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On August 09 2012 20:03 Striker.superfreunde wrote:
One of my tutors once told me, it would be enough to sleep 5 to 6 hours during a workweek, and catch up the missing hours on weekends. I don't know if it's true, or right or healthy, but i can say, if you do so, you will have to take a nap on saturday/sunday (or whatever the days of your weekend are) afternoon.
I've heard this as well. I did it for a while and I think it works. But I feel like crap on weekends after sleeping 12-14 hours each day.
I wouldn't say this is a healthy strategy.
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This is sadly a common issue in our era with longer working hours and travel distances meaning less time to do shit so you are trying to reduce somthing that is actually really important to you. my advice would be manage your time better.
I don't know what job you do or what form of travel you take but you can do the following;
1) do personal things at work - Bring an ipod in with an audio book, listen to inside the game via podcast. you can do a lot of personal things at work without hurting your work too much (depends on the job)
2) do personal things whilst traveling, if you use the train great, thats 2 hours you can you do personal stuff rather than just thinking god this journy sucks.
3) Bike to work? (exercise + travelling bundled into one meaning for time for free time)
4) exercise at work (i don't know what job you do but depending on the job you can most likely fit some sort of excercise within your work  )
Hope this helps. don't ruin your sleep you need it, espc if you plan on excercising daily.
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From someone in the same age group with same schedule pretty switching work to school and extra stuff to studying. I sleep for 6 hours a day and have never had a problem with it, 8 hours for me is personally to long and if I sleep for anything more then 6 I wake up tired. So I spend 6 hours sleeping 8-10 depending on the day in class, roughly 3-5 studying. Within 3 things i am already sitting on 17-21 hours a day used. Takes me about 2 hours to travel to and from school so I am up to 19-23 hours used. Factor in walking my dog + shower and general morning routine my entire 24hour day is booked on a bad day. If I'm on an easier class schedule day or low study requirement day I can squeeze in some free time maybe 90minutes most 2 hours.
Sadly this is the life of an adult. It is a shitty cliche, but it is merely fact when you get to 22+ I wouldn't expect you to find 3-4 hours of personal time a day without sacrificing something more important then sleep.
Basically forgot to answer OP's question whilst I realized I have no free time to do anything writing this ( summer does not count because I am not in school ) But if you can set yourself to 6 hours of sleep and be consistent with it your body with attune itself properly to what you are trying to get it to do. It takes sometime to get use to but give it a couple weeks and you should be fine.
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On August 09 2012 20:41 rEalGuapo wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2012 20:27 Frigo wrote:
No you really can't reduce sleep time despite various claims to the contrary (binaural beats, biphasic sleep, etc). While sleeping your entire body is repairing itself, most noticeably your skin. It also processes your memories in various ways. All these take time, you just can't skip them without side effects.
However you can greatly improve your quality of sleep, which is at least as important as the amount of sleep. For quite a while my sleep was utter crap since I slept randomly and made many mistakes but over time I discovered a few cheap tricks that helped me tremendously:
- Don't drink coffee after 16:00. Caffeine has a biological half-life of 5 hours, you'll have trouble falling asleep if you drink coffee too late.
- Drink at most 2 or 3 cups of coffee a day or equivalent. Caffeine is not a substitute for sleep.
- Go to sleep early, for me that's before 23:00. Don't sleep at day. Sleeping in sunlight guarantees low-quality sleep.
- Go to sleep and wake up at consistent times every day, don't sleep randomly. Your body will get used to the routine and will be much more efficient. I know this is hard when you are a university student, but try it. At least you will have less trouble adjusting when you start going to work.
- Get a softer, more comfortable bed. Don't "get used to" uncomfortable, hard beds or awkward sleeping positions.
- Get a progressive alarm clock (or an appropriate app for your phone), it improves your awakenings and mornings greatly.
- Don't play video games (especially not something competitive), use the computer, or study anything before going to bed. Your body will stuck in some kind of hyperactive/overworked state and you will have trouble falling asleep. Instead I recommend some light reading in the bed to relax (get an e-book reader, books are heavy and a bit awkward to read in the bed).
- Don't leave on your computer or any music when you are going to bed. It's much better to sleep to silence than various noises.
- Try to do some daily exercise. Apart from being healthy, you will have zero trouble falling asleep if you exhaust yourself physically. Biking and jogging on alternate days worked for me.
