Besides ditching the snooze button, I have another great tip to improve your sleep.
A STABLE SLEEP SCHEDULE
A few months ago, one of my friends mentioned that it should be really healthy to have a stable sleep schedule. And so I thought “yeah why not try it, makes sense that the body craves a stable biological rhythm right?”
So I set my alarm to wake me up at the same time every day, and already after a few weeks I experienced much more energy and much fewer of those nasty drops in energy that I used to have during the day. Now I have had a stable sleep schedule for several months and it’s just fucking awesome so that’s why I really recommend you to do the same.
When you have a stable sleep schedule you can also quit using an alarm clock.
How to create a stable sleep schedule
You shouldn’t focus on going to bed at the same time every day – that’s not the most important thing. The most important thing is that you wake up at the same time every day. So decide on a time that you want to wake up, and set an alarm for that. Use that alarm for a couple of weeks, until your body has adapted to the new stable sleep schedule. Then, you will discover that your body automatically wakes up just around the time of your alarm. When you start to feel this, you can basically shut the alarm off and wake up naturally without an annoying beep tone. If you’ve still not escaped 9-5, or if you have to be somewhere at a certain time, you can set the alarm to ring 20 minutes later, just as a backup, if your body’s natural clock will fail.
So yeah, the basic steps are:
- Set a certain time to get up
- Get into the rhythm
- Adjust your bedtimes accordingly.
So, lets say you have a fixed wake up time that is 8am. Then, you always have to keep that, and then you just go to bed when you’re tired. So if one day, you feel tired at midnight, it’s a sign that – to be fresh and well-rested at 8am, the body needs to sleep now. Your body will tell you the right time to go to sleep so you are fresh for your wakeup time. When you feel you are tired, go to bed.
A stable sleep schedule is natural
It’s a great pleasure not to be woken up by some fucking annoying alarm. The body is made for nature. We are cavemen. And that’s the problem with our current society, because when we go out in the nightlife or watch TV until late in the night, we disrupt the natural rhythm of our bodies. And the change from weekdays to weekend is also confusing. A lot of people get up at 6am from Monday to Friday, and then in the weekends they go to bed at 6am and wake up at 12 instead. This swing in sleep schedule is very confusing for the body because the body is used to adapt to nature, wake up at sunrise and go to bed when its dark and it feels tired. By following the natural patterns a little more, you will feel much better.
I wake up now, by myself, and I feel FRESH when I wake up. Why? Because my body wakes up at the right time. It wakes up when I’m FRESH. My sleep circles are not destroyed by an alarm. I’m fresh during the day and Im never going back to the random sleep schedule.
Obstacles for a stable sleep schedule
Also, it’s not that big of a thing to change. All you have to do is wake up at the same time every morning. You know… usually you already wake up AROUND the same time. Now just make it exactly the same time.
The thing that can be hard is if you are going to bed late, because you are going out in the nightlife or work as a stripper like me. Then you might go to bed a little late. But you just have to force yourself to get up at your fixed wakeup time, and maybe you will be tired earlier the next night, but then just go to bed and wake up at 8am again.
If you feel like it’s impossible to keep a stable sleep schedule because you have to go out and party until 6am in the morning, then maybe you should consider ditching the afterparties and getting some sleep instead. There’s many ways to have fun and to hit on girls… And umm… I just see A LOT of guys waste their time in the nightlife… So… I’m just saying… There’s other ways to spend your time. Yes, nightlife can be fun, I haven’t really done it for the past 1½ years but I used to go out a lot back in my teenage years (17-19).
But yeah anyways, whatever you do, get up at the same time every day. Your body will adjust to it, then you can remove your alarm clock and everything will be good.
Do yourself a favor and keep a stable sleep schedule for the next month. See how it feels. For me it feels great, so it probably does for you as well. You will never look back.