This past week and weekend, I ran a little experiment on myself.  A Question.  Without alarms, noises, lights or stimuli, what time will I naturally awaken?  The answer is a little worrying.

Noon.

That right. Noon on a Saturday.

I could be missing the world out there.

Of course, this has more to do with a very uneven sleep schedule.  I was up until 2:00 am on some of those nights, but even still, I’m over-sleeping.  That makes me tired when I wake up and then tired throughout the day. If I’m tired all day, there’s a tendency to simply sleep later, compounding the problem.

Other nights, I stay up extra  late and get up extra early.  Then I’m tired from not enough sleep.

That’s called Sleep Debt.
And we’ll get into it later, but not quite yet.

The body likes a schedule.  I can change my sleeping times easy enough, but the problem is making them stick. I can’t suddenly be up a 6am.  Getting up is the issue.  I’m groggy.  Tired.  It’s worse than being drunk,  I cant help but hit the snooze button and think, its fine. ‘Work wont miss me’ i think in my near drunken sleep-stupor. ‘I have hours until I have to be up.  Days to sleep’

not so good.

The answer of course is simple: Baby Steps.

All it takes is small subtle changes:  setting the alarm 15 minutes earlier a week.  Once I’m used to noon, for example, 11:45 isn’t so early.

Once I’m used to 10 am, 9:45 am ain’t so bad.  And so on.

This is step 1.

Step 2:  Getting to Sleep on Time

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