I wake up every day between 5 and 5:30. I have worked with the Brits for the past 2 1/2 years and they are 5 hours ahead of my time zone, so my 5 is their 10. I also work from home, so one day seems pretty much like another, so I’m up at the same time every day.
I miss the days when I could stay up late and sleep late!
I have to wake up around 7am to get to my job on time. On the weekends, if I don’t have anything for which I need to get up early, I’ll easily sleep until 10, even 11. The only time in my adult life in which that wasn’t the case was the six months or so when I had an ulcer; my stomach would wake me up by 7:30 or 8, demanding food. Once the ulcer healed, I was able to sleep late once more.
I work in the office three days a week and at home two days. My alarm goes off at 6:30 on Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays and at 7:30 on Wednesdays and Fridays. No alarm on Saturdays and Sundays. I usually haul myself out of bed around 8:30 on Saturday. Sunday ranges between 8:30 and 10:00, depending on whether I can persuade the family to leave me alone.
Left to my own devices, I’m happiest sleeping 1:00am to 9:00am.
If left to my own devices, my natural sleeping schedule seems to be about 3am to noon. Following a “normal” schedule requires an alarm clock. I would not get up in time for work/school/whatever otherwise; I wouldn’t even notice the time has come and gone.
Anything earlier than 7 or 8am is painful. I can do 6am consistently for a while, but good lord it sucks. I usually aim for midnight to 8am, unless I have to get to an office instead of working from home. I’ll still sleep in when I can.
I have no natural sleep pattern. It can be inconvenient in it’s own way, since I have a hard time waking up and will oversleep 100% of the time if I don’t have something to jar me awake at the right time - and oversleeping makes me feel ill. But the advantage of not having a ‘schedule’ is that I adapt effortlessly to any changes in my normal routine (which is bed around midnight when my boyfriend turns in, up between 6 and 8 so I can go to work or get some things done before I go to work). I’m out like a light 5-10 minutes after I lie down and I sleep very soundly. Once I get out of bed, I always feel alert and ready to go - at 5am or 12pm, after 4 hours of sleep or 7. The only exception is if I get more than 8 hours of sleep - then I feel like hell.
I really hope I get a ‘wake-up time’ when I get older. It seems a lot of people do with age. It would be awesome to just find myself wide-awake at 6:30 in the morning! I’d have to make sure to go to bed earlier.
My boyfriend is a schedule person, and his schedule isn’t in time with America’s. He spent his early life feeling groggy, nauseated and otherwise awful for hours if he had to get up before 9-10am (which he had to be for school of course). As soon as he graduated high school he swore he’d never get up early again, and he’s managed to avoid ever holding a job that starts before 12pm. He is tired at the same time every night, and wakes up naturally at the same time each day. Doesn’t matter if he had to stay up til 4am the night before and is exhausted - 9-10am is his wake-up time no matter what.
I have no sleeping pattern and no schedule there for my sleep and rest… Because due to the job work and also some kind of the study with my job is continuing there… Also giving time to my family and friends in evening and night… Working and studying late night that’s why I can’t sleep well and properly… I have only 4 to 5 hour sleep from all the 24 hour’s…
I will wake up at 6-6:30 a.m. However, if I don’t have to get up, it’s very easy for me to go back to sleep. Actually even if I do have to get up, it’s still very easy for me to go back to sleep.
However, I have found that if I have to be up early, say for a job that starts at 8:30 or 9, I need to set the alarm for some time before 7, because for some reason I just cannot get up between 7 and 9 a.m. Earlier doesn’t make me happy but I can do it.
I must be getting younger. I find I’m getting to be more and more of a night owl as I age. I usually get to bed by about 1:30 - 2:00. Midnight is an early night for me. At this rate, I’ll be partying 24/7 by the time I’m 70.
I don’t use an alarm clock, and my job has no pre-defined start time (they don’t really care when I arrive, as long as I cover all my responsibilities). I’m 55 and usually wake up between 4:30 and 5:30 am every day including weekends.
