#sleep hack

I think a big part of the reason so many people have dysfunctional sleep schedules is just because beds are comfortable. That’s it. They’re comfortable, warm, and you just don’t want to get out of them. Weekend lie-ins are great, but they screw up your sleep during the week. That’s the hardest part of this: if you want to sleep regularly, you have to be regular, regardless of what day it is.

Please bear in mind I’m no medical professional and this won’t work for everyone, it’s not a universal cure to insomnia, this is just how I did it. But, if you are struggling, it’s probably worth a try.

1) Pick a wake-up time. To fix your sleep schedule, you first need to figure out how much sleep your body needs. This means fiddling with bedtimes and wake-times, and people generally have more room for flexibility with bedtimes - they just have more free time at night. So, you need to adjust your bedtime to figure that out.

Pick the time you want to wake up in the morning (I’d recommend some time around or after sunrise - getting up, probably earlier than you would otherwise, is hard, and doing it in the dark isn’t going to do much good for your mood or willingness to get out of bed.) and stick to it. I don’t care if it’s Saturday, get up. Same time, every morning, every day of the week.

2) Count back 7 hours. Generally, people need 7-9 hours of sleep a night. The goal here is to gradually increase the amount of sleep you’re getting, until you hit the right amount, and it’s best to start with an underestimate. You’ll be tired for a few days, but if you start with an overestimate, you then may not be able to sleep and this whole thing just won’t work.

So, take your wake-up time, count back 7 hours, and make that your bedtime for the moment - e.g. if you want to get up at 7am, go to bed at midnight. Again: every day of the week.

3) Put your alarm across the room. Alarms are hard to get up to. You hate the noise, so you shut it up, and go back to sleep, because you’re warm. I’ve been that person, setting an alarm every five minutes for an hour and still not getting up.

The trick to getting out of bed at your alarm is really not letting your body realise how warm it is. Wake up, get up, immediately. And the best way to do that is by putting your alarm, whether it’s a clock or a phone, across the room. It’ll go off, wake you up, and you, immediately wanting to silence it, you’ll get straight of bed without mulling in the warmth, and you’ll be more willing to stay out.

It sucks, but it works.

4) Wait a week. It takes around a week for your body to adjust to a new sleep pattern, so you might not really know whether or not it’s enough sleep until then. Since 7 hours isn’t enough sleep for most people, you’ll probably be sleeping right up until your alarm goes off. You’ll probably be tired during the day, but it’s ultimately worth it, and, besides, that’s what caffeine is for.

5) Adjust. After the first week, make your bedtime half an hour earlier. Wait another week. If, after the week, you’re still sleeping right up to your alarm, make it another half hour earlier, and repeat, until you start naturally waking up just before your alarm. When you wake up naturally at the time your body’s used to, it means you’re getting enough sleep.

Ideally, you should wait a week between each bedtime, but, if after you’ve got to at least 7.5 hours, you’ve been going to bed at a certain time for a few days and are still tired, you can adjust slightly early. But not until after at least a couple of nights.

6) Exercise your willpower. Honestly, it gets harder once you’ve worked out how much sleep you need, because when you wake up before your alarm, you do have a few minutes to enjoy the warmth of your bed. Even if you keep putting your alarm across your room (which I would highly recommend), it can make you want to get back into bed. You have to force yourself not to. 

As a person who makes my bed every morning, after quieting my alarm, I have to go straight back to my bed to make it, because I refuse to let my alarm blare as I do that. Personally, I keep a water bottle with my phone across the room, which I chug from once the alarm’s off. I also open my curtains because it wakes me up, then I make my bed.

When you wake up before your alarm across the room, it’s all down to your will.

7) Adjust as necessary. The amount of sleep you need does change throughout your life, so, if your sleep schedule stops working for you, adjust it. Work it out again.

If there’s a specific morning or night in which you have to wake up early or go to bed late, that doesn’t meant change the unnecessary one - if you have to go to bed an hour late, wake up as you usually would, and vice versa. It’s a little tiring, but worth it.

If the time you need to wake up changes, feel free to adjust the whole schedule. You need to wake up an hour earlier than usual from September, wake up and go to bed an hour earlier. It’ll take your body a few nights to re-adjust, but it works.