[Litl_t]

My wake up time is 5:30a. I was just naturally waking up at that time and not getting back to sleep most days probably because that is around when my husband gets up, so I decided to use that. I don’t want that to be my wake up time at the end of this though.

I hear over and over to keep the same wakeup time. The questions I have are, how will this end time adjust further back to say 7:30a if your body is used to 5:30a. By adjusting and adding time to your sleep window at the beginning of the night I know that increases your sleep time in that direction, but once I am able to go to sleep at say 11:30p, will the wake up time just automatically start adjusting back if you want it later than 5:30a?

Also, I haven’t been using a clock because in my mind if I sleep past 5:30a, that is an improvement. I have been waking up anyway. How bad would it be to sleep past my 5:30a wake up time? I am 4 nights in with 3hr, 4.5hr, 4.5hr, 4.5hr of sleep.

When I awake around 5:30 I am conflicted. I want to get up to follow the program but I also want to test if I can fall back asleep. I end up getting up. But this focus on 5:30a makes me become aroused and I couldn’t fall back asleep if I wanted to. I guess I am still just worried that I am setting in a more permanent 5:30a wake up time that I don’t want so I need confirmation that is not how it ends up working for people.

Should I just set an alarm so maybe some stress is taken off of whether I will sleep past wakeup time?

[Martin Reed]

The start time and end time of the sleep window usually matter less than its duration and the consistency of implementation. As we start to fill our sleep window with sleep, we can start to make the sleep window longer — perhaps in 15-minute increments. This can be done by starting the window 15 minutes earlier or ending it 15 minutes later.

Setting an alarm for the end of the sleep window can certainly give us one less thing to think/worry about during the night!

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