How many hours do you sleep and at what time do you go to sleep?

I usually sleep from 5am to 2pm; my most productive time is also from 9pm to 2am.

I've seen doctors explaining that it's normal to have this inverted internal clock. And that it's ok to embrace it if it's not negatively affecting your life.

But personally I don't like it either. Being a morning person seems more healthy. You get to enjoy life more. Your day seems to last longer so you get more done from it.

It's super hyper hard to change though. Just like most bad habits that have been consolidated for years.

Check the book The Morning Miracle, maybe it will help you. I haven't finished it yet.

Sleep at midnight/1AM, get up at 8AM.

When you get good nights with enough sleep your brain works much better. 7h is the minimum. 8h is good.

Also when you start to wake up "early" you discover that you have plenty of work hours in the morning you did not know about and that's pretty cool

OMG! This was totally my story a couple of months back.

A bit about me first:

I’ve always been a night person. I’ve never woken up early in my life. I usually go to sleep between 2–3 am in the morning and wake up around 9 because I gotta get to work by 10 o’clock. 6 hours of uninterrupted sleep have always been enough for me.

While being very comfortable working at night, I’ve also never been shy of pulling all-nighters. My brain juices flow better at night, and being a creative person, the moon attracts me. But to tell you the real truth, I actually like the calm when everyone else is asleep.

But a month back I decided to make a change.

The night has been good to me always, but for the past couple of months my productivity has been stooping low consistently. I figured I needed to change something. I tried changing my workspace, the coffee shops I work from, my phone’s wallpaper among few other things. None really worked.

After trying several such things with zero or minimum output, the only thing left was to try waking up early. I didn’t just need a change. I needed a big change to shift gears and put myself back in the game. A 28 year old habit of going late to bed, and then waking up late can’t be overcome with just a day’s effort.

But a 28 year old habit of going late to bed, and then waking up late can’t be overcome with just a day’s effort. I figured it’ll take time, and it won’t be easy. I tried sleep-early-to-wakeup-early routine for a week. But it wasn’t without hiccups. The three major problems I faced were:

I couldn’t get to bed early. For a guy who usually goes to bed at 3 in the morning, when I started thinking of going to bed at 12, it felt like I’m killing 3 hours of productivity. There was a sense of guilt lingering whenever I tried to get into bed.

My mental clock was aligned to prepare my mind for sleep by the time it was 2. Now at 12 when I had to leave work suddenly in the middle of it, my mind remained active while I was still lying in bed. It was impossible to sleep. There were moments when I woke up and started working again.

Even when I fell asleep on time, say around 12, it was hard for me to wake up early. I still continued waking up around 8:30 instead of 7, since there’s no external deadline at 7. I woke up late with lots of guilt for oversleeping and not having done any work this whole time.

After looking closely at all of the above problems, I inferred the following:

It’ll take some time to get used to the new routine. It was hard but I convinced myself. Building new habits usually take around 60 days. I decided to give myself a month at first and see how things are going. I maintained an Excel sheet to document my daily efforts. I turned an Excel sheet into a makeshift single-row calendar, and every time I was able to woke up early on time, I filled a cell with green. Every time I failed, I made it red. After a week, the Excel sheet was filled with a chain of red and green. The day I had 14 greens in a row would be when I would consider that I’ve formed the new habit. It is tougher than it sounds. A lot tougher.

One of the primary causes behind not being able to sleep early was that there’s always work lurking in my mind. Not getting closure from the problem I was working on kept my mind active. This is due to the Zeigarnik effect. It is the tendency to experience intrusive thoughts about an objective that was once pursued and left incomplete. I had to tackle this and get closure to get a sound sleep. So, right before going to bed I decided to write down my thoughts and ideas in a journal. If I was stuck somewhere with work, I made it a point write down my strategy to deal with it the next day. Believe it or not, this gives significant closure and work doesn’t remain on my mind anymore after that. I tracked this habit too via the Excel sheet.

But my body isn’t still trained to sleep at 12, even though my mind is. So I use the oldest trick in the book: stories. I started taking my Kindle to bed and started reading novels. I avoided thrillers and mysteries because they tend to have constant cliffhangers. Fiction works like sleeping pills. If I want to read some mystery/thriller, I usually go with a short story, instead of a long novel.

But I was still failing to make it a habit :(

The above tricks worked pretty well for me. But somehow I still failed to make it into a habit. No matter how much I tried, my green and red chain in that Excel tracking sheet wasn’t fully green. There were always some red boxes scattered here and there. When things started falling into autopilot after a week, I started oversleeping again. I went to bed at 12, but woke up around 8:30. Not cool!

So I decided to go back and analyse my previous ideas to find out what was missing. I slowly started noticing a pattern: I realised that I always made it a point to consciously stop whatever work I was doing to prepare for bed. I consciously wrote a journal to put work from my mind into a copy, and I consciously took a call to read fiction to trick myself to sleep. But I never did any such thing, at least not consciously to make me wake up at 7:30. Sharp.

