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I used to like to sleep for as long as possible, then slowly it began to feel like a waste of time. Also, having small children affect sleep although not direc

I used to like to sleep for as long as possible, then slowly it began to feel like a waste of time. Also, having small children affect sleep although not directly, it's the time you try to claw back after putting them to sleep, pushing it a little later to get other things done. After a while it became obvious nothing much was being achieved this way, in fact my mental acuity seemed to drop substantially. Then I realized I hadn't been dreaming (or at least remembering dreams) for a while and that was weird. Slowed down, went to bed as soon as tiredness kicked in for a few months. Improved my diet which probably helped a lot. Dreams have returned with a vengence, it feels like all night is one long dream, I feel better and sharper. I wish I could sleep less than 7 hours, but my body disagrees.

ergothus 10y ago
I agree with everything you listed, but I have one complication. "went to bed as soon as tiredness kicked in". Give me a night or two of good sleep...and I won't be tired until 1am. Waking up for work will then be hell (I don't function well on low sleep). My body knows when it is tired...but that doesn't match the work schedule :( When I'm practicing sleep diligence (which comes and goes based on whether I've been tired a lot lately or not) I have to force myself to go to bed when I'm not feeling tired. That feeling of sacrificing time is almost as hard to maintain as being constantly fatigued. First world problems, but they are my problems.
- 3princip 10y ago
  There is definitely a drift towards staying up later and later, and of course kids and/or work are not forgiving of that trend, so the sleep deprivation starts to accumulate again. I guess just listening to what your body is telling you and not pushing it, especially if the reason is work (side-project or career), but even just staying up for something trivial like watching a movie or whatever. Maybe I can use a lack of dreams to tell when I've gone too far.
- zbobet2012 10y ago
  This is hard for people with kids and a full schedule but there is an effective solution: Work. Out. More. Seriously, part of the reason you're probably not tired is because you simply have not done enough physical exertion.
  - jackmott 10y ago
    which also takes time, which you don't have enough of, which is why you were staying up late in the first place. having kids basically just makes life impossible and painful.
    - AznHisoka 10y ago
      can you take a half hour to do a workout in your lunch break?
    - smallnamespace 10y ago
      Physically exhausting yourself doesn't actually take too much time -- do intervals at max exertion. If you take 'max' literally, you'll be exhausted after 10 minutes.
    - hvidgaard 10y ago
      You don't have to dedicate 1 hours of your day to this. Take the stair, walk/bike around, do some light gardening, ect. All small everyday stuff that exercise your body - and it works.
    - hfsktr 10y ago
      I got one of those bike-like thing to put under my desk. Initially for work but that wasn't working so now it's at home. I haven't been great about using it often but it is easy to use while playing games like I would anyways. It might not be terribly efficient or anything but it's something.
  - AznHisoka 10y ago
    Which type is more effective? Cardio or strength
- Diederich 10y ago
  Have you tried taking melatonin an hour or so before your target sleep time? That's worked wonders for my family.
- Spellman 10y ago
  Michael Breus has a theory that different individuals tend to sleep/wake at different points in the day naturally. So perhaps your natural rhythm is very late night bedtime and late morning wake time? Does make life in the standard 8-5 world difficult unfortunately. EDIT: non-affiliate link to his book The Power of When https://www.amazon.com/Power-When-Discover-Chronotype-Lunch/dp/0316391263 https://www.amazon.com/Power-When-Discover-Chronotype-Lunch/...
  - balfirevic 10y ago
    When left without any external obligations even for a couple of days I seem to wake up and go to sleep later and later each day. My rhythm doesn't settle on any fixed 24-hour period. Is something similar to this discussed in the book?
    - chillwaves 10y ago
      Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome Seems increasingly common with our modern lifestyle. http://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/delayed-sleep-phase-syndrome http://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/delayed-sleep-...
    - nicolas_t 10y ago
      I have the same issue. I progressively sleep and wake later and later until I wake up around 1pm. I then force myself to reset my cycle and go to sleep before 2am. I work from home and I have a lot of flexibility since I live in a different timezone from my clients so I make that work but it is frustrating for my wife. Workouts don't really seem to help much, melatonin seems to improve things slightly.
      - balfirevic 10y ago
        I wish I could just reset it and go to sleep earlier like that. I'll either just lay in bed wide awake or fall asleep for an hour or two and then not be able to sleep again for the next several hours. Sometimes my clock gets so out of phase that I'll fall a sleep at around 10AM and sleep until 19PM or so. It's pretty tough to go back to regular schedule after that, heh.
- stephen_g 10y ago
