5 ms·

Go to bed earlier at night.

by pg 18y ago

icey 18y ago
This plus consistency (i.e. Don't try to wake up at 5AM M-F and then sleep til noon every Saturday and Sunday).
- kingkongrevenge 18y ago
  Consistency is for assembly lines. Sleep when you're tired. Eat when you're hungry. Just as importantly, don't eat or sleep when you're not hungry or tired.
  - randallsquared 18y ago
    ...and by following that strategy, you will soon find yourself out of sync with everyone around you, to both your annoyance and theirs. However, if you start getting up at the time you want to be getting up whether or not you feel like it, then sleeping when you're tired will eventually work. Unless you have some medical problem, I guess.
    - wheels 18y ago
      I think that's part of why I do it, actually. I've noticed that in times where I'm very busy I tend to drift to a sleep pattern that gives me the most time to work undisturbed. Like, in real crunch times, I'll start going to bed at 8:00 p.m. and getting back up at 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. Sometimes being out of synch with everyone can be a boon to productivity.
      - minalecs 18y ago
        I do the same..my schedule is quite weird.. I will wake up around 9:30 AM go to sleep around 11 or 12 PM , quick power nap till about 1 AM , work more till about 4 or 5 AM , sleep and do it all over again. I find I'm most productive at night. so this is the schedule I work around.
  - jacoblyles 18y ago
    Following that strategy was a prelude to some of my housemates getting up at 5PM for a few weeks. I felt bad for the guys sharing a room with them.
- catone 18y ago
  Consistency is the most important part. You need to reset your internal clock to get used to going to sleep and waking up at the same time. Even though it sucks at first -- you may have trouble falling asleep and then getting up early you'll still be tired -- you have to muddle through to get on a regular sleep schedule. Eventually, your body will adjust. Try not to deviate much at all. (That's advice given to me by a sleep expert at Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence, RI many years ago, when I was afflicted with a rare sleeping disorder.) She also told me never to do anything but sleep in my bed (don't read there, don't eat there, don't work, don't watch TV, etc.). Beds are for sleeping and training your brain to recognize that will help you keep to your regular sleep cycle. If you're having trouble falling asleep, get up, go sit in a chair and read for 15 or 20 minutes, then try going to sleep again.
  - chanux 18y ago
    I will never have a good sleep - wake cycle. I normally go to sleep at midnight. wake up at 0600. And the worst thing is that I work, read, study & sometimes even eat on my bed. I'm not at my home there's very little room to make big changes with. But I'll try to re arrange my little room to keep up with your advice. thanx.
tsally 18y ago
True words. A connection can be made to the programming. It's generally accepted by programmers that there is no way to "hack" the process of becoming a really great programmer. That's why it's obvious that the whole notion of "[Persons] Teach Yourself [Enterprise Language] in [Unrealistic Time Frame]" is just garbage. Yet I personally had a hard time accepting that a good night's sleep wasn't hackable. I've tried all the methods you can think of: various routines and schedules, etc. When it comes down to it, like programming, it's something you can't hack. Trying to hack a good night's sleep is much like trying to learn a programing language quickly. True success requires effort and consistency, in the case of sleep, going to bed early.
ciupicri 18y ago
What if I have a problem going to bed earlier? Sometimes, I can stay awake in the bed for at least an hour, if not even a couple of hours. It's like when you suffer from insomnia. By the way, have a look at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome
- randallsquared 18y ago
  Don't stay in bed if you're not sleeping. That just conditions you not to fall asleep when you're in bed.
  - jwilliams 18y ago
    I agree with this - particularly laptop use. The exception I have is reading. Doesn't seem to make any difference. In fact, I usually drift off better if I read.
- shard 18y ago
  Try melatonin. They usually come in 3mg pills, and I find that a quarter pill will do me fine, triggering a drowsy phase in about half an hour lasting for about half an hour. If I am in bed with the lights out, I will sleep the rest of the night. I am a night owl. When I'm not working, I naturally phase shift until I go to sleep at 5AM. When my workplace instituted a less flexible flex time so that I had to get there before 10AM as opposed to before noon, it allowed me to get to sleep early enough to be well rested.
  - ciupicri 18y ago
    I would prefer not to use any kind of pills/drugs. I have tried drinking some tea made from lime/tilia-tree blossoms and some other plants, but it wasn't quite enough. It makes me sleepy, but just a bit and for a very short time. If I don't go to bed in the next 5 minutes or so, its effect seems to vanish in thin air.
    - shard 18y ago
jonas_b 18y ago