- Try to shower before going to sleep, much more comfortable to sleep clean.
Thanks, all of your points seem to make sense and some of them I already incorporated into my daily life. I will try to get the rest in there as well.
Few more I can think of regarding quality of sleep and life in general:
Sleep and in general:
- Do not eat anything 2..3 hours before going to sleep. Eat healthy otherwise.
- I don't recommend to do power naps or biphasic sleep. You risk more interruptions and you will have more problems falling asleep in the evenings. It is also more difficult to plan properly. At least this was my experience, other people reported it beneficial. I'm not sure if it worth a try to mess up your sleep schedule.
- Don't try to cut down your optimal sleep time or quality by making false concessions. It will affect your waking hours very badly. Your memory, your attention, your reasoning, your mood, your looks will all be negatively affected if you don't sleep properly on a consistent schedule. I'm speaking from experience, all this will lead to a more miserable life, and that ~1 hour of extra free time will worth exactly nothing.
- Set up your alarm clock or phone to when you are going to sleep. You can observe your schedule more easily that way.
- Sleep with open windows if you live in a green area.
- Lose weight if you are overweight, it is also a source of low quality sleep (and life). See daily exercise.
If you really want the extra time, try to optimize other activities:
- If commute takes too much time, try to move closer to your school/workplace (beware, inner city noises affect sleep quality negatively) or find alternative transportation. Or squeeze in some extra activities while riding the bus like reading or doing your homework.
- Stop watching TV.
- Stop browsing the net aimlessly.
- Cut your gaming time.
- Try to find quality activities in your spare time that are also relaxing.
- Try to shop less, it shouldn't be a daily activity.
- Try to bundle your household chores. Try to do those on the weekends that do not require daily attention like washing or cleaning.
- Shower instead of bathing
- Try to eat out or eat prepackaged food instead of time consuming cooking. Still eat healthy.
- Realize when you are wasting time
At school and work:
- Don't do overtime or study too much. Your only reward will be headaches, suffering and difficulties in relaxing and falling asleep.
- You can take small breaks in your study or work (where applicable). I work as a programmer and we have a nice big couch where we can sit down and relax. It is very refreshing and improves both quality of waking hours and work performance. Don't try to study, do homework or work in breaks, just relax.
- Even if you have a variable workload, do not sacrifice your sleep time. Start studying to exams earlier. Do your homeworks earlier. Try to ensure a more even workload. At work, speak to your supervisor/manager/boss in such situations. Corporate mentality and project management has quite a few pitfalls like this, but this topic alone worth several books so I will not describe it in great detail.
- Do not pull all-nighters.
Really, it's more of a issue of getting your entire life together, not only your sleep. Ask yourself what prevents you from having a quality life and sleep and try to resolve those issues.
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Again, I think sleep is to specific to one person so a lot of the advice is really not helpful for getting better sleep. You'll have to find a good schedule for yourself. There are however ideas you should follow, and some have posted good ones. I have some as well.
Go to bed early. You need to make sure you don't stay up for Champions League or w/e, I have trouble with that, in Romania the games end at about 23:30 and it is bad for me since I might need help waking up early, or I don't, but in exchange I get up too early, since I know I need to. My internal clock is pretty good, I rarely need an alarm, but when my clock fails me it is bad.
Give yourself time for "modulation". It is a term I am borrowing from Renato Canova in the context of endurance training. One day you go hard, two days you go soft, as an active recovery. With sleep, I have a bit of modulation in my schedule, so I would sometimes wake up extremely early, like after 6-6.5 hours of sleep feeling fine, some other days I need 8.5 hours. The way you handle this is by getting up and doing stuff you don't HAVE to do no matter what. Like exercise, for instance, you can exercise if you are up early, or skip it if you get up late.
The way you feel after waking up is generally dependent on the phase of the sleep you were in when you woke up, so again, find a way to not have to use alarms, and you do this by going to bed early.
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Show nested quote +- Don't drink coffee after 16:00. Caffeine has a biological half-life of 5 hours, you'll have trouble falling asleep if you drink coffee too late.
- Get a softer, more comfortable bed. Don't "get used to" uncomfortable, hard beds or awkward sleeping positions. These two aren't correct. While Caffeine has a half-life of 5 hours, the way it interacts with the body usually results in a high point at around 30 minutes till an hour, after that you end up being more tired than before the caffein arrived in your body.
