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I found the best way to ensure sleep regularity is by having a fixed wake-up time. If you don’t have one and you begin to set your alarm clock to early hours, t

I found the best way to ensure sleep regularity is by having a fixed wake-up time. If you don’t have one and you begin to set your alarm clock to early hours, the first weeks doing so will feel like hell. But eventually all will be worth it. The sleepiness during the day will disappear and, at night, your body will naturally want to get some rest early. Another strategy is to fill your day with deep work and exercise, so as to ensure maximum tiredness at night. Nowadays, my sleeping patterns are mostly regular thanks to these protocols. Every day about 9pm, I feel sleepy, and my bed begins to look very enticing. I follow this pattern for my daily well-being, but it’s nice to know it reduces my mortality risk, too.

m463 2y ago
what helped me was to use an alarm clock. but to go to sleep!
- thimabi 2y ago
  In my case, having a bedtime alarm would only leave me anxious and frustrated if I went to bed and failed to sleep at that time. But I have tried something similar: setting an alarm to decompress before sleeping. No phone, no TV — just some quiet music playing or some books to read. I still set this night alarm, but it is much easier to ignore it than to ignore my body’s natural tendency to lose steam after waking up early and having done so much during the day.
  - m463 2y ago
    actually, I should correct my comment. Not alarm! but notification. What helped was notifications leading up to bedtime. two hours, one hour 30 minute, "get to sleep". It sort of gives you context to wind down.
lazyasciiart 2y ago
I did that for years with jobs that required it and didn’t find that worked for me.
- thimabi 2y ago
  That’s a bummer! Have you found out why that didn’t work? Perhaps something like caffeine or allergies was interfering with your sleep? If haven’t found out, I wholly recommend doing a sleep study if you can. It can shed some light on any obstacles you may be experiencing. I’ve never done one myself, but I know people who got enduring benefits from the insights of their studies.
  - TheBuddha 2y ago
    [dead]
  - bitwize 2y ago
    In my case it's probably a combination of undiagnosed ADHD and "revenge bedtime procrastination".
    - jschrf 2y ago
      Came here to post this. I remember once when going back on ADHD meds, a very smart doctor adding 5mg of Dexedrine. At 5pm. I asked him why he would prescribe a stimulant so late in the day. His reply was simply "it's so you can think of one thing instead of all the things". Worked for me.
  - lazyasciiart 2y ago
    It doesn't work because I fall asleep easily in the early evening or the early morning, and not so much between them. It's not affected by seasonal light, caffeine, exercise, etc. I've never considered a sleep study because once I'm asleep I'm usually fine.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- seer 2y ago
  I think I effectively switched from a night owl to an early bird by having something I _really_ wanted to do in the morning that was actually physical (martial arts classes). I remember the exact day my body switched - I was going in the early morning and my body was not approving of my initiative. Every morning was hell - but then one morning early spring we had a training outside - sunrise, early leaves on the trees in the park, we all got quite sweaty some of the guys started to take our tops off and it looked like a scene from a martial arts movie. I remember thinking this looks so cool - we’re training like our forefather used to. Next day I woke up exact time I needed no grogginess whatsoever. Have been an early bird ever since, almost 10 years now.
snvzz 2y ago
I do a version of this where what I have is a fixed wake-up time WINDOW. The window is 90m, to account for 90m sleep cycle. I set the alarm to whichever multiple of 90 falls within the wake up window. As a result, I sleep somewhere with 7h to 7h30 consistently, with the odd ~6h sleep day or ~9h in special circumstances (being sick).
- Izkata 2y ago
  There's an Android app called "Sleep" where you set an alarm window and put your phone on the corner of your bed, and the alarm only goes off when it detects you're a little active already and not in deep sleep (using the accelerometer to detect movement). If it doesn't detect enough activity it'll go off regardless at the end of the window. It has a bunch of other features as well (rating how well you slept and detecting patterns to give advice, a snore detector, etc) but that alarm is the one I use it for.
Starlevel004 2y ago
This is a fantastic way to give yourself an early heart attack.
apwell23 2y ago
for me the best way is to not worry about sleep at all. After many decades of abusive relationship with sleep. I've had enough. If it comes it comes, if not then thats ok too. I stop reading this 8 hr nonsense or fearing an early death from not sleeping. whatever.
ttoinou 2y ago
Have you ever heard the saying “correlation is not causation” ? Couldnt it be that you already had a good enough health to push you to adopt a better sleep schedule ?
tomcam 2y ago
That method nearly wrecked my life and didn’t change my sleep patterns
t-3 2y ago
Alarms aren't foolproof though. I often shut them off in my sleep or sleep through them, so I have to keep the phone on the other side of the room AND change the alarm every week or two to prevent adaptation, and that still doesn't help if I can't fall asleep for whatever reason and end up sleeping through due to sheer exhaustion. What I've found that actually works well is alcohol; if I'm not tired at sleep-time, take a swig of 130 proof absinthe and I'll be asleep before long.
- internet101010 2y ago
  I set an additional alarm one hour before I need to wake up specifically so that I can get the feeling of going back to sleep. It has really helped.
- dchftcs 2y ago
  I have found that vibrating alarms on wrist watches to be very effective. For over 5 years I've been setting a vibration alarm on my watch and another backup alarm on my phone. I never slept through the vibration alarm. Granted YMMV
- globular-toast 2y ago
  Sleep for Android has some neat modes to try to prevent this. Even just the fact it colours the snooze button green and the dismiss button red is incredibly thoughtful and works well. My just woken up brain can somehow understand "red bad". If you're on iOS the alarms are caveman style. My partner sets like 20 alarms on her phone, it's hilarious.
- thimabi 2y ago