I wake up with the dawn whether I want to or not – I’m a light sleeper and (stupidly!) have sheer curtains, and the light just wakes me up.
I’ve actually been having problems sleeping for months now because of this and my natural inclination as a night owl – I wake up around 5:30, stay in bed trying to sleep until 6:30, drag myself out of bed to go to work and feel exhausted all day…until around 5 pm. Then I have plenty of energy, and I’m wide awake until around 11-11:30. I sleep around 6 hours a night, which isn’t nearly enough for me. ( Back when I was in grad school, I slept from 1 or 2 am to 9 or 10 am, and loved it.)
Then comes the weekend, when I so look forward to sleeping in, and…nope, I wake around 5:30 and can’t fall back to sleep. I sleep fitfully throughout the night, too. It’s really taking a toll on me.
Coincidentally, last night I made a promise to myself to go looking for opaque curtains after work this evening. So this thread just confirmed my need for them – thanks!
I could have written this to the word. (Except the NYC part.) The day my kids were old enough to get their own breakfast in the mornings was a great, great day for me. My preferred schedule, absent any other commitments, is stay up until 3-4 am, and then sleep until around noon or so.
I was a night owl as a teenager and young adult, but once I started working full time, I switched to a wake up time of between 5:00 and 6:00 am. For most of my early 20’s, I would still stay up late on the weekend and sleep late. Around 26 or 27, I started waking up earlier on the weekend, and now it’s to the point that I’m going to bed around 10:30 or 11 pm and am up by around 7:00 or 7:30 on the weekend too. I feel like I’ve wasted a good portion of my day if I don’t get up early on the weekend. I like to get stuff done and then have the rest of the day to relax.
Those of you that stay up well past midnight - what do you do? Watch TV? Read? I do a lot of outdoor activities (cycle, run, work on the yard, walk the dogs, etc.) so need daylight to do them and couldn’t really imagine altering my schedule so I get less daylight hours.
Read, write, surf the Internet, play computer games, watch TV, do the grocery shopping, bake stuff, chat with friends online. Whatever, really. If I’m out socializing, I’m probably not even home until after midnight.
For me, I like the peace of the night - no phone calls and the only noises from outside are the mating calls of passing drunks. So I work on various daft hobbies, spend time on the internet, read books, enjoy the silence and use it to think about stuff.
My natural routine would be to sleep past noon and go to bed at 4 or 5 am. I work shifts, so some mornings I’m up at 7am, some at 9am, and on my 3 days off I don’t care what time I get up. It’s rarely before 1pm.
I don’t need daylight to walk my dog. He loves night walks, things smell different, other animals are out. He loves it. He often gets walked after dark, by me or the ex.
But like others, I spend a lot of time online. I play my computer games. I find I feel more creative in the early hours of the morning, so when I’m writing a lot of that gets done between midnight and dawn. Sometimes I read, sometimes I watch TV. Given I’m in Australia, my early morning hours are often peak time for my international friends to be online, so I’ll surf the net or chat or catch up on my forums.
I’m a 20 year old college student, so my advice should be taken with a grain of salt, but generally I find what helps me to maintain the sleeping schedule I want is controlling light carefully. If my room is dark, then my brain is okay with sleeping. I’ve had as much as a 3.5 hour difference between weekday and weekend wakeup times.
However it is also the case that I usually don’t get a lot of sleep between Sunday and Monday. This does serve to get me properly tired for an early bedtime on Monday, but it can make Mondays stressful.
Lessee - Monday, I set alarm to 12:30 AM (middle of Sunday night), so I can get to work by 2 AM. Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, the alarm is set to 3 AM so I can get in by 4:30. Friday is a free day, and I generally plan to do things early, but often end up sleeping till 9 or 10. Saturday, I have to get up at 7:30 AM, then I pretty much party all Saturday, stay up late, sleep in on Sunday till 10 AM or so, then party the rest of Sunday till I try to go to sleep sometime between 6 PM and the time I have to wake up the next Monday.