That is correct, coffee makes you tired, but it is significantly different from the exhaustion you feel from physical activities. The latter makes falling asleep easier, the former just makes you twitchy and unable to sleep. It's kind of similar when you are in front of the computer at 2 am, tired as hell, but you still can't get yourself to sleep.
Try drinking an energy drink at 3am. Find out how long it lasts for you personally till you start getting tired without big exercise or anything similar. That time usually varies between 1-2 hours for most people. Keep in mind that there are various conditions (e.g. low blood pressure) where caffeine will make you immediately more tired. That's the reason why e.g. some elderly people can drink a cup of coffee and fall asleep after half an hour. =P
Yes I did experience it several times. However it was invariably lower quality sleep, in the wrong time, and I usually woke up 3 hours into it, unable to go back to sleep. Coffee is still unreliable in this situation and should not be used to manage sleep patterns. The hard limit of 16:00 makes it sure that it will not affect your sleep in either way.
A "soft bed" doesn't make you sleep better. To effectively relax your body needs a bed that helps maintain natural positions without either letting your weight decide how that ends up looking but also without offering a flat, hard surface. Most people err on the wrong side and get too soft beds which can result in all kinds of back problems in the long run.
Back problems are caused by lack of exercise, bad posture and poor working conditions (position, duration, etc) rather than sleeping position. Sleeping is not some kind of physical therapy to fix your back, it is as you said, a period of rest. I also discovered this by experience when I tried to maintain "proper posture" while sleeping, with a hard bed and a low pillow, looking at sleep as some kind of physiotherapy. All I got was further neck problems, trouble falling asleep and low quality sleep. You should really just let your muscles rest rather than maintain an awkward position.
Show nested quote +- Don't leave on your computer or any music when you are going to bed. It's much better to sleep to silence than various noises. Not exactly true. As long as the "noise" is below a certain threshold (I think 70dB, but basically equivalent to soft music, some birds around etc.) it's actually better than complete silence. Having some sound around is comforting and relaxing.
I found it the complete opposite. For quite a while I was sleeping with my computer on. I tried to switch it off once and was flabbergasted how much well rested I was in the morning. Since then it is always off at the night. Try it out for yourself.
Show nested quote +- Go to sleep early, for me that's before 23:00. Don't sleep at day. Sleeping in sunlight guarantees low-quality sleep. Also a tricky one that you can't exactly quantify. In literally the entirety of southern europe sleeping 4-5 hours per night and 2-3 hours per day is completely normal. It depends on what you're used to and your body personally.
I'm not familiar with their sleeping patterns or quality, but I suspect they have to choose the lesser evil. There are a variety of research into how light affects sleep, they mostly agree it's not positively.
If you're like me and love browsing before going to bed there are various programs which adjust the light temperature your computer screen emits. I can't remember the one I used to use but maybe someone else can link one or google will be your buddy. Solid light (colder in the morning, warmer in the evening) is half the deal when it comes to making your body work properly despite artificial lighting.
It's not (just) the light, it's the position, the focus required for anything on it, the way I dismiss any warnings of my body to go to sleep. Also try this out for yourself, do not watch TV, use computers or anything similar before going to bed, just read something in bed to relax.
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On August 09 2012 21:05 heishe wrote:
I have some kind of magic number of minutes that I need to sleep at night. When I sleep like that, I will feel really tired when waking up (not badly tired, just this "Oh god this feels so good I need to keep sleeping") but will have 100% of my energy available during the day, not being tired even a little bit.
Unfortunately I haven't yet figured out the exact number, but this thread needs to remind me to do some testing. It's somewhere between 7 and 8 hours.
It's more of a range, it's between 7.5 and 8 hours for me. But it's pointless to try to determine it precisely, if you set up a tradition alarm clock you will almost invariably wake up like crap, just use a progressive alarm clock.
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Although most of my pointers have been covered above,I can expand a bit on how I manage on 4-6 hours of sleep a night while NOT sleeping in during my weekends/off days. I definitely don't mean to be pretentious or anything and I'm not superman. I just want to give you my thoughts because I do discuss my sleep habits a lot with friends/peers.
Here's some background info. I'm currently a nurse and work 12-15 hour shifts 2-3 days in a row. I worked this Monday-Wednesday with 4-6 hours of sleep each night. It's a very physically demanding job (I'm 24). I once used a pedometer and measured 5 miles of walking done during a shift (besides the lifting and bending I do). To those that think nurses sit around all day, definitely not at a high acuity cardiac floor. Logic says I should be drained on my off days right? Nope, slept 6 hours last night after being at work for 16 hours and woke up without an alarm clock. I'm about to go run/lift after this post! On to my thoughts on this....