Following is the simple trick I tried to consciously decide to wake up early. It’s so simple, yet it can be missed very easily. Before going to bed, I decided to tell myself to wake up at 7:30, rather than putting it in autopilot. I just had to manually setup a 7:30 alarm every night instead of making it repeat forever. I thereby consciously tell my mind to prepare to be awake at 7:30 after a full 7.5hrs of sleep. It is an external factor.

You gotta setup the wakeup alarm every night. The repeat forever simply doesn’t work. It doesn’t matter whether you are waking up at 7 o’clock or 9 o’clock, consciously telling yourself that you’ll wake up at that time always works. Setting up the alarm is just a medium of doing exactly that.

This was a simple trick I tried and so far it’s working. Do you know any other tricks to sleep better? Please do share in the comments.

Sorry for the long post. I had previously published it on Medium. Have picked it up from there: https://medium.com/coffee-and-junk/i-tried-a-couple-of-tricks-to-wake-up-early-heres-what-i-learned-3bffcea8089d

I have a full time, stressful day job and building two companies on the side.

I get home from day job and have dinner with family, play with my baby daughter for a few hours then the bedtime routine starts. While my wife is bathing and bedding baby I do the housework.

Wife and I both go to bed at same time, around nine pm.

She sleeps by ten but I code / market till maybe 1am.

I’m then up for work again at 7am.

Rinse and repeat.

It’s not healthy or maintainable (been like this for 18 months or so) but needs must. If you want to break the chains of the 9-5 something’s gotta give.

I'm one of those people who needs a solid 7-8 hours of sleep a night. If not, my brain is absolute mush!

I always try to get in bed around 9 pm and aim to turn the lights off and go to sleep around 9:30. Having a 30-minute transition from "life" to "sleep" has been a game changer for me. Gives my brain time to wind down, stop thinking, and rest.

I get up at 5:40 every morning, have a slow cup (or 2 or 3) of coffee, breakfast, hit the gym, walk the dogs, then start on work right at 9.

I used to be an anti-morning person, but forcing myself into this kind of schedule is one of the best things I've done. Now I can't sleep in past 6 (physically, I absolutely can (and often want to), but mentally I can't because I know if I get up late, my whole day is off. Just that thought gets me up every morning).

I think you just play around with schedules and find what works best for you. What makes you happiest and most productive? If it's late night working, don't let guilt of not being a morning person take that away from you.

Only you know your body, let it guide you! But don't be afraid to try something new. Who knows, maybe you're a secret morning person like me!

I wish everyone could use 24H format. its hard to follow the posts here :(

I sleep around 10pm-6:30am. I need a lot of sleep and just embrace it. I think what matters is doing what makes you feel good, and being honest with yourself about that. Seems like your approach works fine. Too many bloggers out there preach their method like it's better, but I think it's just to feel good about themselves.

I sleep 8 hours every day, without fail.

Usually 10-6.

Generally, I try to be in bed by 11pm and sleeping by 12am. I wake up at 8am every day and if I sleep any less than 8 hours I feel extremely tired.

I used to have a bad sleeping habit for a long time. Sleeping for 4 - 5 hours a day. After watching this Joe Rogan episode on Why we sleep with Matthew Walker, I’ve been sleeping for no less than 7hours 45mins every single day from 10 pm for the last 5 months. Matthew is a professor of Neuroscience and Psychology as well as the founder of the Centre for Human Science.

I would highly recommend you watch the whole thing. It’s 1 hr 55mins but it was worth it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwaWilO_Pig

My new sleeping plan has been a game changer. It took me about a week or so to get used to it.

I go to sleep around midnight and wake up around 8:30am! Getting 8+ hours of sleep every night keeps me happy and energized haha

I used to wake up at 5am 4 days a week to go to the gym first-thing. It really did feel good to have worked out, showered, eaten and started my day by 8:30am. Really felt like I was "crushing it!"

But after starting my own business, I'm enjoying the relaxed later wake up and sleeping until I wake up naturally. Means I've gotten as much sleep as my body needs.

I think these things ebb and flow. Sometimes you'll be motivated to wake up early and after 2 months, you won't be. That's OK. Things change :)

If you really want to start getting up earlier, here are the things that helped me big time when I was up at the crack of dawn:

• Go to bed early. It's much easier to wake up at 6am if you're in bed by 10pm and get 8 hours of sleep. Forget going to bed at 2am and trying to wake up at 6am. It won't happen.

• If you're exercising in the mornings, get your gym bag completely set up and by the door and your clothes laid out. No thinking when you wake up; clothes on, grab your bag and out the door.

• Cook in big batches and make 10-12 tupperwares at a team. This way you can pack them and eat healthy throughout the day without having to make a decision about what to eat.

Mark Manson has an good post about "changing yourself." Worth a read!

I usually sleep anywhere from 6 - 8 hours a night. I go to bed between 10pm and 11:30pm.

For me, it's very helpful to wake up early. I have a lot of focus in the early morning (especially once I have that first cup of coffee).

