I’ve been a late riser for the majority of my conscious life, but over the past 2-ish years my sleeping patterns have been changing pretty significantly. KK & I began making a conscious effort to go to bed earlier, and as we got better at it, we started naturally waking up earlier.
Like, really early. We’re lights-out most nights by 9pm, sometimes even earlier, and I find myself waking up naturally, completely refreshed and ready to go, often between 5:30-6am.
This is boggling—but what’s even more boggling is that I like it. Seriously, I feel like I’ve discovered some kind of cheat code to life. There’s so much time in the mornings to do stuff now—I get a jump on work, do some house errands, or sometimes just screw around on the internet for a couple of hours without feeling like I should be doing something else. On weekends, I’m shitposting on reddit at 6am, then doing fun weekend stuff.
As a weird added bonus, i haven’t needed an alarm clock for more than a year. I just…wake up. It’s crazy.
It is with some shock that I have realized that I’m now on basically the same sleep/wake schedule as my parents—asleep by 9, awake by 5-6.
It sure happens to me. I go to bed between 9-10, and wake up between 4-5. No alarm clock. Sometimes I may sleep in until 6. I used to need the alarm clock to wake up at that time. Now I set it just as an insurance policy.
Yup. In bed by 9pm and usually up by 4am for the past few years now. I’ve overslept if I’m up at 6am.
With two teenage offspring in the house, the mornings are usually the calm before the storm for me on my off days. I cherish those early morning hours.
Probably a lot of people, but not all. My dad is early to bed, early to rise; my mom has always been a night owl, but now that they’re getting up in years, she doesn’t sleep through the night and ends up taking a nap during the day. I take after my mom - I’m a card carrying night owl. And if I may mix metaphors, I’m no spring chicken*. Unless I’m super exhausted, if I try to go to bed before 11pm, I just toss and turn. Not a good combination with having a 5am meeting every Monday. I’m generally late to the meeting; the meat doesn’t happen for 20 minutes anyway. I start the week at a deficit, so I generally sleep in Saturday until like 10 at the earliest, sometimes noon.
*My buddies and I recently had a oh shit moment when we realized we’re pushing 50… 50!
The fiance and I try to be in bed by 9:30ish or so because I am normally in the office by 7am. But it’s still a fucking pain to get up in the morning. Years of military service ought to have helped me, but no dice lol
I don’t get this. There are the same number of hours in the day no matter when you get up. Unless you’re relying on businesses open at a certain time, you can do things whenever.
I’m older than you and this hasn’t happened to me. I find it difficult to go to bed before 11 and even that is pushing it.
Yeah, I get that it’s subjective. I dunno, I feel less time pressure to accomplish my shit for the in the AM than I do in the PM. Being awake earlier and having more morning feels like each day is super long and I’m not rushed.
Of course, the other side of that is that it’s quarter after seven right now and I’m feeling like it’s 10 or 11pm. Sleep is starting to creep.
What the ever loving f*&k?
What moronic, mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging twatwaffle schedules a meeting for 5am on a Monday?
If anyone sent me a meeting request like that it would be declined immediately.
Some of us are pushing it backwards. Like @Road_Rash I’m 2 years past that (and about to be 3 years)
It sounds like I’m almost exactly one year younger than you, @MikeP.
I actually need less sleep these days. If I get over 6 hours of sleep in a night, I’ve really slept. I think some of that comes from being female and the hormonal changes that happens at this time of life. Then again, about twice a week I find that I get home and need a nap, so I sleep for about two hours in the afternoon. Eh. In other words, yes, my sleep patterns have changed some as I’ve gotten older.
I’ve been working a schedule since early 2016 where I have to work late 3 nights a week. It’s doing nothing good for my sleep schedule. Maybe change by the end of the year.
I was of the “stay up till 2 AM, barely make it to work by 9 AM” persuasion for a number of years.
Then I got married and moved 45 minutes (then 75 minutes) away from work. I found myself going to bed earlier and having to get up at 6 AM to be sure I got to work on time, and actually ended up getting to work much earlier and more reliably than when I lived close to the office.
Job change, life events, etc. - but somehow I managed to stay on that 6 AM wake-up schedule, with or without an alarm, regardless of the day.
Now I’m pretty much on a “get into bed between 11 and midnight, wake up by 6” schedule, and I’m often awake before my alarm. The kids are up by 6 for no good reason at all. But then I stay in bed catching up on things on my iPad until 6:30-6:45.
The days where I’m awake well before 6, I squander the time and I really need to get better about taking advantage. Even if I got out of bed at 6, I could jump on the rowing machine and get a solid 30 minutes in before getting ready for work.
This week, though…not going well. I was at work overnight Saturday (got home at 5 AM), got 3 1/2 hours of sleep then had to baby-sit stuff all day Sunday for no good reason. I was asleep by 10 Sunday and had trouble getting up Monday morning. Asleep by 11 on Monday and felt mostly OK Tuesday morning. But the older I get, the more being off my sleep schedule hurts.
I’m with you - completely dread Monday mornings - but it is not work related. It is for our Bible study class leaders, so the group can meet for a couple hours and then have time to get to work by 8ish.
I used to schedule 0800 CST project review meetings at Boeing to get back at my PacNW colleagues who really enjoyed scheduling meetings at 1700 PST. If they’re gonna demand I stay two hours late, I’m gonna demand they get up early.
I used to have 6 AM meeting regularly. That’s what happens when you have to have meetings with people around the world. For the guy in India it was 9:30 PM, for the guy in Switzerland it was 3PM, 7PM for the person in Singapore.