My New Sleep Schedule
There comes a discrete moment when you can see a plan coming together exactly as you envisioned. This is a heady moment, a moment when you realize that just maybe you aren’t full of crap all the time.
This morning, I actually managed to sleep over the radio alarm for thirteen minutes. This means that I was too deeply asleep to notice it. This is an unmistakably good thing because it means that I haven’t set the radio volume too loud. No, it’s apparently gentle enough to wake me if I’m lightly asleep but not if I’m in the deeper stages of sleep. Victory.
My hope is that this will provide me with a better night of sleep eventually. I have the gentle radio alarm that only brings me out of light sleep, but I also have the psychological reassurance that if I need it, the alarm on my mobile phone set for 5:30 is guaranteed to wake me up. Not worrying leads to a body and brain that’s focussed on sleeping when it’s time to sleep. Thus far, it seems to be working well.
My sleeping pattern is rather odd. Up until college, I was an insomniac, sleeping for only 1-2 hours every night. When I say every night, I do mean every night of my life. Nonetheless, I functioned just fine and felt rested. Since college, I’ve started sleeping a more “normal” eight-ish hours every night, but I discovered a sure fire way to send me right back to insomnia land—take away my ability to see the time.
I’ve discovered that I never sleep for more than a hour or so at a time. I’m always waking up for little micro-breaks through the night. I check the clock, determine that I don’t need to get up yet, and then go right back to sleep without any memory of this. Without a clock to confirm the time, I can’t fall back asleep during these little waking periods. If I’m in a foreign place, I’ve learned to keep my cell phone by the bed just so I can reach out and see the time whenever I need to. One of the great conveniences of this attribute is that I almost never need an alarm clock. I just get up during the nearest convenient waking period. I’m always getting up before my alarms. This is yet another reason why I’m heartened by sleeping up through a bit of the radio alarm this morning.
Overall, I felt pretty great. I’m pretty well rested, and I’m sure that I’ll improve even more as I get more comfortable with the routine. I greatly enjoy having so much time to myself every morning, and unlike a lot of my co-workers, I’m at peak performance when I walk in the door in the morning.
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