::secrets of successful seep::

[zero]

it is well to be up before daybreak for such habits contribute to health, wealth, and wisdom.
- aristotle

Originally Posted by steve pavlina.com

HOW TO BECOME AN EARLY RISER

Are morning people born or made? In my case it was definitely made. In my early 20s, I rarely went to bed before midnight, and I’d almost always sleep in late. I usually didn’t start hitting my stride each day until late afternoon.

But after a while I couldn’t ignore the high correlation between success and rising early, even in my own life. On those rare occasions where I did get up early, I noticed that my productivity was almost always higher, not just in the morning but all throughout the day. And I also noticing a greater feeling of well-being. So being the proactive goal-achiever I was, I set out to become a habitual early riser. I promptly set my alarm clock for 5AM…

… and the next morning, I got up just before noon.

Hmmm…

I tried again many more times, each time not getting very far with it. I figured I must have been born without the early riser gene. Whenever my alarm went off, my first thought was always to stop that blasted noise and go back to sleep. I tabled this habit for a number of years, but eventually I came across some sleep research that showed me that I was going about this problem the wrong way. Once I applied those ideas, I was able to become an early riser consistently.

It’s hard to become an early riser using the wrong strategy. But with the right strategy, it’s relatively easy.

The most common wrong strategy is this: You assume that if you’re going to get up earlier, you’d better go to bed earlier. So you figure out how much sleep you’re getting now, and then just shift everything back a few hours. If you now sleep from mightnight to 8am, you figure you’ll go to bed at 10pm and get up at 6am instead. Sounds very reasonable, but it will usually fail.

It seems there are two main schools of thought about sleep patterns. One is that you should go to bed and get up at the same times every day. It’s like having an alarm clock on both ends — you try to sleep the same hours each night. This seems practical for living in modern society. We need predictability in our schedules. And we need to ensure adequate rest.

The second school says you should listen to your body’s needs and go to bed when you’re tired and get up when you naturally wake up. This approach is rooted in biology. Our bodies should know how much rest we need, so we should listen to them.

Through trial and error, I found out for myself that both of these schools are suboptimal sleep patterns. Both of them are wrong if you care about productivity. Here’s why:

If you sleep set hours, you’ll sometimes go to bed when you aren’t sleepy enough. If it’s taking you more than five minutes to fall asleep each night, you aren’t sleepy enough. You’re wasting time lying in bed awake and not being asleep. Another problem is that you’re assuming you need the same number of hours of sleep every night, which is a false assumption. Your sleep needs vary from day to day.

If you sleep based on what your body tells you, you’ll probably be sleeping more than you need — in many cases a lot more, like 10-15 hours more per week (the equivalent of a full waking day). A lot of people who sleep this way get 8+ hours of sleep per night, which is usually too much. Also, your mornings may be less predictable if you’re getting up at different times. And because our natural rhythms are sometimes out of tune with the 24-hour clock, you may find that your sleep times begin to drift.

The optimal solution for me has been to combine both approaches. It’s very simple, and many early risers do this without even thinking about it, but it was a mental breakthrough for me nonetheless. The solution was to go to bed when I’m sleepy (and only when I’m sleepy) and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days per week). So I always get up at the same time (in my case 5am), but I go to bed at different times every night.

I go to bed when I’m too sleepy to stay up. My sleepiness test is that if I couldn’t read a book for more than a page or two without drifting off, I’m ready for bed. Most of the time when I go to bed, I’m asleep within three minutes. I lie down, get comfortable, and immediately I’m drifting off. Sometimes I go to bed at 9:30pm; other times I stay up until midnight. Most of the time I go to bed between 10-11pm. If I’m not sleepy, I stay up until I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. Reading is an excellent activity to do during this time, since it becomes obvious when I’m too sleepy to read.

When my alarm goes off every morning, I turn it off, stretch for a couple seconds, and sit up. I don’t think about it. I’ve learned that the longer it takes me to get up, the more likely I am to try to sleep in. So I don’t allow myself to have conversations in my head about the benefits of sleeping in once the alarm goes off. Even if I want to sleep in, I always get up right away.

After a few days of using using this approach, I found that my sleep patterns settled into a natural rhythm. If I got too little sleep one night, I’d automatically be sleepier earlier and get more sleep the next night. And if I had lots of energy and wasn’t tired, I’d sleep less. My body learned when to knock me out because it knew I would always get up at the same time and that my wake-up time wasn’t negotiable.

A side effect was that on average, I slept about 90 minutes less per night, but I actually felt more well-rested. I was sleeping almost the entire time I was in bed.

I read that most insomniacs are people who go to bed when they aren’t sleepy. If you aren’t sleepy and find yourself unable to fall asleep quickly, get up and stay awake for a while. Resist sleep until your body begins to release the hormones that rob you of consciousness. If you simply go to bed when you’re sleepy and then get up at a fixed time, you’ll cure your insomnia. The first night you’ll stay up late, but you’ll fall asleep right away. You may be tired that first day from getting up too early and getting only a few hours of sleep the whole night, but you’ll slog through the day and will want to go to bed earlier that second night. After a few days, you’ll settle into a pattern of going to bed at roughly the same time and falling asleep right away.

So if you want to become an early riser (or just exert more control over your sleep patterns), then try this: Go to bed only when you’re too sleepy to stay up, and get up at a fixed time every morning.

share your seeping and getting up tips

[xfox]

^^another winner from our friend º.

Last night was a full moon. Usually this keeps me awake.

