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It is certainly true that going camping will reset your sleeping schedule. Last year, my sleep schedule was to start sleeping at 8AM, and wake at 4PM; after a f
by johnfn 16y ago
It is certainly true that going camping will reset your sleeping schedule. Last year, my sleep schedule was to start sleeping at 8AM, and wake at 4PM; after a few days of camping, it had shifted all the way to sleeping at 8PM (sunrise).
The only problem with this is that camping isn't something that you can just go out and do, especially if you have any sort of obligation (work, school).
I recently "reset" my sleep schedule from sleeping at 4am to sleeping at 12am. It wasn't really that hard, and I didn't use anything tricky or uncomfortable, like starving myself beforehand. All you really have to do is climb into bed two hours before you went sleeping the previous night, and start reading. I find that reading puts you in a much more relaxed state, and after an hour or so, I don't drift off to sleep so much as it hits me like a train. :) You can knock back your sleep schedule almost an hour a day through this strategy.
The other advantage of this is that you get to do a lot of reading.
- Qz 16y agoI dunno, growing up part of the reason I stayed up so late to begin with was because I was in bed reading...
- dagw 16y agoI've basically stopped reading bed because I found myself staying up far too late reading. If I'm going to read before going to bed I do so in my chair in the living room. I've found that training myself that bed is for sleeping only works really well. This way my body seems to know that lying down in bed means it's time to shut down, since nothing more is going to happen after that. It seems to work the other way as well, as soon as I get out of bed I find myself more awake than before.
- MichaelSalib 16y agoWhen I was younger, reading in bed often caused me to stay up way too late but now it helps me fall asleep. I think the difference is that these days I only read non-fiction in bed. If I don't bond with characters and get fascinated with a plot, its a lot easier to fall asleep.
- Tyrannosaurs 16y agoWouldn't sleeping with the curtains open achieve much the same thing? From the article there doesn't seem to be much special about camping other than it removes much of the artificial control we exert over our environment (light, noise and so on). Just willingly stopping those things would be a big step in moving back into a rhythm which was more in step with the natural day / night cycle.
- joshuacc 16y agoThis depends on which direction your windows are facing. I've slept in rooms with East-facing windows where I would always wake up around 6:30-7. I've also slept in rooms with West-facing windows, where I could very easily sleep till 11.
- MichaelSalib 16y agoNot really. When you're camping, the primary illumination is the sun rather than lights under your control. Especially if you're camping in a tent without a rainfly. Plus, around dawn lots of noisy animals decide to wake up as well. On my recent camping trip to Yosemite, I found that the birds were often what woke me up.
- euccastro 16y agoIt depends on how 'natural' are the conditions outside. Light and sound pollution over the night can make it uncomfortable to sleep with curtains or windows open.
- ern 16y agoI think it would. A few years ago, my curtain rail collapsed, and it took a few days before I could have it fixed. Automatically waking up with the sun streaming through the window was a wonderful experience and I felt well rested, but, for privacy reasons, the curtains had to go back up.
- VBprogrammer 16y agoI would sleep with my curtains open more often but I generally find the sodium street lights to be an annoyance when my eyes adjust to the almost darkness. At which point they get closed. I regularly go camping and have to agree with everything the author says. The physical exertion (setting up camp, building a fire, walking around etc) lack of environmental controls and natural light certainly correct any day / night in balance immediately. Though, since I finished University I have found that just having to get to work for 9am each morning takes care of most problems. Other than the occasional nights bad sleep, usually caused by being fascinated by some programming problem or even a real life issue!
- rue 16y agoUp here in the cold, dark north a recent trend in alarm clocks is to incorporate A) a gradually intensifying "natural" bright light (think light therapy) starting about 30 mins before wakeup and B) a "natural" alarm sound such as bird calls. Works well for me in the winter. Summer not so much.