  > What I've found that actually works well is alcohol; if I'm not tired at sleep-time, take a swig of 130 proof absinthe and I'll be asleep before long. I’d be wary of relying on alcohol to sleep, because the relaxation that it offers is somewhat distinct from a good night’s sleep. Alcohol has been known to disrupt “REM sleep”, thus making your sleep phases inconsistent. In the long run, it might leave you with even poorer sleep quality.
colechristensen 2y ago
I do much better with no alarm clock and being in situations where i don’t need one. Allowing myself to naturally wake up and being in situations where variable times to naturally wake up are ok are very much better for my brain and overall health.
clvx 2y ago
Get a german shepherd dog. They will wake you up at the same time everyday whether you like it or not.
- ErigmolCt 2y ago
  Haha, so true—whether it’s a German Shepherd or a cat, you’re definitely getting a "reliable alarm clock" that doesn’t care about weekends or your sleep schedule!
- thimabi 2y ago
  I don’t know about a German shepherd dog specifically. But my experience with dogs is that they will wake me up whether I like it or not… whenever they feel like it, even in the middle of the night. That can be severely disrupting.
lazyeye 2y ago
One thing I've done is create a "color clock" using a smart bulb that changes color based on a daily schedule. So at 8:00pm the bulb has a dim orange glow, this changes to dim red glow at 9pm and then turns off at 10pm (sleep time). Its a really nice relaxing way of ensuring a regular sleep pattern (no longer clock watching etc).
hombre_fatal 2y ago
Most people have to wake up at a fixed time for work and school their entire lives. I don't think that's what sleep hinges on, else everyone would have good regularity and we'd take it for granted. It's your behavior and attitude towards going to bed.
makeitdouble 2y ago
For people failing for a long time at fixed wake-up schedules or still feeling like shit after months of doing it: giving up is fine, and it frees you to explore what works for you. It might change depending on the seasons, and you might more or less sleep depending on what you're doing at that time. Waking up at the same damn hour everyday to deal with my kid's school was an utter pain for years, and I got in a better health and shape once I could adjust depending on my daily condition. It still have a set of fixed alarms, but regularly ignore the first ones as needed, and only wake no-matter-what for the last one for my job. I heard from other coworkers doing the same, and it was a game-changer for most of us.
- RMPR 2y ago
  > For people failing for a long time at fixed wake-up schedules or still feeling like shit after months of doing it: giving up is fine, and it frees you to explore what works for you. Another piece of anecdata from someone who used to be like this for years. I first noticed that regular alarm sounds annoyed me and eventually I would get used to turning it off and going back to sleep (that is until I HAVE to wake up). I then figured that if I set up an alarm with a song that I like, it would make waking up more enjoyable. Which I eventually did. The first few weeks, I enjoy waking up and in a sense look forward to it, but after a certain amount of time not only I get used to it and the cycle continue, but I also can't stand that song anymore (RIP rolling in the deep, chainsmoking, ...). I randomly stumbled upon the app sleep for Android that has a feature I didn't know I needed, putting a playlist as an alarm sound (I shuffle it of course). Now every morning, waking up is an adventure, and more often than not I end up singing along. Now months in, I haven't failed to wake up even once. And I don't have any alarms on Sunday, yet I still wake up without it. That is with the caveat that I know I need between 7:30 and 8h of sleep, and I stop all screens by 10 (night time feature of Android is very helpful in this regard). Except my ebook reader than I use without backlight.
- ErigmolCt 2y ago
  Finding what feels natural can sometimes be a matter of listening to those instincts rather than pushing against them
left-struck 2y ago
I agree with this except for the early part. At least personally waking up at about 8 works for me, that way I’m not waking up before sunrise in winter which makes me unhappy quite reliably. A lot of people are weirdly proud of how early they wake up, and I’ve literally been shamed for waking up late, called lazy etc in a casual sense but that’s nonsense. I just work later.
xeromal 2y ago
I think you have a key component in good sleep but there are 2 more imo. The first is that phones and light break our natural sleepiness triggers and the second is that we don't exercise our bodies enough because of our sedentary lifetstyle. I used to struggle with terrible insomnia and I still get bouts of it time to time but I've also found it's related to my laxing my 3 rules. If I have a good workout about 5x a week, I turn off my phone and the lights 30 minutes before bed and take a good long shower in the dark and I have a regular alarm set at 7am that goes off 7 days a week, I'm almost guaranteed a good nights sleep every night. It also had the added affect of ridding me of my night terrors and sleep walking I used to have frequently but I'm 90% certain that was correlated to me using my phone in bed and it causing my brain to enter a weird state where it never really turned off.
- ErigmolCt 2y ago
  Shutting off your phone and lights early is especially smart. It lets your mind and body transition smoothly into rest mode
  - xeromal 2y ago
    I think it makes the biggest difference out of my habits. I kind of picked up on it when I realized that I never struggled to sleep when I went camping out in the woods. My body would instantly fall into sleepiness when it got dark out because I had no artificial light keeping me up as well as no easy access entertainment like TV
    - ErigmolCt 2y ago
      In these conditions, your body just knows when to shut down and recharge
- duggan 2y ago
  I'm going to "yes, and" this with just one more thing that may seem obvious: almost any amount of alcohol is enough to throw that pattern out of whack. The older I get the more reluctant I am to make the trade. Few glasses of wine with friends is hard to pass up though :)
ErigmolCt 2y ago
I think a solid rhythm is important!
gastlygem 2y ago
Just here to confirm. I have facetime setup at 5am in the morning with my family across the pacific. I've also started to exercise regularly. It's been 2 months and my sleep pattern is exactly like yours, and I feel exactly like you do.

