[TommiH]

Hello everyone!

I’ve been wondering, for a while, whether and how to try improve my habit to wake up after 6-7h of sleep. The issue is no doubt quite minor for the standards of this group, but I could use some advice regardless.

My typical night goes as follows: I go to bed and fall asleep without much problem. Then, after 6-7h I wake up. I feel a big drowsy but feel like I could get up. I ask my self the same question every time: Should I get up or try to sleep another cycle?

1) If I get up, the day is kind of mediocre. I can go about my life fine, do my (creative) work at decent quality etc. I imagine most people wouldn’t notice anything wrong.

2) If I try to sleep, sometimes it works. Then I wake up feeling positively refreshed. I’m quite creative at work, answers to difficult questions come almost effortlessly, I hunger for physical exercise etc. The day feels great, and I get a lot done. However, I might have spent 2-3h in bed, drifting in and out of sleep, making the night’s total 8-10h.

3) Sometimes it doesn’t work, I waste hours failing to sleep, and feel frustrated about it.

I sometimes (such as this week) engage with sleep-related advice in order to improve this. The downside is, however, that this invites me to worry about sleep more actively, which can make it hard to even fall asleep at all. So kind of a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” situation.

I already follow decent sleep hygiene with regular bed times, no screens, etc.

Thanks in advance for any advice!

Edit: A few more tidbits:

– At any given time, my bed time is fairly regular but I’ve tried anything between 8PM and 2PM over the course of my life. This doesn’t seem to have a noticeable effect on the problem. I’m not sure if I’m a lark or an owl.

– I’m physically active but otherwise my life is very low on stresses. Especially my work and work schedule are very relaxed. I’ve wondered if a more mentally hectic life would make me sleepier (as long as it doesn’t get stressful enough to prevent sleep).

– I’ve been curious about napping and biphasic sleep (supposedly an historical way to sleep), thinking maybe a straight 8 hours isn’t for me.

• This topic was modified 2 years, 10 months ago by TommiH.

[Chee2308]

Hello Tommi!
My advice is just do what you feel like doing. If 8-10 hours makes you more happy and productive, then allow yourself to sleep this much while accepting that you are probably overdoing it and therefore making difficult nights down the road become more likely. 6-7 hours is the minimum amount of sleep that a majority of people need and is your core sleep, anything more than that is probably bonus sleep and discretionary which tend to manifests as more light sleep, lots of dreams and awakenings in between. There is no right or wrong here, trying to control sleep or anything related to it such as dreams etc is probably futile because ultimately it’s been always your own body that decides what kind of sleep and how much of it that you need and actually get.

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