To expand on PGs comment a little bit. I used to have serious problems with onset insomnia, almost to the point of making me sick. While trying to find a solution, I found that having a few quiet, "boring" hours before I go to bed helps me a lot to fall a sleep earlier and quicker. This means no tv, no internet, loud music etc. At first, this was extremely frustrating for me, I felt that I needed some kind audio/visual stimuli to keep sane. But after a while, I started to embrace this boredom and focus my awareness inside. Sometimes I meditate, write in my journal, take a slow walk to a beautiful viewpoint or just chill out to an old Bob Dylan album and really try to focus on the music. These days, I manage to do this about half the time, and it usually makes me calm enough to fall asleep within 30 minutes or so.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
sgoraya 18y ago
GO to bed earlier at night. Thats pretty much it - We've all read the various sleep 'hacks' and blogs out there but the only thing that worked for me was to go to bed earlier. Like an old man, I now go to bed at 10pm and wake up at 6 ;) - But business/work/wife dictates that I get up earlier - when I first started this schedule it felt like I had been missing out on the wonderful early mornings. I just felt a bit more 'fresher'. My previous schedule was 1:30-2am and waking up at 9-9:30; I sorta miss being a night owl, but both work and wife make sure I go to bed early.
- sketerpot 18y ago
  Going to bed is easy; the trick is being able to get to sleep earlier. Melatonin can help, and so can simply not getting as much sleep as you'd like for a few days in a row. And only shift your schedule in short increments if you're looking to make a bigger change eventually.
niels_olson 18y ago
To go to bed earlier 1) get up earlier 2) You can only shift your schedule about 1 hour per day. You can try shifting it more, but you're going to have sweater-head, nausea and hot flashes. If you go from getting up at 11 to getting up at 5, expect five days of feeling like crap. 3) The pineal gland is activated by light incident on the retina. So calculate when you need to go to sleep based on when you get up, and stop using the computer one hour prior. AND use Flux, or do something to turn down the absolute amount of light coming from your screen(s). 4) The sleep-wake cycle is naturally about 25 hours. It takes discipline to go to sleep at the same time every night. Or exhaustion. 5) Recent findings suggest that starvation can suspend the diurnal cycle 12 hours or more. So eat a good dinner. 6) Additionally, fats, proteins, warmth, and bulk activate the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest). Simple carbs offer none of these things. So fatty snacks are better. Unsalted nuts are a great snack (salt stimulated the cephalic phase of eating. So, sorry, but bacon is not a good snack). 7) Caffeine. Metabolized in the liver at a second-order decay rate by CYP1A2. Effective half-life is 3-7 hours. Coffee: 30-170 mg/8oz Espresso: 30-50 mg/oz Tea: 10-50 mg/8oz (more with black teas) Soda: 30-60 mg/12oz Dark chocolate: 20mg/oz Minimum effective concentration is around 0.05 mg/dL. Total body water is 40L for a 5'10" male (5'10" male has about a 70kg lean body mass regardless of total body weight and 40L of that is water. The 70kg and 40L vary linearly with height for adults). So those two cups of French pressed Sumatra you stopped drinking at 8:30 after a 7pm pasta dinner could easily keep you wired until 1 or 2 in the morning. Go on, have that chocolate ice cream, too. 8) Calculate when you want to get up (remember, you need to phase in the change, one hour a day). Establish a routine that starts at dinner. Eat. No more caffeine. Work. Have a small, fatty snack. Work until an hour before you need to go to sleep. Brush your teeth, change; lay down. Read something good. I recommend the classics. Doesn't really engage the problem-solving areas of your brain, but you've been meaning to start reading those things. Start with Plato. Very readable. 9) If you just absolutely have to go to sleep with noise, I recommend white noise. A beat, rhythm, or lyric will capture your conscious mind. As for getting up, the only thing I've found that definitely will get me up without relying on sunrise is a social commitment. If surgery starts at 7 am and I need to round on patients before then, it's relatively easy to get up at 4:15. If I'm on a "research month", um, yeah.
- 10ren 18y ago
DenisM 18y ago
I think you just lost your right to complain about comments that are shallow, flippant and/or do not bring any useful knowledge or argument to the table. Sleep is a serious subject with many intricacies and hacking one's sleep can have far-reaching consequences. By reducing it to a short soundbite you set out a bad example, and it will be followed with zeal - already it's been modded to 55. Sad.
- Kaizyn 18y ago
  Actually, the question has a simple and correct answer which is what PG provided. Just because sleep is a serious matter does not mean the advice/answer to the question must be complicated.
  - bkudria 18y ago
    Simple and correct, sure but not helpful. Answering the question is one thing, fostering good discussion is another. To foster discussion, both parties should understand each other. To help understanding, a question should not only be answered, but explained. An explanation is more helpful than a straight answer. Make sense?
tlrobinson 18y ago
Even when I want to I have a hard time going to sleep early (like before 3am) I partially blame the computer, since it seems to energize me. If I'm tired and I start using the computer I am no longer tired.