1. Physically/Mentally active: I lift/run 2-3 times a week, work, volunteer once a week at a clinic, have a gf who I see x1-2 a week, and go to school part-time. I believe having a strong cardiovascular system, a strong body, etc, logically gives me a stronger body to endure a long day. I also believe an active lifestyle keeps your mind off of sleep. Ever noticed how playing video games keep your mind off of eating? I think it's a similar situation.
2. Goal: This semi-relates to sleep... but I think if you have a goal or a dream you want to work towards every day helps your mind WANTING to start the day and ACCOMPLISH things. This helps your willpower to wake up after a hard day. Imagine being jobless during the summer as a student and the only thing to look forward to each morning is gaming. What's the incentive on waking up at all? I'm pursuing med school and most of the activities in my life one way or another will help me advance towards my dream. I can't wait to accomplish things every day.
3. Napping: I believe in napping, but not for 3-4 hours! Maybe once a week (if even), I nap when I feel like I need it. I think getting 1-2 hours in (a complete sleep cycle) the afternoon is optimum. Seriously, nap if you have to. It's your body telling you it's tired (although you can reduce this by having a fitter body). Napping after a big meal doesn't count lol.
4. Caffeine: During my undergrad years, I remember popping 500mg of caffeine at a time and still required naps, but now I survive on 1-200 mg right when I wake up with no need for that mid-afternoon coffee. I'm not saying caffeine is required, but titrating the right amount to keep you peppy in the morning is definitely a plus.
5. Progressive alarm clock: Someone mentioned sleep cycles previously and I believe it's a key factor to find what works for you. Sleep disturbances is bad! I used to have that buzzing alarm clock and blare it every morning. I wake up startled and agitated. However, now I have a galaxy s3 and there is a feature in the clock that allows the alarm to progressively get louder and louder up to 3 minutes to the desired max volume. I use a very pleasant bird chirping alarm tone and it really makes a difference!
6. Bed: I sleep on a tempur-pedic bed (have a bit of lordosis), and it's one of best purchases of my life. It's hard to get used to at first, but it helps me fall into deep sleep tremendously.
7. Lighting: My day starts at 4-5 a.m. since I'm in the office by 6 a.m. It's pitch black outside, so I go to sleep with my desk lamp behind my monitor, giving my room a soft, white glow. I think this tip might be just speculating, but I think having the same sleep environment every night helps a bit.
8. Food: Carb-heavy meals make you sleepy. This is dangerous mid-afternoon and can ruin your sleeping schedule. Increasing protein helps your body recover from physical stress faster.
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I actually had the same schedule as you not to long ago with the commute and everything. with only 1 day off cause I worked 6 8 hour days a week. So I would stay up tell 12-1 am and wake up at 7 to be ready to leave for work at 8 get home around 7 and run on my treadmill while catching up on TV shows.
So I wouldn't get tons of sleep but after your body acclimates to it you can get use to that amount of sleep. It will kill you for the first couple months but after working that job for 5 years I had a decent home life with my fiance. I suggest you just do what you need to make you happy and satisfied. your going to have to move something around cause you obviously can't live like this if your unhappy with your situation so cutting a little bit of sleep or napping on lunch or something to give you that little energy boost tell your use to 6-7 hours of sleep.
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Every night i go to bed at midnight and finally sleep around 2:30am, just to get up at 8:30am for work. I wish i could get some solid 7-8 hours. Well, weekends i usually get my 10 hours to compensate.
I wouldn't recommend anyone to go for so little sleep when you have to work 8 hours, it has a serious impact on the concentration.
From what i know, the best way to get a good sleep schedule would be just going for it. Go to bed at a certain time and set your alarm to wake you up at a certain time. No exceptions. After a few weeks your body will have adjusted and you wake up at the normal time without the need for an alarm.
Didn't work for me since my brain doesn't have an "off" switch but should work for most other people.
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On August 09 2012 22:53 Morfildur wrote:
Every night i go to bed at midnight and finally sleep around 2:30am, just to get up at 8:30am for work. I wish i could get some solid 7-8 hours. Well, weekends i usually get my 10 hours to compensate.