  Sounds like you could have delayed sleep phase disorder/syndrome. It's just having a delayed circadian rhythm - not really a disorder except that it's hard to fit in with 'normal' schedules. I have a lot of issues with this (my circadian rhythm delay is pretty bad). My employer tolerates me coming in at 10am but even then I'm still suffering symptoms of sleep deprivation pretty constantly and don't feel like I can survive without sleeping in to midday on Saturdays and Sundays... It's a frustrating condition to have, because while research into circadian rhythms has generally found that you can't fight against your natural sleep cycle long-term without experiencing sleep deprivation, pretty much everyone who has a normal cycle will tell you that you just have to "be more disiplined", "just wake up the same time every day and you'll get into a better routine", etc. Even most GPs I've talked to aren't up-to-date with the latest research and it's been really hard to convince them to refer me to a sleep specialist! It's also especially bad at work, because management tend to be older (sleep cycles are usually at peak delay during adolescence, and then shift earlier as you age) and seem to have an impressive ability to not understand the condition. But if the science is to be believed, what people tell me is about as effective as telling a severely clinically depressed person to "just be happier." But even for people with more normal (average) cycles, one sleep scientist has suggested [1] that work shouldn't start until 10am, which would make people more productive and more alert. 1. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/12/staff-should-start-work-at-10am-to-avoid-torture-of-sleep-depriv/amp/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/12/staff-should-s...
  - louthy 10y ago
    > pretty much everyone who has a normal cycle will tell you that you just have to "be more disciplined", "just wake up the same time every day and you'll get into a better routine", etc I feel your pain. Been there many times. The way I solved it was to become the boss. Daywalkers will never understand. Even if you're an owl rather than a lark it's looked down upon - and the standard trope of "you're just lazy" come out; but delayed sleep phase syndrome where it's possible to go in and out of sync with the day is a real killer for the regular office hours. I now get significantly more work done than at any time in my career because I sleep and awake when I want. Of course occasionally I need to be in-sync with someone (meetings, etc.). But it's relatively easy to have a few things to get in-sync with if I get good sleep the rest of the time.
- nextos 10y ago
  Try implementing the tips in https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/sleep https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/sleep In a nutshell, with a bit of free running sleep you can readjust your cycle.
- fegu 10y ago
  This is me as well. There is so much to do, see and make. Both workwise and a million odd projects outside of work. A serious complication to the variable length of sleep is that when you get a bad back after sitting for 20 years, you can't catch up on sleep anymore as the back hurts after X hours in bed anyway.
yomly 10y ago
Mentioning lack of dreams is on point. As a student I would do at least 1-2 all nighters (~36+ hours without sleep) a week. In the rest of the week I would probably be partying. In hindsight, it was pretty stupid as I was incredibly inefficient at everything, my health was poor and I was cognizant that my mood would get depressive the more sleep deprived I got. One of my benchmarks of my tiredness, and conversely how rested I was, was if I was having dreams. When I was exhausted, sleep would be pure black abyss and the time between sleep and awakening could have been the blink of an eye for all I knew. When I was sleeping reasonably (~6.5+ hours) I would start to dream again after a few days. I take things a bit easier now, it's much easier to resist distractions like Facebook or the news when I'm rested than when I'm extremely exhausted. Heavens knows what happens during parenthood and you simply have no choice, presumably there must be some psychological instinct that takes over...
aswanson 10y ago
I used to have trouble sleeping as a kid, was always the last one wide awake at the sleepovers; always up at the end of a teenage conversation with a girlfriend noticing she had passed out like an hour earlier an hour later (maybe my convo was that boring). After my first kid, I've had no problem at all catching and cherishing a nap. Dreams, I think, are the brains garbage collection mechanism. Without them, the system just grinds to a halt.
tluyben2 10y ago
I sleep when tired and wake up when I wake up. I thought that would lead to 12 hour sleeps but I average on 6 per day. But I do sleep two times (at night 4 hrs and afternoon 2). I work best nighttime but Skype meetings are during the day so this works perfectly.
bemmu 10y ago
That dreams returning thing has a cool name too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REM_rebound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REM_rebound
- lawless123 10y ago
  wow im going to name my band tha... damn..
  - NoGravitas 10y ago
    It would be a good name for a tribute band.
taneq 10y ago
> Also, having small children affect sleep although not directly Hah. Haha. Hahahahahhahaa trails off One of ours woke 4-6+ times per night, every night, for nearly a year straight. It's beyond just "affecting sleep" and well into Gitmo-style sleep deprivation.

