I am the kind of person who does best when I can stay up until 3 or 4 in the morning and sleep until noon the next day. The rest of the world runs on a much different schedule and I spend most of my morning trying not to be comatose. Now on top of this my boyfriend is one of those crazy early-to-bed-early-to-rise people, so I will lay awake for 2 or 3 hours after he has fallen asleep and he gets up and quietly goes about his morning routine for an hour or so while I stay asleep.
I’d like to be able to switch to a sleep schedule that works better with the rest of the world but any time I’ve tried I’ve failed miserably. Is it possible to change your sleep schedule or am I doomed to be noctournal for the rest of my life?
In my experience, a week or two of moderate changes is the best way to go: try going to bed an hour earlier each night until you’re sleeping and waking at the hours you want, and then maintain that schedule for a week or two. I seem to recall my sleep psychology prof telling us that it takes four weeks of waking and sleeping at roughly the same time (within a 1-hour window) each night for your body to adjust, if that helps.
Now, for the vaguely amusing anecdote: my university always ends up helping the grad students reset their sleep schedule. There’s no way this could be intentional, but it’s so staggeringly efficient that I suspect mad science.
In any event, a series of weird intersecting requirements results almost every PhD candidate preparing an annual 30-50 page piece of original research and presenting it to their adviser at the end of each year. Because almost everyone does this every year, the faculty and students have started a tradition of holding an informal science fair of sorts, in which everyone who has written a paper prepares a posterboard, sets up in the conference hall, and stands there for the next 2-3 hours as faculty circulate through the room, listening to each student’s spiel and pointing out the good and bad parts of their methodology.
The thing is, everyone is so eager to either a) please their faculty or b) not get completely reamed for doing a haphazard job that most presenters stay up for two (or, very occasionally, three) nights in an attempt to perfect their work, polish their presentations, and perhaps, in a totally theoretical manner that never happened to me, realize that they are f**king bastard screwed because the f**king bastard ultrasound broke last week and they need to create an entirely new research problem with the data they managed to gather before the scanning equipment failed… …anyway, the point is that almost everyone pulls an all-nighter on the night before they present, and since the actual function usually runs from 2pm-5pm, this results in practically every grad student running back to their room and falling asleep before 6pm.
Of course, coffee and mania tend to screw everyone’s sleep up before a month has passed, but it’s a nice gesture at the least.
I am exactly like in the OP - if it were up to me, I’d be hitting bed somewhere around 4am-7am every morning. I can force myself into a routine of going to bed just before midnight or one, waking up at 8am/9am, but I feel like I am missing my most productive hours.
I do, however, have a period of lethargy from around 4pm to around 10pm. Once I accidentally fell asleep at 8pm and woke up at 4, so I guess I could do the early morning thing if forced, but I felt exhausted and useless all day.
In summary, try to find when your energy is at its lowest during the day, the time(s) when you would fall asleep if you lay in bed (especially if you have been undersleeping). You might get lucky. If not, gradual shifts in your sleeping times can work.
I am just like the OP. I have needed to set my sleep schedule to be more traditional a few times before and it wreaks havoc with everything even after months of trying. I know now that I can never accept a job that starts before 8:30 am and even that is pushing it.
I think the 28 hour day thing sounds fantastic but unfortunately the rest of the world would have to make the transition with me for that to be effective.
I can try to get to bed an hour earlier each night but if I am in bed before 1 I just lay there trying to sleep and failing, so it really doesn’t matter what time I go to bed because I tend to fall asleep at the same time anyway. I might be able to stay up for 30 hours or something to get back around to waking up around 7 or 8 but that will absolutely suck. I might need to enlist help from some sort of over the counter medication to be able to get back onto a “normal” schedule, though honestly it might be easier for me to concoct a scheme that somehow makes the rest of the world readjust to my schedule.
Ever since I first slept in a bedroom where the rising sun shone through the window, I have woken up with the sun.
My schedule is firmly set. Jet lag is a total bitch (because I always wake up with the sun, no matter what time I go to bed) but other than that, as long as there’s a crack in the drapes, I get up when the sun does.
Can you let the sun shine in the bedroom a little? Have your boyfriend open the drapes when he gets up?
Shifts? Ha! I have the “good” fortune to work for the local convention center. That means business is what I call “event-based”, as opposed to the more common “transaction-based”. In other words, rather than a regular shift consisting of a series of transactions (using the word loosely - “transaction” here can mean anything from literal customer service transactions to assembly-line work to just about anything), we book “events”, and if there’s an “event” then I work whatever hours and days are necessary to get my task done in relation to that “event”.
A couple example work schedules (work week Mon -Sun):
Last week:
5:00P - 10:00P, 2:00P - 10:00P, OFF, 10:00A - 3:00P, 10:00A - 3:00P, 4:00P - 12:00A, OFF
This week:
OFF, 4:00P - 8:00P, 9:00A - 11:00P, 9:00A - 4:00P, 9:00A - 4:00P, 3:00P - 11:00P, OFF
Throw in some big, multi-day events, and I can end up working back-to-back-to-back 18-hour shifts (8:00A - 2:00A).
My dad told me when I was younger that I would get used to being on the schedule rest of the world basically follows. Turns out that he was full of it.
I’ve spent years working in corporate america and still can’t get my brain to function properly before around 10. Mostly you just muddle through and make the best of it.
It’s a great questioon and I’m looking forward to reading all the responses. I’m pretty much stuck on an early to rise schedule, but I haven’t really tried all that hard to change it. When I travel to a different time zone I have no trouble adapting and I seem to think that no one else does, so it should be possible to change.
Can you fall asleep, or do you fall asleep at other times of the day? Like, mid afternoon? For me, I’ve always been tired and I finally went to go get it checked out and turns out I have narcolepsy, and it runs in the family (hereditary) with no cure - so I deal with it like I have all my life. My nappytime wants to be between 2-4 for about 30mins. I do have a script for Provigil which helps me get through the tired times, and I believe I read it’s been prescribed for people to help get back on a normal sleep schedule. (not taking while pregnant)
If that’s not the case then, here’s what has worked for me since I had unhealthy habits of staying up late 2-3am consistently when I was ready for bed at 1030.
-Slowly adjust your sleep schedule
-Wind down before bedtime (sex, reading a book, watching tv)
-Don’t count sheep
-Recite the alphabet with something like ‘A’ is for ‘apple’, ‘p’ is for ‘plum’, ‘l’ is for lemon…or add in colors or other things. Bore your mind to death and eventually you fall asleep
-Deep breath/relaxation techniques. Breathe in slowly and let your belly rise, then exhale. Feel the belly go up n down. Focus on your belly or something else relaxing.
-Listen to music you frequently listen to, and not some new CD. You’ll fall asleep easier to things your mind is used to hearing and eventually you’ll just doze off.
This is me. The only time I ever got in trouble during school was for barely-paying-attention during early morning classes. My best year of college was by far my senior year, when I didn’t have any courses that began before 10am. Now that I’m out in the working world and am required to be sitting at a desk shortly after 8… not so good. At least twice a week I am completely useless before 10, sometimes more.
I feel terrible saying this, but selective alcohol can work miracles.
The one time I’ve dramatically changed my sleep schedule was when I did a cross country bike trip. We woke up two hours before dawn which I thought would be pretty near impossible for me. However, with all the exercise, I had no problem passing out at 7pm or even earlier, even if the sun was still bright in the sky.
In my normal life, if I go a few days without exercising, I have trouble falling asleep when I want to. So, my suggestion would be to try working out during the day.
