It’s not easy. Two things that seem to be really important for me:
In the morning I have multiple iPhone alarms to wake me up and a physical alarm clock across the room to get me out of bed. The one inviolable rule is that once the alarm clock gets me out of bed, no going back to sleep. That gets me up at the same time every morning.
I also try to go to bed at the same time each night. I’ll admit that I’m not as consistent about this as the getting up part. In part, that’s because getting to bed at the same time every night is harder. But it’s also because staying up late doesn’t screw me up as much as sleeping in would. If I stay up a couple of hours I’ll be miserable the next day. If sleep in a couple of hours it’ll throw me off for a week. As long as I go to bed early enough to get 8 hours in most of the time it seems to work OK.
I just read the book “Why we sleep” by some esteemed sleep professor, and he said, it is definitely not possible to catch up on sleep. It’s about the quality and not the quantity.
And I just finished listening to a survey course on sleep science by another esteemed sleep researcher (H. Craig Heller). He’s also quite clear, based on the research he surveys, that catch up sleep isn’t effective. It doesn’t address underlying long-term issues caused by sleep deprivation.
If only I’d known during my shambling zombie overworked developer phase.
Going to bed/getting up at the same times every day work best for me as well. It’s sometimes very hard for me to do this and, especially, to resist sleeping in if I stay up late. It’s that getting up later that affects my sleep quality for days afterwards - much more than getting to bed a bit (or more) late some nights. It’s how well I sleep that really matters, not how much time I’m in bed.
I’m going to keep sleeping in on the weekends. Just the joy of not having to wake up at the demand of an alarm clock is really relaxing to me, also the night before. Just knowing that I can sleep until whenever…
But I know that all sleep professionals advocate this scheme of rising at the same time every day. It’s good for all bodily functions.
I go to bed quite early, but never before I start yawning.
Then I refill the water chamber of my CPAP machine, and do my ablutions, as I’m told it is called.
Then I make sure there are no dogs in the room, and adjust the window and curtains to make it both cool enough and dark enough to sleep. (More of a problem in summer than winter)
Finally I ask Alexa to read me one of the book series I know by heart so that it doesn’t matter if I miss out on it by falling asleep. (“OK! I will stop playing in half an hour!”)
Then I ask Alexa to set a sleep timer, and Alexa for some reasons explains to me what a sleep timer is EVERY DAMN NIGHT.
Finally I put on my CPAP mask and try to find out where the bumps in the mattress are right now so that I can lie elsewhere.
I really can not believe this is such a problem for people, I have never had problems sleeping, ever.
Surely there must be some underlying issues or problems somewhere in life for this to be problem for so many people, or are we just so pampered that it’s something if we had more pressing things to worry about (like where the next meal was coming from) it would just not be an issue?
It seems that when society solves one problem it just creates others, at least in peoples minds.
You may be on to something. For many years, I needed a distraction to fall asleep because my mind would continue to work on technical problems I was facing at work.
And on occasion, an answer would come to me in the instant before I fell asleep.
Now that I’m retired, listening to a book/podcast for a few minutes is really more a habit than a sleep aid.
I work from home and am on my computer all the time … I used to be a nighthawk and thought that it would never change but it has in a BIG way…
Now I work about 8AM - till whenever - usually try to quit at 5PM and I go to bed early but thats because I listen to about 3 hours of podcasts in bed, its not only my wind down put its a ritual to fall asleep to!
I read a book on an Eink Kindle until I fall to sleep. It works much better for me than listening to something. I used to be able to read all night, but now I only last about 15 minutes before I can’t hold my eyes open.