ergothus 10y ago

I agree with everything you listed, but I have one complication. "went to bed as soon as tiredness kicked in". Give me a night or two of good sleep...and I won't be tired until 1am. Waking up for work will then be hell (I don't function well on low sleep). My body knows when it is tired...but that doesn't match the work schedule :( When I'm practicing sleep diligence (which comes and goes based on whether I've been tired a lot lately or not) I have to force myself to go to bed when I'm not feeling tired. That feeling of sacrificing time is almost as hard to maintain as being constantly fatigued. First world problems, but they are my problems.

3princip 10y ago
There is definitely a drift towards staying up later and later, and of course kids and/or work are not forgiving of that trend, so the sleep deprivation starts to accumulate again. I guess just listening to what your body is telling you and not pushing it, especially if the reason is work (side-project or career), but even just staying up for something trivial like watching a movie or whatever. Maybe I can use a lack of dreams to tell when I've gone too far.
zbobet2012 10y ago
This is hard for people with kids and a full schedule but there is an effective solution: Work. Out. More. Seriously, part of the reason you're probably not tired is because you simply have not done enough physical exertion.
- jackmott 10y ago
  which also takes time, which you don't have enough of, which is why you were staying up late in the first place. having kids basically just makes life impossible and painful.
  - AznHisoka 10y ago
    can you take a half hour to do a workout in your lunch break?
  - smallnamespace 10y ago
    Physically exhausting yourself doesn't actually take too much time -- do intervals at max exertion. If you take 'max' literally, you'll be exhausted after 10 minutes.
  - hvidgaard 10y ago
    You don't have to dedicate 1 hours of your day to this. Take the stair, walk/bike around, do some light gardening, ect. All small everyday stuff that exercise your body - and it works.
  - hfsktr 10y ago
    I got one of those bike-like thing to put under my desk. Initially for work but that wasn't working so now it's at home. I haven't been great about using it often but it is easy to use while playing games like I would anyways. It might not be terribly efficient or anything but it's something.
- AznHisoka 10y ago
  Which type is more effective? Cardio or strength
Diederich 10y ago
Have you tried taking melatonin an hour or so before your target sleep time? That's worked wonders for my family.
Spellman 10y ago
Michael Breus has a theory that different individuals tend to sleep/wake at different points in the day naturally. So perhaps your natural rhythm is very late night bedtime and late morning wake time? Does make life in the standard 8-5 world difficult unfortunately. EDIT: non-affiliate link to his book The Power of When https://www.amazon.com/Power-When-Discover-Chronotype-Lunch/dp/0316391263 https://www.amazon.com/Power-When-Discover-Chronotype-Lunch/...
- balfirevic 10y ago
  When left without any external obligations even for a couple of days I seem to wake up and go to sleep later and later each day. My rhythm doesn't settle on any fixed 24-hour period. Is something similar to this discussed in the book?
  - chillwaves 10y ago
    Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome Seems increasingly common with our modern lifestyle. http://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/delayed-sleep-phase-syndrome http://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/delayed-sleep-...
  - nicolas_t 10y ago
    I have the same issue. I progressively sleep and wake later and later until I wake up around 1pm. I then force myself to reset my cycle and go to sleep before 2am. I work from home and I have a lot of flexibility since I live in a different timezone from my clients so I make that work but it is frustrating for my wife. Workouts don't really seem to help much, melatonin seems to improve things slightly.
    - balfirevic 10y ago
      I wish I could just reset it and go to sleep earlier like that. I'll either just lay in bed wide awake or fall asleep for an hour or two and then not be able to sleep again for the next several hours. Sometimes my clock gets so out of phase that I'll fall a sleep at around 10AM and sleep until 19PM or so. It's pretty tough to go back to regular schedule after that, heh.
stephen_g 10y ago
Sounds like you could have delayed sleep phase disorder/syndrome. It's just having a delayed circadian rhythm - not really a disorder except that it's hard to fit in with 'normal' schedules. I have a lot of issues with this (my circadian rhythm delay is pretty bad). My employer tolerates me coming in at 10am but even then I'm still suffering symptoms of sleep deprivation pretty constantly and don't feel like I can survive without sleeping in to midday on Saturdays and Sundays... It's a frustrating condition to have, because while research into circadian rhythms has generally found that you can't fight against your natural sleep cycle long-term without experiencing sleep deprivation, pretty much everyone who has a normal cycle will tell you that you just have to "be more disiplined", "just wake up the same time every day and you'll get into a better routine", etc. Even most GPs I've talked to aren't up-to-date with the latest research and it's been really hard to convince them to refer me to a sleep specialist! It's also especially bad at work, because management tend to be older (sleep cycles are usually at peak delay during adolescence, and then shift earlier as you age) and seem to have an impressive ability to not understand the condition. But if the science is to be believed, what people tell me is about as effective as telling a severely clinically depressed person to "just be happier." But even for people with more normal (average) cycles, one sleep scientist has suggested [1] that work shouldn't start until 10am, which would make people more productive and more alert. 1. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/12/staff-should-start-work-at-10am-to-avoid-torture-of-sleep-depriv/amp/ http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/2016/03/12/staff-should-s...
- louthy 10y ago
  > pretty much everyone who has a normal cycle will tell you that you just have to "be more disciplined", "just wake up the same time every day and you'll get into a better routine", etc I feel your pain. Been there many times. The way I solved it was to become the boss. Daywalkers will never understand. Even if you're an owl rather than a lark it's looked down upon - and the standard trope of "you're just lazy" come out; but delayed sleep phase syndrome where it's possible to go in and out of sync with the day is a real killer for the regular office hours. I now get significantly more work done than at any time in my career because I sleep and awake when I want. Of course occasionally I need to be in-sync with someone (meetings, etc.). But it's relatively easy to have a few things to get in-sync with if I get good sleep the rest of the time.
nextos 10y ago
Try implementing the tips in https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/sleep https://www.supermemo.com/en/articles/sleep In a nutshell, with a bit of free running sleep you can readjust your cycle.
fegu 10y ago
This is me as well. There is so much to do, see and make. Both workwise and a million odd projects outside of work. A serious complication to the variable length of sleep is that when you get a bad back after sitting for 20 years, you can't catch up on sleep anymore as the back hurts after X hours in bed anyway.

