior at PKU, struggled with sleeping in for years. Determined to beat her bad habit, Hu started a thread on social platform renren.com in search of other chronic sleepers-in to build a network of encouragement to get up every morning.

Though she received hundreds of queries at first, Hu explains most members preferred hitting the snooze button after joining.

"It sounds fun and easy to do in an email, but really hard to actually show up every day," said Hu.

To further combat the urge to crawl back in bed, the club set up an online punch clock where early birds can check in and are ranked daily.

"It looks childish, but it's really motivating. Members tend to get up earlier the next day if they're ranked at the bottom. Many of them even get up before 6 am," said Hu.

The club's core members have now become friends and often hang out together beyond breakfast.