I wouldn't recommend anyone to go for so little sleep when you have to work 8 hours, it has a serious impact on the concentration.
From what i know, the best way to get a good sleep schedule would be just going for it. Go to bed at a certain time and set your alarm to wake you up at a certain time. No exceptions. After a few weeks your body will have adjusted and you wake up at the normal time without the need for an alarm.
Didn't work for me since my brain doesn't have an "off" switch but should work for most other people.
I have the same "problem" you have. Both my parents can basically sleep whenever they want to. To them bed equals sleep (or couch / chair as well in my dads case). It always takes me a couple of hours to actually fall asleep.
The not being able to sleep made me watch a lot of TV in bed, to the point that I associate "going to bed" with "watching a few shows and then try to sleep" which made it even worse. I know I can fix this by not watching any TV when going to bed but it's almost an addiction now lol.
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I for one always sleep around 6 to 8 hours max and while i can't exactly tell why its likely because i almost always wake up around the same time in the morning.
So no matter if I go to sleep at 12 PM or at 2 AM i will still wake up around 7:30 AM, well most of the time anyways... if i am shit tired or haven't slept in a long time i might wake up later.
Thus if i have to give an advice it would be for you to try to wake up at the same hour every day and than constantly increase the time at which you go to sleep.
But i don't know if this has any backing to it, does it ? If anyone knows i would be happy to find out :p
Also sleeping is pretty much the best tool for your body to "regenerate" and more importantly it helps the brain "set" your metabolism ( and this things can be damaged by the lack of sleep even if you don't "fell tired" at all), so if you can keep it at 8 hours just keep it at 8 hours unless decreasing it to 7 or 6 really helps you.
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On August 09 2012 20:53 r.Evo wrote:
While you can't "reduce sleep time" you can reduce the non-REM sleep time. This part is crucial. Most people I know who sleep 7-8hours or more never once in their life made an attempt to find out how that works for them personally.
What I did about 7 years ago or so was devote an month on cleaning up my sleep schedule. Go to bed, set an alarmclock to ring in 3 hours, get up. Repeat this every 12 hours. The first 3-4 days were plain and flat out brutal. I didn't fall asleep quick enough, I was incredibly dizzy after waking up and I couldn't perform anything "real" during the time I was awake. After those first days what happened is that whenever I layed down in bed I started to fall asleep asap and I started to slowly feel less dizzy and it felt somewhat okay.
Next step (while you're still sleep deprived) is to find out how long your sleep phase really is (average times from 2:15h to 3:45h are completely normal) by adjusting the sleep time you give yourself in 15-30 minute increments. For me personally 2:45h of sleep in one setting just feels incredible. I wake up on the first tone of my alarm, I am immediately at full capacity and my brain just feels sharp as hell.
After spending 3-4 weeks in that schedule I started to skip one of the two phases per day and returned to sleeping 1x, now at 5:30-5:45hours per day. That has been my standard sleep time ever since when I actually want to get work in, even over longer periods of time (~4months) I had never had a problem with that timing.
What I noticed what stayed with me after a couple of years (especially comparing myself to other people when it comes to sleep) is that I fall asleep quicker, sleep deeper and am more relaxed than anyone I know. The only big "drawback" is that if I try sleeping e.g. 1-2hours at a time I'm completely wrecked. My guess would be that the body adjusted to the schedule and that time is right in the middle of a REM phase.
tl;dr: "Cleaning up" your sleep schedule might easily net you 2-3hours more, the only way I tried this personally is by living with an incredibly strict alarmclock for a couple of weeks. I don't regret it at all and would do it over and over again. Getting to know how your body and brain works and how to make them work at their best is incredibly rewarding, most people just don't bother even thinking about it.
PS: Switching from mono- to biphasic sleep and back within a couple of days feels rather normal to me, no problems there at all. Note that babies/elderly people sleep polyphasic and that monophasic sleep is more a product of our culture, not of our internal clocks. There's a reason most of us get sleepy around midday.
This guy has the right idea, although the method for accomplishing it was a bit extreme. What you need to do is figure out how long one phase of sleep is. Although I would recommend a Zeo for this instead of torturing yourself. The Zeo will also be able to show you how much time in each phase of sleep you are in during each cycle, so you can see how many cycles are optimal for you.
http://www.myzeo.com/sleep/
Not only can this show you your sleep cycle and it can give you an idea if you are missing phases of sleep, waking up due to apnea or basically any problems you have with your sleep. Additionally it can be set to wake you up when you are coming out of a sleep cycle so that you feel more rested when you wake up. I used this device after coming back from afghanistan to figure out some of my sleep problems and it showed I wasn't going into deep sleep at all. Who knows maybe you have a deeper problem than just sleep time as well.
