71–80 of 151 posts
3 weeks ago I decided to wake up at 5h30 every morning and go to the gym until 7h, when the sun rises. It's been really good and making the most of light hours in this season has been a major boost on my moral.
I moved from NYC to SF, but I didn't change my natural sleep schedule when I did ;) I just didn't let myself slip -- so the first week, I woke up at 5-6am every day and started to get tired around 11, and 3 years later, I'm on the same routine.
I always roll my eyes a little bit when people say they get extra "free hours" by waking up earlier. In this case it works for the OP, because he has another motive, which is syncing his schedule with his wife so he can spend more time with her. But the extra hours don't come from nowhere... you need to compensate by losing a comparable amount of time at night. My waking hours are usually 10-11am until 2-5am. It's no…
e.g. this review article http://www.nature.com/nrendo/journal/v12/n1/full/nrendo.2015...
I've been thinking about buying a light therapy box[0] and adding an esp8266 or similar to connect it to my home network. I could position it above my bed and have my phone's alarm trip it on. It would be interesting to see if it gave me a motivation boost throughout the day in addition to helping me wake up. [0]: http://www.amazon.com/Verilux-VT20WW1-HappyLight-Intensity-I...
http://meaningness.com/metablog/sad-light-lumens
http://lukeskaff.com/diy-sunlight-simulator-light-therapy-fu...
I think the most important tip is just start waking up early. Like 5am early. By the end of the day you are exhausted. It'll get easier to go to bed at the right time and waking up will get easier. Things like stimulants, diet, light, sound, etc are all well and good, but nothing trumps just being awake and active for 18 hours.
It will probably take a week or two for your natural sleep cycle to change. I find morning exercise helps this process. (Yes, you too can be one of those crazy assholes at the gym at 6am!)
I always roll my eyes a little bit when people say they get extra "free hours" by waking up earlier. In this case it works for the OP, because he has another motive, which is syncing his schedule with his wife so he can spend more time with her. But the extra hours don't come from nowhere... you need to compensate by losing a comparable amount of time at night. My waking hours are usually 10-11am until 2-5am. It's no…
I do understand your point but I still feel you're missing something. It's not pure coincidence or random that there is not a lot of advice out there about how to stay up late and sleep in. Nor is it completely irrational that there is a lot about waking early. There's something to being in sync with nature and the sun, maybe, or the psychology of the /idea/ of getting an early start, even if it is just an idea. I wo…
Add that a lot of people who work physically hard in that sort of tiring shift work (especially people my parent's age) learn to consider early rising a moral virtue and a badge of worth, and you've got a lot of pressure to hold it up as an admirable standard. It can get pretty silly, to the point that I've seen people promoted for punctuality despite a record of poor performance; factories are different, of course, but America was built on the power of heavy industry, so it's a philosophy that pervades. To wit: even in fields where work spans months instead of hours, getting up daily 'before your competitors' gives you an 'edge'. It's a really odd notion if you look at it closely.
On the other hand, I find the added mild stress of waking early, combined with a ritual (absolutely and especially like making coffee as noted in the article) helps me have an excellent start to the day. I don't usually do that, but I really like it when I do.
Waking early is nice, so long as I'm not horribly sleep deprived to start; or so stressed that I can't fall asleep early.
EDIT: I should note that I'm just skimming the surface here. That industrial timing may really be rooted in how trains had to be critically on-time, which forced plants to be ready or miss the ride, and vice-versa. The whole topic is stressful to read about, but really interesting.
I always roll my eyes a little bit when people say they get extra "free hours" by waking up earlier. In this case it works for the OP, because he has another motive, which is syncing his schedule with his wife so he can spend more time with her. But the extra hours don't come from nowhere... you need to compensate by losing a comparable amount of time at night. My waking hours are usually 10-11am until 2-5am. It's no…
We're products of evolution and thus we have physiologic reasons to have our sleep/wake cycles tuned to the sun. There's a decent amount of scientific evidence in favor of "sun-conscious" sleep patterns. e.g. this review article http://www.nature.com/nrendo/journal/v12/n1/full/nrendo.2015...
My body just doesn't really seem to care. If travel or work demands it, I can pretty easily get up at any time in the morning. Usually I enjoy it. I almost always wake up right away if I've set an alarm, and have little inclination to snooze unless severely sleep deprived. But usually I just go to bed 8.30 hrs before I need to be up, and things take care of themselves.
Here in Thailand where I'm staying there's a custom of waking up before sunrise, so I've been going to sleep around 9 to wake up at around 5.30, enjoying the sunrise with a cup of Nescafé and some reading.
I think the fact that my 3G is metered, plus the warmth and the dark evenings, make it rewarding to sleep early. And I do love the early mornings. Walter Benjamin has a quote that I can't help but agree with (in One-Way Street):
> Anyone seeing the sun come up in front of him while awake, dressed–out walking, say–will retain throughout the day above all else a sense of the sovereignty of an invisibly crowned king, and anyone having the day break over him at work will feel, around noon, as if he had crowned himself.
I can't identify with being either a night owl or a morning person; I just go to bed when I find it reasonable and wake up 8 hours later. The struggles some people have with sleep seem tortuous; I feel blessed.
However, if someone is snoring ever so quietly... Or a clock is ticking... No sleep for me until the infernal noise is silenced. Rain audio works too.