Month: May 2007

So, about 2 months ago, I was your average geek: between 5-8 coffees a day, a couple of cans of stimulant drinks (i.e. Red Bull), up ’til the small hours in the morning, waking up all tired, falling asleep at school, etc. And I wasn’t happy with this…

So, after doing a bit of research into sleeping patterns, how sleep works, monophasic, biphasic and polyphasic sleep, I decided to change.

First of all: Cut out the caffeine. I did this in a really stupid way; completely stopped drinking anything with caffeine in it in one go. I suffered… The headaches were terrible! Fortunately, I didn’t get the “shakes” I’ve heard and read about…

Secondly: Drink a lot (of water). Apparently you’re supposed to drink around 2l (8 250ml glasses) of water per day; coffee and tea doesn’t count towards this, so this went kinda well with the first thing! I started drinking lemon tea, more apple juice, and much more water. I need to go to the toilet more than in the past, but I started feeling so much better, physically. I currently attempt to have about 500ml at breakfast: herbal tea and applejuice, 1l throughout the day: water, and another 500ml at home: water and herbal tea. This seems to fit in with my schedule well, and I often find myself drinking over 2l per day :D.

Thirdly: Go to bed at the same time each evening. This seems to me to be one of the more important parts of the schedule… I go to bed at around 23:00 on a daily basis, and always attempt to stick to it. Sticking to your bedtime is especially important during the adaptation phase…

Fourthly: Exercise. Ride a bike, go on long walks, go for a jog, go to the gym, whatever! Just attempt to get at least 40-50 minutes of exercise done per day (IMO). Not only does it make you physically fit, but it also helps you wake up in the morning (when you first wake up) and early afternoon (when your body temperature slumps a bit and you get tired… this is why Italians have a mid-afternoon nap) by helping your body temperature rise quicker.

Fifthly: Get a lot of light. I’m talking real light here, not light from those flourescent lights you have in the office. You gotta get real sunlight. Obviously, this could be difficult for some people in the world… Especially in the UK, but I managed it… It’s relatively simple to get more sunlight – open the curtains, walk places – don’t drive. Don’t wear sunglasses, go outside for lunch, go outside to think stuff over, move your desk to a window, etc, etc. You can also get artificial light generators (commonly used by recovering insomniacs), but I’ve never tried one… All this light helps your body temperature rise quickly, ensuring that you wake up faster and stay awake more throughout the day. BTW, please use your common sense here, and be sensible… Say, if you’re on Tatooine, or someplace just as sunny, do wear sunglasses, do cover up, and so on… UV light is dangerous, and can cause irreversible damage to your eyes (eye problems can be influenced by the amount of UV light accumulated by your eyes over time). Just don’t go overboard in either direction… there really is no need to stare at the sun all day long, but do you really need to wear sunglasses at 8am in the morning? 😉

That’s about it! I used an alarm clock (well, my mum woke me up) to get up at 07:00 every day, but after about a week, I would be up at about 06:55. “Amazing!”, I thought… After a while, I would be up at about 06:45! After about 3 or 4 weeks, I was even getting up before 06:00! At the moment, I normally (read almost always) get up at between 05:00 and 06:00 without the aid of an alarm clock, and I’ve even managed to get up before 05:00 (This was after getting more exercise than normal). So, it seem that my body *naturally* wants me to get around 6.5 hours of sleep per night, which is pretty spiffy… I’m always amazing people when I tell them what time I wake up in the morning without an alarm clock… And they always seem to think I’m lying, or on some kinda drug or something… Even my own parents don’t understand how I manage to do it!

After a while, you get to the stage where you can change your bedtimes on occasion, for example, go to bed earlier, and still get up at the right time. So far, I’ve only tried going to bed earlier, but not later than 23:00, but from the looks of things, I should be fine.

At some stage, I’d like to attempt polyphasic sleep, but this is likely to happen sometime later in my life when I have a less restricting schedule.

Oh, just an endnote.. drinking lots of alcohol makes you sleep more unless you can get it out of your body fast.
Also… I tend to find it good to only use the bed for sleeping… If I, say, lie in bed with my laptop, or start reading a book in bed, I get sleepy much quicker than I otherwise would.
Hm! Self-discipline is also important! Resist the urge to “sleep-in” when you wake up, that’s a bad thing to do and is likely to muck you around…

**EDIT** Added stuff about using common sense to ‘light’ section ***EDIT***