m463 2y ago

what helped me was to use an alarm clock. but to go to sleep!

thimabi 2y ago
In my case, having a bedtime alarm would only leave me anxious and frustrated if I went to bed and failed to sleep at that time. But I have tried something similar: setting an alarm to decompress before sleeping. No phone, no TV — just some quiet music playing or some books to read. I still set this night alarm, but it is much easier to ignore it than to ignore my body’s natural tendency to lose steam after waking up early and having done so much during the day.
- m463 2y ago
  actually, I should correct my comment. Not alarm! but notification. What helped was notifications leading up to bedtime. two hours, one hour 30 minute, "get to sleep". It sort of gives you context to wind down.

lazyasciiart 2y ago

I did that for years with jobs that required it and didn’t find that worked for me.

thimabi 2y ago
That’s a bummer! Have you found out why that didn’t work? Perhaps something like caffeine or allergies was interfering with your sleep? If haven’t found out, I wholly recommend doing a sleep study if you can. It can shed some light on any obstacles you may be experiencing. I’ve never done one myself, but I know people who got enduring benefits from the insights of their studies.
- TheBuddha 2y ago
  [dead]
- bitwize 2y ago
  In my case it's probably a combination of undiagnosed ADHD and "revenge bedtime procrastination".
  - jschrf 2y ago
    Came here to post this. I remember once when going back on ADHD meds, a very smart doctor adding 5mg of Dexedrine. At 5pm. I asked him why he would prescribe a stimulant so late in the day. His reply was simply "it's so you can think of one thing instead of all the things". Worked for me.
- lazyasciiart 2y ago
  It doesn't work because I fall asleep easily in the early evening or the early morning, and not so much between them. It's not affected by seasonal light, caffeine, exercise, etc. I've never considered a sleep study because once I'm asleep I'm usually fine.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
seer 2y ago
I think I effectively switched from a night owl to an early bird by having something I _really_ wanted to do in the morning that was actually physical (martial arts classes). I remember the exact day my body switched - I was going in the early morning and my body was not approving of my initiative. Every morning was hell - but then one morning early spring we had a training outside - sunrise, early leaves on the trees in the park, we all got quite sweaty some of the guys started to take our tops off and it looked like a scene from a martial arts movie. I remember thinking this looks so cool - we’re training like our forefather used to. Next day I woke up exact time I needed no grogginess whatsoever. Have been an early bird ever since, almost 10 years now.

