I want to experiment with my sleep patterns.
Currently, on the weekdays I go to bed between midnight and 1 AM. It just doesn’t do me any good if I hit the sack earlier – I’ll just lie there unless I’m extremely tired. When I don’t have morning appointments I tend to get up between 8:30 and 9. On one hand, I’m happy to have a job where I can do that from time to time. But on the other, when I get up at that hour it’s usually 10 or later before I’m fully functioning, which means I’ve shot half the morning, and since I’m self-employed that means the only person I’m hurting is myself.
Recently I have read that healthy adult humans sleep too much – that six hours should be the maximum, and four to five, with a nap in the middle of the afternoon if needed, is ideal. This supposedly gives the best interplay between conscious and subconscious minds and results in increased creativity throughout the day. Real-life experience seems to bear this out – some of the wisest, most creative people I know do not sleep more than four hours a night, and I remember reading that Edison slept only a few hours.
Trouble is, I’ve been conditioned to believe (like most Americans) that 7-8 hours is normal. So when I go to bed at 12:30, I expect to need to sleep until 8:30 to feel good in the morning. Now, there is evidence to the contrary. Every Thursday morning I have a meeting at 7:15 AM, so I rarely get more than 6 hours sleep (and often more like 4-5) on Wednesday nights. But I always feel great on Thursday, partly because the 7:15 meeting is one I thoroughly enjoy, starting the day on a good note.
What I’d like to do is forget what time it is and just experiment to see when I wake up. I tried turning my digital alarm clock around where I couldn’t see it, but that didn’t work – I can still see light coming in my bedroom window in the mornings, which tells me it is 6 AM or later. I’d like to have absolutely no clue what time it is – when I wake up, if I feel refreshed, I get up, be it 4:30 or 11 in the morning or sometime in between. If I don’t feel refreshed, I’ll fall back asleep. I just want to know how much sleep I really need without the pressure of when I’m “supposed” to be getting up.
Ideally, I’d love to be able to get by on 5 hours a night. Then I could stay up until 2 in the morning – I do some of my best thinking late at night – and still get up at 7 in time for a full day of business or pleasure.
There’s no possible way to totally block out my 12-foot-high bedroom windows to keep the sun out. Maybe I’ll have to buy a sleep mask. Not sure I’ll like wearing one but it may be the only way I can conduct this experiment.