yomly 10y ago

Mentioning lack of dreams is on point. As a student I would do at least 1-2 all nighters (~36+ hours without sleep) a week. In the rest of the week I would probably be partying. In hindsight, it was pretty stupid as I was incredibly inefficient at everything, my health was poor and I was cognizant that my mood would get depressive the more sleep deprived I got. One of my benchmarks of my tiredness, and conversely how rested I was, was if I was having dreams. When I was exhausted, sleep would be pure black abyss and the time between sleep and awakening could have been the blink of an eye for all I knew. When I was sleeping reasonably (~6.5+ hours) I would start to dream again after a few days. I take things a bit easier now, it's much easier to resist distractions like Facebook or the news when I'm rested than when I'm extremely exhausted. Heavens knows what happens during parenthood and you simply have no choice, presumably there must be some psychological instinct that takes over...

aswanson 10y ago

I used to have trouble sleeping as a kid, was always the last one wide awake at the sleepovers; always up at the end of a teenage conversation with a girlfriend noticing she had passed out like an hour earlier an hour later (maybe my convo was that boring). After my first kid, I've had no problem at all catching and cherishing a nap. Dreams, I think, are the brains garbage collection mechanism. Without them, the system just grinds to a halt.

tluyben2 10y ago

I sleep when tired and wake up when I wake up. I thought that would lead to 12 hour sleeps but I average on 6 per day. But I do sleep two times (at night 4 hrs and afternoon 2). I work best nighttime but Skype meetings are during the day so this works perfectly.

bemmu 10y ago

That dreams returning thing has a cool name too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REM_rebound https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/REM_rebound

lawless123 10y ago
wow im going to name my band tha... damn..
- NoGravitas 10y ago
  It would be a good name for a tribute band.

taneq 10y ago

> Also, having small children affect sleep although not directly Hah. Haha. Hahahahahhahaa trails off One of ours woke 4-6+ times per night, every night, for nearly a year straight. It's beyond just "affecting sleep" and well into Gitmo-style sleep deprivation.