Adjusting sleep patterns for people who don't want to grow up

I won’t tell you today about the benefits of sleep; you already know that sleep is very useful and pleasant. This is probably one of my favorite hobbies. In this article I will tell you about how I sleep professionally. There are, of course, things that I would like to improve, and this will be discussed in the “Experiment” section.

Child's sleep

In childhood and adolescence, our sleep is regulated by external circumstances. This is the opinion of parents, the schedule of kindergarten and school. We do not yet have a special say in staying home and not going anywhere. The schedules of other people who do not hesitate to adjust us and set certain limits depend on our efficiency in the morning.

Once upon a time we were put to bed at 20:00, then we gradually began to rebel and bedtime shifted, depending on the resilience of our parents’ character. In high school, computer games, TV series, pornography and other interesting things appeared, which are so pleasant to do late in the evening, when darkness falls on the city and there is no need to rush anywhere.

At this moment, we begin to slowly steal our sleep. A child's body can normally withstand lack of sleep. It’s hard in the morning and the first two lessons at school, and then the problem fades into the background. It is quite possible to survive this for the sake of these sweet and forbidden hours, when everyone thinks that you are sleeping, but in fact you are quietly doing your childish things behind a closed door. You can and probably have been caught, but it makes the game more interesting.

Student's dream

At some point, without warning, adulthood begins. We are throwing off the shackles of preparing to enter a university, there is a new world around us, new friends and an intoxicating feeling of youth and freedom. Depending on their temperament and inclinations, some study hard, others immediately dive into the whirlpool of parties, adventures and relationships with the opposite sex. Sleep is not important in this context. A young body can easily withstand sleepless nights and hangovers. New impressions are what is needed and important now. If you take a responsible attitude to your studies, you still come to the first class, albeit in zombie mode. For now, productivity is not important for you, your goal is to graduate from university and finally start working. After all, work will provide you with resources for your beautiful and wonderful life.

A careerist's dream

A surprise awaits you at work. You need to work there, and work very effectively. Previously, it was necessary to go through checkpoints, such as a session, preparation of coursework and a diploma. It didn’t matter to those around you how you passed these checkpoints. Now, everything is different. You are under constant surveillance and control. No one is interested in the fact that it’s difficult for you to get into work at 8 am because you haven’t slept enough. Competition has appeared. If you are not effective, you will be overtaken, you will fall into stagnation and have nothing to brag about to your friends and relatives. The son of his mother’s friend always steps on his toes and this should be remembered. It’s good that there is a boss for whom it is important that you come to work on time. This fear makes you wake up in the morning at the first sound of the alarm clock and run very quickly if you missed this call.

There are a little fewer parties than during the student period, but money appears. And the money you can spend is a powerful catalyst for sleepless nights. As a result, you are hiding again, only this time from your boss. No one at work knows what you were doing at three in the morning yesterday. And now you are sitting at the computer, looking at the monitor with a blank gaze and looking quite professional. You're definitely not like everyone else. You manage to work and live life to the fullest. I wonder how long it will be possible to hold out in this mode? Well, it’s okay, in the summer there will be a vacation in Asia, where you can sleep off. In the meantime, you can be patient; it’s good that willpower is still replaced by a corporate pass to the building and a vigilant boss. And to this American who suggested having breakfast in the center at 7:30 in the morning, we will tell him that, unfortunately, there are no free slots in the morning this week.

Entrepreneur's Dream

One day you close your eyes, and when you open them, you no longer have a strict boss and a salary. There is no office where you have to go by 8 am. Congratulations, you have grown up. There are no people left in this world who can influence what time you go to bed and get up. Freedom, in its truest expression.

At this stage of my life, I personally began to experience complete debauchery in terms of sleep. Going to bed at 6 am and getting up after lunch is easy. Never scheduling meetings in the morning is a great habit, because it can be done.

Unfortunately, the human psyche works in such a strange way that the disappearance of inhibition makes the possibility of stealing sleep from oneself less attractive. Waking up again around lunchtime, you realize that you have lost a huge part of your working day. Minimal time management paints a terrifying picture of 2-3 working hours a day, which time tracking showed. But there is so much to do; an entrepreneur usually has much more ideas than time.

Several years were enough for me to realize the fact of a radical decrease in work efficiency due to lack of sleep. I’ve heard and read a lot about this, but I’m structured in such a way that I don’t trust other people’s experience and I definitely need to personally confront the problem. This is how my learning and learning process works.

The first step for me was to think about how many hours I sleep. The recommended amount of sleep for my age group is 6-8 hours. I conducted a two-week experiment in which I slept 6, 7 and 8 hours, and took notes in the morning and afternoon and assessed my level of performance. I was surprised to find out that the optimal sleep duration for me is 7 hours. If you sleep more, it’s harder to wake up and get up in the morning, and during the day you feel groggy. So I started setting my alarm clock so that I always got about 7 hours of sleep, and after a week I got used to this routine. It's cool that my Android phone allows me to see the time before the alarm goes off, very convenient. I'm sure your phone can do the same.