Since I live on the east coast and work on west coast, PDT, I sleep late. In the winter months this suits me fine. In the summer months running 18/6 is teh best i do.

[daverbee]

I've used the techniques mentioned in the article all my life.
Nothing else I can add, really.
The technique Trish mentioned is used by a lot of solo sailors in competitive round-the-world races. They carry it to an extreme, though, and will go months at a time on 20 minute naps several times a day.

[trisherina]

Learn the secrets of the twenty-minute nap. If you tend to sleep only 6 hours/night or less, you'll probably feel noddy in the middle of the day or later. When you hear that siren song of sleep, succumb -- but only for a maximum of twenty minutes. Set an alarm or get someone to wake you until you have "trained" in this. Don't worry, you'll feel fine when you wake up, not all sodden. That twenty minutes will take away the nods and allow you to be quite perky until a more reasonable bedtime.

When you wake up, if you feel like going back to sleep, reflect a moment on all the times when you overslept for 10 hours or more, and felt unrefreshed on arising. That feeling of wanting to go back to sleep has nothing to do with how many hours you got. If you don't give in to it and go about your normal morning routine, you'll feel fine in ten minutes or so regardless of whether you had six hours of sleep or eleven.

[craig johnston]

weird you post this today.
last night i just could not sleep and heard the birds start singing before i
nodded off for a couple of hours fitful dozing until the alarm went off what
seemed like five minutes later.
this is not untypical.
4am to 12 noon would suit me but the world doesn't agree.

[karma_queen]

^ me too. i go through real phases of not sleeping. the last couple of weeks has been one of them

[NimbleMarmoset]

xanax helps

[Frieda]

hmm sleeping tips..

well, first of all, i dont really understand why one would want to get up early. the article mentions productivity, but the only thing more productive in the morning is my bowel movement.. i've never understood people that are able to get up early and actually feel good.

anyway, most people have a sleep cycle of 3,5 to 5 hours depending on your physical activity during the day. i guess it works the same as the 20-minute nap, but then for a longer period of time. half an hour to relax, 3 hours to sleep. then stay awake till you start feeling tired and repeat the whole thing.

after a while you'll start to wake up after your sleeping cycle is complete, never longer than 5 hours though!

and yeah, if you're not tired at night, don't go to bed.. go outside and smell the night air! the night is pretty

[Zaftig]

Originally Posted by trisherina

Learn the secrets of the twenty-minute nap. If you tend to sleep only 6 hours/night or less, you'll probably feel noddy in the middle of the day or later. When you hear that siren song of sleep, succumb -- but only for a maximum of twenty minutes. Set an alarm or get someone to wake you until you have "trained" in this. Don't worry, you'll feel fine when you wake up, not all sodden. That twenty minutes will take away the nods and allow you to be quite perky until a more reasonable bedtime.

When you wake up, if you feel like going back to sleep, reflect a moment on all the times when you overslept for 10 hours or more, and felt unrefreshed on arising. That feeling of wanting to go back to sleep has nothing to do with how many hours you got. If you don't give in to it and go about your normal morning routine, you'll feel fine in ten minutes or so regardless of whether you had six hours of sleep or eleven.

My sister lives by her "power naps" as she likes to call them.

[smellyrayzin]

2 hr naps are all i need

[rmr]

Originally Posted by trisherina

Learn the secrets of the twenty-minute nap. If you tend to sleep only 6 hours/night or less, you'll probably feel noddy in the middle of the day or later. When you hear that siren song of sleep, succumb -- but only for a maximum of twenty minutes. Set an alarm or get someone to wake you until you have "trained" in this. Don't worry, you'll feel fine when you wake up, not all sodden. That twenty minutes will take away the nods and allow you to be quite perky until a more reasonable bedtime.

When you wake up, if you feel like going back to sleep, reflect a moment on all the times when you overslept for 10 hours or more, and felt unrefreshed on arising. That feeling of wanting to go back to sleep has nothing to do with how many hours you got. If you don't give in to it and go about your normal morning routine, you'll feel fine in ten minutes or so regardless of whether you had six hours of sleep or eleven.

what'cha you talking about willis????

i like to sleep on my back with my arms over my head.........and the room must be ice cold like me -- ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!


eta this was directed toward mr. zero's first post -- not towards ms. trish

[xfox]

aaahhhh - a narcoleptic episode! nighty night.

[trisherina]

Originally Posted by rmr

what'cha you talking about willis????

I'm talking bout
Things
Like a walk in the park
Things
Like a kiss in the dark
Things
Like a sailboat ride
What about the night we cried?

[venusupnorth]

Cold as ice is the way to do it :-)

Originally Posted by rmr

what'cha you talking about willis????

i like to sleep on my back with my arms over my head.........and the room must be ice cold like me -- ARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!!!!!


eta this was directed toward mr. zero's first post -- not towards ms. trish

[Brynn]

^^^Brrrr!
Believe it or not, warm milk works occasionally. With honey and a dash of vanilla. Oh hell, have a cookie too.
I think being an early riser has a lot to do with what point you're at in your sleep cycle/REM cycle each morning when your alarm is set, doesn't it? The fact that your body adjusts to a set time no matter what time you go to bed makes sense - but if your set time is right in the middle of a dream cycle, forget it. For instance, on the rare occasions that I have to, I wake up quicker and happier at five-thirty than at seven, no matter what time I go to bed. Even shifting that set time by ten or fifteen minutes earlier could make all the difference.