Go to bed earlier at night.

by pg 18y ago

Go to bed earlier at night.

icey 18y ago

This plus consistency (i.e. Don't try to wake up at 5AM M-F and then sleep til noon every Saturday and Sunday).

kingkongrevenge 18y ago
Consistency is for assembly lines. Sleep when you're tired. Eat when you're hungry. Just as importantly, don't eat or sleep when you're not hungry or tired.
- randallsquared 18y ago
  ...and by following that strategy, you will soon find yourself out of sync with everyone around you, to both your annoyance and theirs. However, if you start getting up at the time you want to be getting up whether or not you feel like it, then sleeping when you're tired will eventually work. Unless you have some medical problem, I guess.
  - wheels 18y ago
    I think that's part of why I do it, actually. I've noticed that in times where I'm very busy I tend to drift to a sleep pattern that gives me the most time to work undisturbed. Like, in real crunch times, I'll start going to bed at 8:00 p.m. and getting back up at 1:00 or 2:00 a.m. Sometimes being out of synch with everyone can be a boon to productivity.
    - minalecs 18y ago
      I do the same..my schedule is quite weird.. I will wake up around 9:30 AM go to sleep around 11 or 12 PM , quick power nap till about 1 AM , work more till about 4 or 5 AM , sleep and do it all over again. I find I'm most productive at night. so this is the schedule I work around.
- jacoblyles 18y ago
  Following that strategy was a prelude to some of my housemates getting up at 5PM for a few weeks. I felt bad for the guys sharing a room with them.
catone 18y ago
Consistency is the most important part. You need to reset your internal clock to get used to going to sleep and waking up at the same time. Even though it sucks at first -- you may have trouble falling asleep and then getting up early you'll still be tired -- you have to muddle through to get on a regular sleep schedule. Eventually, your body will adjust. Try not to deviate much at all. (That's advice given to me by a sleep expert at Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence, RI many years ago, when I was afflicted with a rare sleeping disorder.) She also told me never to do anything but sleep in my bed (don't read there, don't eat there, don't work, don't watch TV, etc.). Beds are for sleeping and training your brain to recognize that will help you keep to your regular sleep cycle. If you're having trouble falling asleep, get up, go sit in a chair and read for 15 or 20 minutes, then try going to sleep again.
- chanux 18y ago
  I will never have a good sleep - wake cycle. I normally go to sleep at midnight. wake up at 0600. And the worst thing is that I work, read, study & sometimes even eat on my bed. I'm not at my home there's very little room to make big changes with. But I'll try to re arrange my little room to keep up with your advice. thanx.

tsally 18y ago

True words. A connection can be made to the programming. It's generally accepted by programmers that there is no way to "hack" the process of becoming a really great programmer. That's why it's obvious that the whole notion of "[Persons] Teach Yourself [Enterprise Language] in [Unrealistic Time Frame]" is just garbage. Yet I personally had a hard time accepting that a good night's sleep wasn't hackable. I've tried all the methods you can think of: various routines and schedules, etc. When it comes down to it, like programming, it's something you can't hack. Trying to hack a good night's sleep is much like trying to learn a programing language quickly. True success requires effort and consistency, in the case of sleep, going to bed early.

ciupicri 18y ago

What if I have a problem going to bed earlier? Sometimes, I can stay awake in the bed for at least an hour, if not even a couple of hours. It's like when you suffer from insomnia. By the way, have a look at this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_syndrome

randallsquared 18y ago
Don't stay in bed if you're not sleeping. That just conditions you not to fall asleep when you're in bed.
- jwilliams 18y ago
  I agree with this - particularly laptop use. The exception I have is reading. Doesn't seem to make any difference. In fact, I usually drift off better if I read.
shard 18y ago
Try melatonin. They usually come in 3mg pills, and I find that a quarter pill will do me fine, triggering a drowsy phase in about half an hour lasting for about half an hour. If I am in bed with the lights out, I will sleep the rest of the night. I am a night owl. When I'm not working, I naturally phase shift until I go to sleep at 5AM. When my workplace instituted a less flexible flex time so that I had to get there before 10AM as opposed to before noon, it allowed me to get to sleep early enough to be well rested.
- ciupicri 18y ago
  I would prefer not to use any kind of pills/drugs. I have tried drinking some tea made from lime/tilia-tree blossoms and some other plants, but it wasn't quite enough. It makes me sleepy, but just a bit and for a very short time. If I don't go to bed in the next 5 minutes or so, its effect seems to vanish in thin air.
  - shard 18y ago

jonas_b 18y ago

To expand on PGs comment a little bit. I used to have serious problems with onset insomnia, almost to the point of making me sick. While trying to find a solution, I found that having a few quiet, "boring" hours before I go to bed helps me a lot to fall a sleep earlier and quicker. This means no tv, no internet, loud music etc. At first, this was extremely frustrating for me, I felt that I needed some kind audio/visual stimuli to keep sane. But after a while, I started to embrace this boredom and focus my awareness inside. Sometimes I meditate, write in my journal, take a slow walk to a beautiful viewpoint or just chill out to an old Bob Dylan album and really try to focus on the music. These days, I manage to do this about half the time, and it usually makes me calm enough to fall asleep within 30 minutes or so.