Sweet bad habits

My main problem is not having a fixed bedtime. About a year ago, I added a daily task to my habit tracker: “Go to bed before 1:30”, but it often failed. When I'm having trouble implementing a habit, I usually cut myself some slack. In the case of bedtime, it was permission to go to bed whenever I wanted on Friday and Saturday.

Gradually, I began to succeed, although the level of protest against the fixed bedtime remained high. This is my sweet time, when no one wants anything from me. It’s so nice to spend it chatting, watching YouTube, playing something or staying late at a party.

I realized that the very idea of ​​​​protecting this night time comes from childhood and is some part of my inner child. He stamps his foot and doesn't want to sleep. He is not at all convinced by the rational argument that in the morning, being cheerful and motivated, you can have a much more interesting time than drooling while lying on the couch at night. The trouble is the subconscious association of going to bed late and having a good time in youth and student life. I noticed that when you work until late at night, you don’t want to protect anything. I want to finish quickly and dive into my beautiful bed.

I have an objective lack of working and personal time. This is some kind of starting point for me now. There are too many ideas, too few hours in the day. If you learn to plan, then life becomes completely scary. You can come up with tools and techniques as much as you like to increase the efficiency of your schedule, but objectively, additional hours can only be taken from the evening, moving them to the morning.

And within myself, I always understood this, but for some reason my brain did not allow me to focus on this thought. It has always been so obvious, but for me it is a path full of sacrifices.

Experiment

I decided to approach the issue radically, turn off the lights at midnight and fall asleep at half past twelve. In the morning wake up at 7:30. This is the daily routine, probably “normal” people live this way, I don’t know. I've been running from this my whole life.

A week later, I noticed that after 23:00 my eyes began to close. Those. The body quickly got used to it and rebuilt itself. He clearly likes what's going on. And I, in turn, spend the morning stress-free. I have certain morning rituals that are more pleasant to perform when there is no need to rush anywhere. Now I will tell you how my evening and morning usually go.

Evening ritual

In an ideal world, I set my alarm for tomorrow at 11:30 p.m., put my phone somewhere where I can't reach it without getting out of bed, and read fiction on my Kindle for 30 minutes before bed, then turn off the lights and turn on the audio at midnight. a book for an hour. I really like falling asleep to short fantasy stories, 40-60 minutes long. I used to listen to Model to Build, and now I listen to Puffin Cafe and Harry Still. Audiobooks are needed to turn off your thoughts. Sometimes I follow the plot, sometimes I just listen to how the author’s voice sounds. If you listen to one reader for a long time and fall asleep to it, the very timbre of his voice will perfectly turn you off after 10 minutes. To be honest, I very rarely listen to stories. This habit helps me fall asleep better than sleeping pills. I bought it when I flew a lot on business trips to Siberia and Europe.

In the real world, you can find me in bed with my phone, and sometimes bedtime is late. But according to my concept of habit implementation, it is important to constantly try, despite the failures that will happen anyway. From the results, there are already days when I act according to the chosen system and this makes me very happy.

Morning ritual

Unfortunately, I almost never dream. If I had seen them, I would definitely have written them down immediately after waking up, and then fed them to ChatGPT and asked them to explain them. But since this doesn’t happen, let’s go back to my morning.

I get up on an alarm clock, without it I don’t feel safe because of the loss of control. For some reason it’s important for me to know what time I wake up. For many years I tried to find a tune that would cause me minimal pain. If you have such a melody, please share it in the comments – I’ll try it.

I recently got a Smart Band 9 fitness bracelet. Using this inexpensive toy, I measure the duration and quality of sleep. She also knows how to wake you up with vibration, which is very nice. Much nicer than hateful music. The only problem is that I have never gotten up when only a bracelet woke me up. The action to turn it off is too simple and is carried out automatically in a dream.

I eventually came to the conclusion that first I would have a bracelet, and then, after 5 minutes, a phone that was out of my reach.

For me, an important goal is to get up right away. Those. Do not open messenger while lying in bed. This is quite a difficult task, I tell you. Some people don't use their phone for an hour after waking up, but this isn't possible for me yet. However, I know for sure that if you don’t get up right away, you can fall asleep or spend 30 to 60 minutes aimlessly in a warm and cozy bed. The fear of going out into the big world is similar to the feeling when you are already standing on the shore and need to jump into cold water. And you need to jump right away because… this painful anticipation and fear is significantly worse than the action itself. The imaginary safety of a warm blanket and a messenger is the most unexpected source of stress for me. Yes, yes, the bracelet measures stress and I conducted an experiment.

Therefore, having gathered my will into a fist, I get up, brush my teeth, drink a glass of water, do exercises, go outside to do the horizontal bars, and then have a leisurely breakfast. All this is very pleasant to do if you wake up early and quite painful if you have to rush or spend part of your working hours on it.

Conclusion

It is clear that there will always be super-people around who go to bed at 22:00 and get up at 5 in the morning. For me this is still hardcore. But moving bedtime one hour earlier and trying to always go to bed at the same time is a completely feasible task for everyone. Try doing something similar with your routine today, without delay.

I come up with systems for managing various aspects of life in Notion and Obsidian and I’m writing about this on Telegram. Subscribe if you are interested, I am happy to answer all questions in the comments.