So a little over a week ago, I was reading some random news article — can no longer find the URL, otherwise I’d provide it, sorry — that was revealing the shocking news that, in a study done on (IIRC) college football players, if they got up to 10 hours of sleep, they performed much better. Anyways, it was nothing really earth-shattering. I mean, every other news story is the same: get more sleep, eat less crap, worry less, and you’ll live longer! But I decided to make a concerted effort to get more sleep for a week and see if it made a difference. Since I can’t sleep in any later, my poison of choice was to go to bed earlier – between 8:30 and 9PM.
It’s annoying, as it turns out, to try and get more sleep. I’ve been going to bed in the 10-11ish time frame, on an average night, for ages. There are exceptions, but mostly they are of the ‘get to bed later’ variety. So deciding at 8:50PM that it was bedtime was foreign and, honestly, made me feel like a big baby. And, for example, on the nights where I don’t get out of class until 9PM, it’s impractical. But mostly I made it to bed on (my new) time. I turned on my white noise generator — a fan — and, surprisingly, dropped off to snoozeland in pretty short order. My usual alarm goes off at 6:45AM (at which point, depending on how much I can bear the idea of facing the day, I generally hit the snooze button up to about 5 times). So that gives me roughly 10 hours of time to get sleep, which I figure gives me a fighting chance to actually get in my recommended 8 hours, or more if I need it.
I started these early bedtimes last Sunday, the 8th of November. It has already made a clearly noticeable difference. Usually, I’d be sleepwalking through work by Wednesday (after my Tuesday late class!), and by Friday, I’d be so whipped the day would take an eternity to slog through, not that I’d be doing anything worthy of note anyways. This week I was actually perky on Thursday and Friday. Possibly the sort of perky that verges on chirpy. I was awake enough to fight some sort of weird issue with an RPM spec file that has been plaguing me (Mike said to me Thursday, after listen to me lecture my computer that it was being bad: “Didn’t you start working on this, like, three years ago?” In fact, I did; I just abandoned it shortly after that point because something was on fire. So I’m picking up where I left off. It’s depressing that in three years no one else has apparently gotten Quickfix to make pretty RPMs, either. But I am determined.). I actually, like, noticed that my desk was becoming cluttered and did something about it. Plus? Today? Saturday? When normally I’d have to set my alarm to make my personal trainer appointment, then slog over there all sleepy and yawning? Today I was up at 7, on my own before my alarm even thought about going off (at 8), cleaning my kitchen, considering alternatives to Quicken, and was awake and lively for my whole workout (though not any more thrilled about the eight-pound medicine ball than normal — perhaps medical science can offer another solution for that problem).
It’s only been a week, and so far the benefit of wakefulness has yet to make me feel like less like wookat da big baaaaaaaybeeee, it’s eight o’cwock, has ta go get weddy for beddie-bye for to go ni-ni when actually confronted with the reality of early bedtime. But seriously, dudes, I was, like, awake all week at work and at class. That hasn’t happened to me in I can’t even tell you how long.
There is one other side effect I noticed: I’m dreaming a lot more. Some of the dreams are more fun than others — I kind of could have done without the one where I was on a window-washing platform being winched up to the 42nd floor of the CBOT building — but just noticing dreams at all is somewhat unusual for me. So I’m taking that as a good sign, that I am actually having the time to get into quality sleep states.
It remains somewhat to be seen whether or not I’ll be able to keep this up on an ongoing basis. For now, I’m done with scheduled classes for the year — DUDES, I HAVE BEEN BACK IN SCHOOL FOR A WHOLE YEAR, AND I TOTALLY SURVIVED IT, GO ME! — but in January it’ll kick back in with twice weekly, after work, 6-9PM classes. I think they’re Monday and Wednesday for winter quarter, though it doesn’t matter much which days, really. Saturday mornings are reserved for the gym. Sundays are homework. That means that my other weekdays, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, will be my best chances for sleep during the week. If I can get to bed by, like, 8, those nights, I should still be able to be asleep by 9, and catch up on my sleep by the next morning, thus avoiding the day-after-late-class zombie state.
But that’s long-term planning. For now, I’m just going to try and get to bed early this week too, and gauge the results. Hopefully there will continue to be less foggyheadedness…though I would not mind fewer bizarro skyscraper dreams to go along with that.
