I’ve decided to adjust my sleep schedule.
See, until today I’ve been getting roughly 8.5 hours of sleep a night. Every night. I set an alarm, and Google has a nice bedtime mode thing that reminds me when it’s time to sleep. I generally have a “no screens” rule in my bedroom which I routinely break thanks to TikTok, but still don’t spend much more than 15-30 min a night scrolling through the funnies. I can safely say that I get around 8-9 hours of sleep a night.
Is that too much? Maybe. I’ve been running on the hypothesis that I personally need more sleep because I’m a tall guy. To me, more body mass = more hours of sleep required to replenish my energy stores. That makes sense, right?1Also, I’m a Taurus. But I watched this video recently:
In short, one of the myths centers around the amount of sleep you get a night. Dr. Lieberman says that most people get around 7 hours of sleep per night and are doing fine. So now I’m thinking: maybe I sleep too much! I’ve decided to adjust my alarm to 7 hours a night to test this updated hypothesis.
Obviously there is no definitive answer to the sleep question, and not everyone gets the same amount of sleep every night due to all sorts of factors. But I’m in a position where I usually get the same amount every night and I’d like to see how I work on less.
The schedule was 10:30pm – 7:00am. Now it’s 11:00pm – 6:00am. I could do 12-7 but I’m not a huge fan of staying up late. I used to be an insomniac/night owl but the older I get, the more I enjoy the sunrise and the quiet hours of the morning. So we’ll see if I enjoy the winter darkness for an extra hour. Hell, I might even do a workout in the morning or something!
I will say that my 8.5 hours of sleep has resulted in me often waking up in the middle of a dream, which is not ideal. But Sleep Cycle kept “naturally” waking me up at around 7-7:05am, which I think was more Jowers somehow making the app wake me up than it was me actually waking up naturally. She’s a smart cat, when it comes to getting food.
On the other hand, I’ve slept 10 hours before and woken up fine, so who knows. I think the optimal amount of sleep is “what feels right when you don’t have an alarm clock.”
That’s all. Just something to think about re: your sleep schedule. I’ll let you know how well it goes.
- 1Also, I’m a Taurus.