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I think the simplest solution has nothing to do with sleep habits at all: find a better place to live. Unless you work in a really nice neighborhood, an industrial park, or the middle of nowhere, I'm sure there is housing within 10 minutes of your workplace that you can probably afford. You may not think that it's worth it to move in all cases, but realize that by doing so you will be getting almost 2 extra hours a day to do what you like, perhaps more if you conveniently locate yourself near shopping centers as well. If it becomes necessary, you could always work an extra job to pay off a down payment.
Also, you won't be living like this for the next 50 years. You can always get a new or maybe part time job, and hopefully your career has some room for promotions on your part that will allow you to secure better hours. Since I assume you have already graduated uni, you won't have a ton of options of jobs that you can do with your degree, but I'm sure there are multiple. Look into them.
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On August 09 2012 23:29 StreetWise wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2012 20:53 r.Evo wrote:
While you can't "reduce sleep time" you can reduce the non-REM sleep time. This part is crucial. Most people I know who sleep 7-8hours or more never once in their life made an attempt to find out how that works for them personally.
What I did about 7 years ago or so was devote an month on cleaning up my sleep schedule. Go to bed, set an alarmclock to ring in 3 hours, get up. Repeat this every 12 hours. The first 3-4 days were plain and flat out brutal. I didn't fall asleep quick enough, I was incredibly dizzy after waking up and I couldn't perform anything "real" during the time I was awake. After those first days what happened is that whenever I layed down in bed I started to fall asleep asap and I started to slowly feel less dizzy and it felt somewhat okay.
Next step (while you're still sleep deprived) is to find out how long your sleep phase really is (average times from 2:15h to 3:45h are completely normal) by adjusting the sleep time you give yourself in 15-30 minute increments. For me personally 2:45h of sleep in one setting just feels incredible. I wake up on the first tone of my alarm, I am immediately at full capacity and my brain just feels sharp as hell.
After spending 3-4 weeks in that schedule I started to skip one of the two phases per day and returned to sleeping 1x, now at 5:30-5:45hours per day. That has been my standard sleep time ever since when I actually want to get work in, even over longer periods of time (~4months) I had never had a problem with that timing.
What I noticed what stayed with me after a couple of years (especially comparing myself to other people when it comes to sleep) is that I fall asleep quicker, sleep deeper and am more relaxed than anyone I know. The only big "drawback" is that if I try sleeping e.g. 1-2hours at a time I'm completely wrecked. My guess would be that the body adjusted to the schedule and that time is right in the middle of a REM phase.
tl;dr: "Cleaning up" your sleep schedule might easily net you 2-3hours more, the only way I tried this personally is by living with an incredibly strict alarmclock for a couple of weeks. I don't regret it at all and would do it over and over again. Getting to know how your body and brain works and how to make them work at their best is incredibly rewarding, most people just don't bother even thinking about it.
PS: Switching from mono- to biphasic sleep and back within a couple of days feels rather normal to me, no problems there at all. Note that babies/elderly people sleep polyphasic and that monophasic sleep is more a product of our culture, not of our internal clocks. There's a reason most of us get sleepy around midday. This guy has the right idea, although the method for accomplishing it was a bit extreme. What you need to do is figure out how long one phase of sleep is. Although I would recommend a Zeo for this instead of torturing yourself. The Zeo will also be able to show you how much time in each phase of sleep you are in during each cycle, so you can see how many cycles are optimal for you. http://www.myzeo.com/sleep/Not only can this show you your sleep cycle and it can give you an idea if you are missing phases of sleep, waking up due to apnea or basically any problems you have with your sleep. Additionally it can be set to wake you up when you are coming out of a sleep cycle so that you feel more rested when you wake up. I used this device after coming back from afghanistan to figure out some of my sleep problems and it showed I wasn't going into deep sleep at all. Who knows maybe you have a deeper problem than just sleep time as well.
Ohgawd. Yeah, this looks way easier than what I did. I'll start recommending this one instead. Thanks. <3
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On August 09 2012 21:41 Badgesc wrote:
Reducing sleep time is not the way because sleep is paramount to your health.