snvzz 2y ago

I do a version of this where what I have is a fixed wake-up time WINDOW. The window is 90m, to account for 90m sleep cycle. I set the alarm to whichever multiple of 90 falls within the wake up window. As a result, I sleep somewhere with 7h to 7h30 consistently, with the odd ~6h sleep day or ~9h in special circumstances (being sick).

Izkata 2y ago
There's an Android app called "Sleep" where you set an alarm window and put your phone on the corner of your bed, and the alarm only goes off when it detects you're a little active already and not in deep sleep (using the accelerometer to detect movement). If it doesn't detect enough activity it'll go off regardless at the end of the window. It has a bunch of other features as well (rating how well you slept and detecting patterns to give advice, a snore detector, etc) but that alarm is the one I use it for.

Starlevel004 2y ago

This is a fantastic way to give yourself an early heart attack.

apwell23 2y ago

for me the best way is to not worry about sleep at all. After many decades of abusive relationship with sleep. I've had enough. If it comes it comes, if not then thats ok too. I stop reading this 8 hr nonsense or fearing an early death from not sleeping. whatever.

ttoinou 2y ago

Have you ever heard the saying “correlation is not causation” ? Couldnt it be that you already had a good enough health to push you to adopt a better sleep schedule ?

tomcam 2y ago

That method nearly wrecked my life and didn’t change my sleep patterns

t-3 2y ago

Alarms aren't foolproof though. I often shut them off in my sleep or sleep through them, so I have to keep the phone on the other side of the room AND change the alarm every week or two to prevent adaptation, and that still doesn't help if I can't fall asleep for whatever reason and end up sleeping through due to sheer exhaustion. What I've found that actually works well is alcohol; if I'm not tired at sleep-time, take a swig of 130 proof absinthe and I'll be asleep before long.

internet101010 2y ago
I set an additional alarm one hour before I need to wake up specifically so that I can get the feeling of going back to sleep. It has really helped.
dchftcs 2y ago
I have found that vibrating alarms on wrist watches to be very effective. For over 5 years I've been setting a vibration alarm on my watch and another backup alarm on my phone. I never slept through the vibration alarm. Granted YMMV
globular-toast 2y ago
Sleep for Android has some neat modes to try to prevent this. Even just the fact it colours the snooze button green and the dismiss button red is incredibly thoughtful and works well. My just woken up brain can somehow understand "red bad". If you're on iOS the alarms are caveman style. My partner sets like 20 alarms on her phone, it's hilarious.
thimabi 2y ago
> What I've found that actually works well is alcohol; if I'm not tired at sleep-time, take a swig of 130 proof absinthe and I'll be asleep before long. I’d be wary of relying on alcohol to sleep, because the relaxation that it offers is somewhat distinct from a good night’s sleep. Alcohol has been known to disrupt “REM sleep”, thus making your sleep phases inconsistent. In the long run, it might leave you with even poorer sleep quality.

colechristensen 2y ago

I do much better with no alarm clock and being in situations where i don’t need one. Allowing myself to naturally wake up and being in situations where variable times to naturally wake up are ok are very much better for my brain and overall health.

clvx 2y ago

Get a german shepherd dog. They will wake you up at the same time everyday whether you like it or not.

