The First Step VI - This Is No Joke

'Your whole life has the same shape as a single day.' - Michael Crichton

My days are pear-shaped. My life is pear-shaped. Why can't it look like a sexy mango?

OK - It's been a month since I decided to get my sleep sorted out. After a further two weeks since the last post, I am still in the same position as previously. Last night was the only good night's sleep I've had in the last month. As a result, I feel GREAT!! But the rest of the month has been the same old story. Even on those rare nights that I did manage to do everything right my sleep would manage to be messed up by circumstances beyond my control. So far I've had a noisy vane over the chimney (this is serious - I live in a very windy place), thunderstorms and even flea bites! After suffering sufficiently from cumulative nights of sleep deprivation, I decided to ditch the alarm clock and just get up when I'd had enough sleep. Result: I slept over 9.5 hours and woke up with a headache that lasted the whole day and the feeling that someone had puffed up my face with a high pressure air hose. Couldn't concentrate and felt like shit. I'd prefer less sleep - as least I could gain some respite by taking a nap. Now that I'd overslept I couldn't even nap.

Clearly what I've been doing is not working. Time to change. New strategy. I'm going to drop the second of the goals I set myself, namely to be an early-riser - at least for the time being. Since I have the flexibility (almost) to sleep whenever I want, I am going to try free running sleep. In a nutshell, this means going to sleep when I'm tired and getting up naturally, without the use of an alarm clock.

The key success factors seem to be;

1. Don't go to sleep until you are tired. OK, we all know this. But my problem is that I actually have to discipline myself to wind down so I stand a chance of naturally feeling tired (circadian cycle imposes itself). So - no more late night movies. Read or watch a not too exciting travel or wildlife documentary.
2. How do I know when I'm ready to sleep? When I know that if I put the lights out, I'm confident I'll be out for the count in about 15 minutes.
   

Well, I've made two minor modifications to the algorithm prescribed by Wozniak:

1. I'll set the alarm clock 8 hours and 45 minutes from when I put the lights out. This is just an emergency backup to stop me from oversleeping which makes me feel even worse than sleep deprivation does.
2. The maid comes to clean the house comes at 08:00 on Tuesdays and 09:00 on Saturdays so I'll have to get up then to let her in. On such days, I'll just get up and have a nap as per the nap protocol.
   

As I seem to be on a 25-26 hour cycle, in theory I should be getting up later and later every day. This creates no social problems since I work at home and am going through an anti-social phase where I see almost nobody. (This is so I can focus on my big work project. Perhaps I'll write on this later.) However, getting up for the maid might mean that this won't happen.

Actually, I don't care anymore when I get up and when I go to sleep. I feel so good today that I want to carry on feeling this way. All that matters is getting a good night's sleep. Just imagine - tomorrow could be the first time I've managed to string together more than 2 consecutive nights of good sleep.

Wish me luck.