This whole 9-5 + going to bed at a reasonable hour thing is nice in theory & all that, but I mean, really…
monday to wednesday, I went to bed after midnight, then got up at 5-something am. This was bad, so thursday night, I went to sleep at 8:30pm, and woke up at 2-something am. Tonight, 10:30p to 2-something. So now I’m awake when sensible people are asleep. This whole adjusting to full time 9-5 employment thing is not going as gracefully as I’d hoped. =)
I’ve been trying to get back onto a 9-5 schedule for a long time, yet my body seems to think that I should be waking up at noon and going to bed at 4am. If I deviate from that schedule, I’ll just wake up at random times when I should be tired and sleeping, or feel really zoned and want to take a nap at the most inopportune moments.
It sucks, bleh.
You probably have a natural sleep cycle which ends about 2 AM, making it easy to wake up at that time. 5 AM is probably in the middle of a sleep cycle, where the brain want to complete the cycle and therefore resists waking up. The length and phase of the sleep cycle is supposedly quite constant for each individual, so it should be possible to figure out your own cycle and adjust your sleep schedule accordingly. Typically, a cycle is 90-110 minutes long, so you should be able to find another “sweet spot” between 2 AM and 5 AM (or a little bit later than 5 AM, if possible). The most reliable way to identify sleep cycles is to take note of times when you wake up and feel fully rested. Once you get a number of data points, you can interpolate/extrapolate the rest.
soemtimes to get my sleep schedule back on track, I stay up from Sun to Mon (assuming I slept super late on Sunday), then do an early shift at work and go to bed when I get home…then each day I wake up a little bit later and later until I’m waking up around 8am.