ErigmolCt 2y ago
Haha, so true—whether it’s a German Shepherd or a cat, you’re definitely getting a "reliable alarm clock" that doesn’t care about weekends or your sleep schedule!
thimabi 2y ago
I don’t know about a German shepherd dog specifically. But my experience with dogs is that they will wake me up whether I like it or not… whenever they feel like it, even in the middle of the night. That can be severely disrupting.

lazyeye 2y ago

One thing I've done is create a "color clock" using a smart bulb that changes color based on a daily schedule. So at 8:00pm the bulb has a dim orange glow, this changes to dim red glow at 9pm and then turns off at 10pm (sleep time). Its a really nice relaxing way of ensuring a regular sleep pattern (no longer clock watching etc).

hombre_fatal 2y ago

Most people have to wake up at a fixed time for work and school their entire lives. I don't think that's what sleep hinges on, else everyone would have good regularity and we'd take it for granted. It's your behavior and attitude towards going to bed.

makeitdouble 2y ago

For people failing for a long time at fixed wake-up schedules or still feeling like shit after months of doing it: giving up is fine, and it frees you to explore what works for you. It might change depending on the seasons, and you might more or less sleep depending on what you're doing at that time. Waking up at the same damn hour everyday to deal with my kid's school was an utter pain for years, and I got in a better health and shape once I could adjust depending on my daily condition. It still have a set of fixed alarms, but regularly ignore the first ones as needed, and only wake no-matter-what for the last one for my job. I heard from other coworkers doing the same, and it was a game-changer for most of us.

RMPR 2y ago
> For people failing for a long time at fixed wake-up schedules or still feeling like shit after months of doing it: giving up is fine, and it frees you to explore what works for you. Another piece of anecdata from someone who used to be like this for years. I first noticed that regular alarm sounds annoyed me and eventually I would get used to turning it off and going back to sleep (that is until I HAVE to wake up). I then figured that if I set up an alarm with a song that I like, it would make waking up more enjoyable. Which I eventually did. The first few weeks, I enjoy waking up and in a sense look forward to it, but after a certain amount of time not only I get used to it and the cycle continue, but I also can't stand that song anymore (RIP rolling in the deep, chainsmoking, ...). I randomly stumbled upon the app sleep for Android that has a feature I didn't know I needed, putting a playlist as an alarm sound (I shuffle it of course). Now every morning, waking up is an adventure, and more often than not I end up singing along. Now months in, I haven't failed to wake up even once. And I don't have any alarms on Sunday, yet I still wake up without it. That is with the caveat that I know I need between 7:30 and 8h of sleep, and I stop all screens by 10 (night time feature of Android is very helpful in this regard). Except my ebook reader than I use without backlight.
ErigmolCt 2y ago
Finding what feels natural can sometimes be a matter of listening to those instincts rather than pushing against them

left-struck 2y ago

I agree with this except for the early part. At least personally waking up at about 8 works for me, that way I’m not waking up before sunrise in winter which makes me unhappy quite reliably. A lot of people are weirdly proud of how early they wake up, and I’ve literally been shamed for waking up late, called lazy etc in a casual sense but that’s nonsense. I just work later.

xeromal 2y ago

I think you have a key component in good sleep but there are 2 more imo. The first is that phones and light break our natural sleepiness triggers and the second is that we don't exercise our bodies enough because of our sedentary lifetstyle. I used to struggle with terrible insomnia and I still get bouts of it time to time but I've also found it's related to my laxing my 3 rules. If I have a good workout about 5x a week, I turn off my phone and the lights 30 minutes before bed and take a good long shower in the dark and I have a regular alarm set at 7am that goes off 7 days a week, I'm almost guaranteed a good nights sleep every night. It also had the added affect of ridding me of my night terrors and sleep walking I used to have frequently but I'm 90% certain that was correlated to me using my phone in bed and it causing my brain to enter a weird state where it never really turned off.

ErigmolCt 2y ago
Shutting off your phone and lights early is especially smart. It lets your mind and body transition smoothly into rest mode
- xeromal 2y ago
  I think it makes the biggest difference out of my habits. I kind of picked up on it when I realized that I never struggled to sleep when I went camping out in the woods. My body would instantly fall into sleepiness when it got dark out because I had no artificial light keeping me up as well as no easy access entertainment like TV
  - ErigmolCt 2y ago
    In these conditions, your body just knows when to shut down and recharge
duggan 2y ago
I'm going to "yes, and" this with just one more thing that may seem obvious: almost any amount of alcohol is enough to throw that pattern out of whack. The older I get the more reluctant I am to make the trade. Few glasses of wine with friends is hard to pass up though :)

ErigmolCt 2y ago

I think a solid rhythm is important!

gastlygem 2y ago

Just here to confirm. I have facetime setup at 5am in the morning with my family across the pacific. I've also started to exercise regularly. It's been 2 months and my sleep pattern is exactly like yours, and I feel exactly like you do.