I'm at my best with usually 10 hours or a little more a night. I chose to sacrifice TV and a bunch of crap. I think sleep should be on top of your list and the rest is less important.
After 10 hours I feel like I just stepped out of a grave. I'm tired and unproductive.
Personally I function best somewhere around 7.5 hours of sleep, but I guess it's different for every person.
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On August 09 2012 20:03 Striker.superfreunde wrote:
One of my tutors once told me, it would be enough to sleep 5 to 6 hours during a workweek, and catch up the missing hours on weekends. I don't know if it's true, or right or healthy, but i can say, if you do so, you will have to take a nap on saturday/sunday (or whatever the days of your weekend are) afternoon.
This is very true. I get completely destroyed if I don't get my regular 8 hours sleep. But during my time in the military, I could easily sleep down to 5 hours a night, and then catch back up with 12-14 hours a night in the weekends. I have no idea if its healthy for you in the long term (I only did it for half a year), but it works.
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I hear that getting better sleep can help reduce the amount of time one needs to sleep. If you're getting really shitty sleep now it could be increasing the amount of time to need to sleep.
Apparently diet and exercise increase energy as well. I'll try to confirm these ideas later.
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On August 09 2012 23:56 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2012 20:03 Striker.superfreunde wrote:
One of my tutors once told me, it would be enough to sleep 5 to 6 hours during a workweek, and catch up the missing hours on weekends. I don't know if it's true, or right or healthy, but i can say, if you do so, you will have to take a nap on saturday/sunday (or whatever the days of your weekend are) afternoon.
This is very true. I get completely destroyed if I don't get my regular 8 hours sleep. But during my time in the military, I could easily sleep down to 5 hours a night, and then catch back up with 12-14 hours a night in the weekends. I have no idea if its healthy for you in the long term (I only did it for half a year), but it works. This doesn't work at all for me. No matter how long I sleep during weekends I can't 'make up' for any sleep I lost in the previous days. I have to sleep 8+ hours each day or I'm a wreck.
Also, one thing I've noticed is that it's not only the amount of time I sleep that determines whether I feel tired when I wake up, but also when I go to sleep. Sleeping from 2300 to 0700 gives a much better effect than 0100 to 0900. Hell, even 0100 to 1100 will make me a wreck!
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On August 10 2012 00:00 Thorakh wrote:Show nested quote +On August 09 2012 23:56 Excludos wrote:On August 09 2012 20:03 Striker.superfreunde wrote:
One of my tutors once told me, it would be enough to sleep 5 to 6 hours during a workweek, and catch up the missing hours on weekends. I don't know if it's true, or right or healthy, but i can say, if you do so, you will have to take a nap on saturday/sunday (or whatever the days of your weekend are) afternoon.
This is very true. I get completely destroyed if I don't get my regular 8 hours sleep. But during my time in the military, I could easily sleep down to 5 hours a night, and then catch back up with 12-14 hours a night in the weekends. I have no idea if its healthy for you in the long term (I only did it for half a year), but it works. This doesn't work at all for me. No matter how long I sleep during weekends I can't 'make up' for any sleep I lost in the previous days. I have to sleep 8+ hours each day or I'm a wreck. Also, one thing I've noticed is that it's not only the amount of time I sleep that determines whether I feel tired when I wake up, but also when I go to sleep. Sleeping from 2300 to 0700 gives a much better effect than 0100 to 0900. Hell, even 0100 to 1100 will make me a wreck!
This is whats called a dayrythm. Some are more bound to it than others (personally I don't feel much different when I go to sleep, as long as I get my 8 hours). The internal clock in your body gets more and more bound to it the more you follow it. If you've had the same sleeping patterns for years, and then try to break out of it, its going to be hell.
Sleeping patterns also follows whoever you might be sleeping with. If you have a girlfriend or wife you sleep with every night, the chances are the internal clock is going to adjust to her/him.
The problem with giving sleep advice is that there are so many variable, everything from your internal clock, to who you sleep with, down to personal DNA. There is also the possibility of a sleeping disorder if you wake up tired even after 8 hours asleep. And they are really hard to find out about on your own. I think there was a case of some old woman being able to get enough sleep with only 1 hour a night. I'm so jealous 
to the OP: I suggest bending your daily life around your sleep, instead of the other way around. Some people just aren't made to sleep less or at variable times.
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EPT
