My Sleep Habits

I actually find it somewhat ironic that our first real assignment concerns our sleeping habits as I have recently taken a real interest in the science behind the state of unconsciousness that we call "sleep." Between working out for about 90 minutes daily on top of my full time job as a butcher, I already felt rather fatigued most days, so with the start of the school year just on the horizon and knowing that my school workload would stretch my already scarce free time even thinner, I made the decision to attempt to maximize my productivity while awake. And through my research on how to do just that, I found that far and away the best way to increase productivity during the day is to decrease productivity during the night; that is, sleep a full eight hours as often as possible. 

Now, for me personally, this poses a challenge. I work from 5am-2pm five days a week, meaning 
I must wake up at 3:30am almost every day; in order to get eight hours of sleep on that schedule, I'd have to be asleep at 7:30pm every night. Most people would consider that pretty damn early, myself included. I would realistically fall asleep around 10pm most nights, if not later, but I realized that if I wanted to get more done during the day, the solution was not to stay up past my bedtime to squeeze as much in as possible; in fact, I came to the opposite conclusion: if I want to maximize the amount of work I can handle, then I actually need to shorten my day in order to fully rest my body and wake up feeling invigorated and prepared. So, in early August, armed with this newfound realization, I began to make a conscious effort to hit the sheets at 7:30pm every night. 

In all honesty, it was extremely difficult. In the beginning, I found myself losing track of time most nights; 9pm sneaks up on you pretty fast if you don't pay attention. If I didn't appropriately manage my time, I found meeting my new goal almost impossible. I concluded that I needed to structure to my life down to the half hour in order to really achieve the elusive 7:30 bedtime. If I idled for half an hour after work, or watched some YouTube after getting home from the gym, then that meant that I'd either have to cut out basic household chores (which my roommates sure wouldn't appreciate) or waste money on takeout for dinner instead of cooking at home in order to make up the lost time. Doomscrolling on my phone became my number one enemy - 30 minutes of needlessly loitering in the abyss of the internet meant 30 less minutes of sweet peaceful slumber. 

Over the first couple weeks I struggled greatly with forcing myself into bed at an hour when every neuron in my brain was screaming at me to stay up and do things, and even if I did actually find myself in bed at 7:30, my brain refused to believe that it was time to settle down for the night, leading to an hour or so of just frustratedly laying in bed. However, I persisted, and like with most things, practice makes perfect; as my body and brain began to accept the new rhythm I had introduced, it became easier and easier to meet my bedtime. By the time school started, I was typically in bed by 8:00 at the absolute latest, and I had begun to notice a drastic difference in my energy levels during the day. No more power naps in the break room at work! No more dozing off on my lunch break! No more 300mg caffeine shots just to have the energy to go hit some dumbbell curls at the gym! My new schedule had me feeling fresh and focused, a stark contrast to the state of perpetual malaise that I found myself trudging through almost daily beforehand. I came to understand that the science was true - that my sleep deficit had been taking a massive toll on my well being. 

But then school started. 

Prior to the start of this semester, I hadn't taken a single class since the pandemic cut short my senior year of high school back in March 2020. Not having any academic workload for over four years lured me into a sort of naiveté that managing schoolwork on top of my current duties would pose little challenge. I was wrong.

Week one of school was rough to say the least. Hours of classes and homework just didn't seem to fit into the perfectly balanced puzzle of a daily routine that I had crafted, no matter which way I looked at it. I overshot my 7:30 bedtime every single night. After the first week of school had concluded, I reflected on how I could possibly manage this new workload on top of all my prior responsibilities. I decided that I had to make a compromise. After mulling it over, I calculated that an extra hour of wakefulness every day would likely allow me to fulfill all of my responsibilities. It would require discipline, but it was doable. So, I made the tough decision to extend my bedtime to 8:30pm, decreasing my sleep to seven hours nightly. 

I'd be lying if I said I didn't notice a difference in my alertness throughout the day when I cut back to seven hours, but seven hours still felt vastly superior to the five-ish hours I had been getting for the previous year since I picked up the 5am opening shift at work. I found I could properly function with minimal naps and rarely found myself feeling absolutely dreadful. So, for two weeks now, that has been my schedule: an 8:30pm bedtime and a 3:30am wake up for seven hours of nightly sleep. This varies slightly on my weekends, but because my body has grown accustomed to this schedule, I typically don't have the energy to stay up past 10pm anyway. I'll typically ditch my alarm on weekends and allow myself to wake up naturally around 6am-7am on these days, ensuring that I get at least eight hours. 

This schedule has worked well for me so far, so I plan on sticking to it. 

That's all folks.