Bed/wake up time.

[FireOnTheMountain]

Edit - Crap, I didn't see the other sleep thread further down the page. Sorry for making a redundant topic. Delete this if you want.

They say they best and most restful sleep occurs when you wake up naturally--no alarms, and with no caffiene needed. Don't use alcohol or sleeping pills to fall asleep, either.


I used to do this when I was in school, but I have gotten really bad since I graduated and got a job.



I tend to gravitate toward 1:00 AM bed time and 10:00 AM wake up time. This is what I would do in college. But I have to be at work at 9:30. So what ends up happening instead is, I still go to bed at midnight or 1, but end up dragging myself out of bed at 8:00 or 8:30 and feeling tired all day. I drink too much caffiene late in the afternoon to stay awake, and then I can't fall asleep until much later.




There's a lady from Germany at my office who goes to bed at 8:00 pm and wakes up at 4:00 AM. This actually seems like a great idea to me.

I really don't like waking up, taking a shower and heading to work immediately. This would be good, because I'd have a 4 or 5 hour buffer before I have to go to work. I imagine myself having time to practice guitar for 45 minutes, maybe go to the gym or whatever and be really alert before heading to work.

The buffer would be like if I woke up at my current time (8:00/8:30) and went to work at noon.





What do you guys think? When do you go to bed and how many hours do you sleep? I'm going to force myself into this by setting an alarm for 4:00 tommorow and getting up, no matter what. It will be tough for a couple days before I get into sync with the new time.

 

[Upside]

Great idea but can you actually pull it off? I don't really see anyone going to bed at 8 PM on a friday night. I suggest you just wake up about 2 hours before you have to leave before work. Gives you enough time to eat, sshower, etc but also to read a chapter in a book or whatever like that.

 

[Farmboy]

I actually was on a sleep schedule like this for a while: I would get home from work at about 5:00 PM and crash about an hour later. I'd wake up between 3:00 AM and 4:00 AM the next day, which was handy becasue I could get my sh*t together before work.

The downside is that most people's lives aren't on schedules like this, so it might hurt your game. Usually the only people who are active at 5:00 AM are retired and driving a golf cart around a Florida suburb.

 

[Deep Dish]

Nowadays, I normally hit the snooze around 3-4am and wake up at 7:30am (to be at work by 8:00am). I can do this for several nights in a row without a problem. In fact, my body somehow got trained to wake up that early -- before the alarm clock -- even when there is that little of sleep. I do have a tendency to pass out in the evenings but only cat naps for a few hours. I'm so busy with work and projects, devoting 100% of my time and thoughts doing something, it's as if my body is on constant alert -- without any aid from caffeine. When it's the whee hours of the morning and I'm doing graphic design, I'll be wired with energy even if I was sleepy earlier in the evening. I do sleep-in on the weekends. I wasn't always this way, though. I used to need upwards of 10 hours of sleep -- but that was when I was living with my parents, attending college, working modestly, and not exercising.

I know what research scientists will say and I once did a whole research paper on sleep. The average person does need eight hours of sleep and sleep deprivation does significantly hamper mental function, but the amount of necessary sleep greatly varies throughout the general population. What you don't hear is how it's not really about the amount of sleep but rather how efficiently your body uses the energy and you can change the efficiency. Someone can go from regularly ten hours to regularly three hours of sleep but only if there's enough exercise