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]

sgoraya 18y ago

GO to bed earlier at night. Thats pretty much it - We've all read the various sleep 'hacks' and blogs out there but the only thing that worked for me was to go to bed earlier. Like an old man, I now go to bed at 10pm and wake up at 6 ;) - But business/work/wife dictates that I get up earlier - when I first started this schedule it felt like I had been missing out on the wonderful early mornings. I just felt a bit more 'fresher'. My previous schedule was 1:30-2am and waking up at 9-9:30; I sorta miss being a night owl, but both work and wife make sure I go to bed early.

sketerpot 18y ago
Going to bed is easy; the trick is being able to get to sleep earlier. Melatonin can help, and so can simply not getting as much sleep as you'd like for a few days in a row. And only shift your schedule in short increments if you're looking to make a bigger change eventually.

niels_olson 18y ago

To go to bed earlier 1) get up earlier 2) You can only shift your schedule about 1 hour per day. You can try shifting it more, but you're going to have sweater-head, nausea and hot flashes. If you go from getting up at 11 to getting up at 5, expect five days of feeling like crap. 3) The pineal gland is activated by light incident on the retina. So calculate when you need to go to sleep based on when you get up, and stop using the computer one hour prior. AND use Flux, or do something to turn down the absolute amount of light coming from your screen(s). 4) The sleep-wake cycle is naturally about 25 hours. It takes discipline to go to sleep at the same time every night. Or exhaustion. 5) Recent findings suggest that starvation can suspend the diurnal cycle 12 hours or more. So eat a good dinner. 6) Additionally, fats, proteins, warmth, and bulk activate the parasympathetic nervous system (rest and digest). Simple carbs offer none of these things. So fatty snacks are better. Unsalted nuts are a great snack (salt stimulated the cephalic phase of eating. So, sorry, but bacon is not a good snack). 7) Caffeine. Metabolized in the liver at a second-order decay rate by CYP1A2. Effective half-life is 3-7 hours. Coffee: 30-170 mg/8oz Espresso: 30-50 mg/oz Tea: 10-50 mg/8oz (more with black teas) Soda: 30-60 mg/12oz Dark chocolate: 20mg/oz Minimum effective concentration is around 0.05 mg/dL. Total body water is 40L for a 5'10" male (5'10" male has about a 70kg lean body mass regardless of total body weight and 40L of that is water. The 70kg and 40L vary linearly with height for adults). So those two cups of French pressed Sumatra you stopped drinking at 8:30 after a 7pm pasta dinner could easily keep you wired until 1 or 2 in the morning. Go on, have that chocolate ice cream, too. 8) Calculate when you want to get up (remember, you need to phase in the change, one hour a day). Establish a routine that starts at dinner. Eat. No more caffeine. Work. Have a small, fatty snack. Work until an hour before you need to go to sleep. Brush your teeth, change; lay down. Read something good. I recommend the classics. Doesn't really engage the problem-solving areas of your brain, but you've been meaning to start reading those things. Start with Plato. Very readable. 9) If you just absolutely have to go to sleep with noise, I recommend white noise. A beat, rhythm, or lyric will capture your conscious mind. As for getting up, the only thing I've found that definitely will get me up without relying on sunrise is a social commitment. If surgery starts at 7 am and I need to round on patients before then, it's relatively easy to get up at 4:15. If I'm on a "research month", um, yeah.

10ren 18y ago

DenisM 18y ago

I think you just lost your right to complain about comments that are shallow, flippant and/or do not bring any useful knowledge or argument to the table. Sleep is a serious subject with many intricacies and hacking one's sleep can have far-reaching consequences. By reducing it to a short soundbite you set out a bad example, and it will be followed with zeal - already it's been modded to 55. Sad.

Kaizyn 18y ago
Actually, the question has a simple and correct answer which is what PG provided. Just because sleep is a serious matter does not mean the advice/answer to the question must be complicated.
- bkudria 18y ago
  Simple and correct, sure but not helpful. Answering the question is one thing, fostering good discussion is another. To foster discussion, both parties should understand each other. To help understanding, a question should not only be answered, but explained. An explanation is more helpful than a straight answer. Make sense?

tlrobinson 18y ago

Even when I want to I have a hard time going to sleep early (like before 3am) I partially blame the computer, since it seems to energize me. If I'm tired and I start using the computer I am no longer tired.