My brain is extremely fresh in the morning, ideas, solutions, it all comes together within those first few hours of the day.

By the time I get home from my day job, 5/6PM, cook dinner, or go work out, my brain is spent and I'm just staring at my laptop screen willing code into existence. Factor in getting ready for bed, and it's already midnight by the time I doze off.

I try to time-box working in the evening because I'm simply not productive and wasting time.

I know I've already replied but this is a briefer reply.

Currently my polyphasic sleep pattern is 5hrs feel great all the time ( biphasic method) been on that pattern for 7 months. But been doing polyphasic methods for almost 18 months.

I work during the day, I code and study during the night. I try to ride push bike on weekends plus 1 day during the week. And socialise on a Sunday. Or at the occasional meet up.

I've been a polyphasic sleeper for 15 months now. Stated on the e3 (Everyman 3, which is 4.5hr sleep total a day) method but for about 7 months I've been following the biphasic method which is 5 hours sleep a day.

I'm primary carer of my 1 year old daughter, work full time between normal 9-5 three days a week. Then 3 days a week I'm building my own home. ( my daughter comes to help, lol) and my wife when she can she also works.

Then at night I code, and more recently study computer science at a uni via correspondance.

I've had a major discovery in the pursuit of a more balanced circadian rhytm - waking up is hard, but going to bed is harder!

If you're an indie hacker, an entrepreneur, a developer even, both your internal and external worlds are against you going to sleep at 10 PM. Especially if you have even the slightest dreams about anything resembling a social life. It is not meant to happen for you.

Personally, I'm trying to fight it, but I fail often, and the failures hurt. So sometimes I go along with it. I like getting up in the morning and participating in a beautiful day full of sunshine with the rest of society, but sometimes it's just impossible...

During the week i am same as you and i am also most productive after diner :D (including weekends etc)

I dont sleep much because i still need to get up to work.

On weekends i can sleep till lunch so even 10+ hours of sleep is possible.

i don't wake up with an alarm or at any specific time. so i sleep as long as i suppose my body needs.

it also depends on how cleanly i'm eating. if i eat like crap, my body needs a lot longer to recover from shitty eating the day before. i eat well, then typically 7 hours total.

i've always been an early riser, so without an alarm i tend to be up around 6am most days.

Sleep at midnight, wake up at 6:40. I noticed that even though I am not a vegetable in the early mornings, my evenings are way more productive.. :) On the other hand, if I stay up for too long (1-1:30am) then I just can't get up in the morning.

Basically there has to be a balance, try organizing simple tasks for the early morning and do the hard things on late evenings + weekends.

I couldn't even tell you, as my sleep patterns are all over the place! 😁

You can definitely train yourself and reset your body clock if you really want to — but perhaps you don't need to.

I often work late at night, like you. Even going to bed at 6am sometimes! (I love the peace & knowing others are asleep while I gain.)

If you know when you're most productive, stick to it. If you want to experiment, try it.

There are many who say waking up at 5:30am is life-changing, but it's all down to the individual at the end of the day (no pun intended!).

I usually take 6-9 hours sleep per day.

9.30pm-5.30am. It's important to realize that sleep helps your productivity.

Everyone has a different chronotype it might be that you are a night owl. 9pm to 2am is still 5 hours. If you can get focused and get stuff done it doesn't matter what time it is.

I get 7 / 8 hours of sleep. midnight to 8 am, my best hours are in the morning. 9:30 to 1pm. I do deep work and focused in that time. No distractions and get stuff done. Do emails and talking in the afternoon. Works for me.

I tried the whole waking at 5am and bed by 10pm and it doesn't work for me. That's when I started reading into the science behind it all and doing the research to get a bit of an understanding behind it all.

I recently got into this sleeping schedule;

Devices off, silent and across the room 9:55 pm

Getting ready for bed at 10 pm

In bed and listen to an audiobook which is set with a sleep timer for 30 minutes at 10:15 pm

Somewhere in that 30 minutes, I usually fall a sleep.

I get up at 6:30 am

Is it more helpful / better to wake up early? For me yes because there are fewer distractions (notifications) in the morning. But why change if you know those are your productive hours?

I used to feel like shit upon waking up, and discovered that the reason for that was too much caffeine during the day. The solution was a one week cold-turkey detox.

I'm curious if this also applies to other people, please do let me know.

9pm - 4am/5am

I get up, do a morning routine and then jump into some work.

I go to bed between 12-1 a.m and up 6.30 a.m.

I feel like shit when I wake up and it really hurts, but throughout the day I'm more awake than if I sleep for more than 6 hours.

I get at least 3 hours of sleep. Six hours on a good day. If I sleep early, I still wake up within six hours 90% of the time.

Bedtime is anytime between 1 AM - 5 AM depending on my productivity. Usually, I'm up between 7-8.

I've done this for almost 25 years - thanks to my passion for computers!

4-6hrs/day

sleep 1 a.m.

wake up 7 a.m.

between 10/10:30 PM - up at 5 AM

I attempt at a 11 pm - 7 am schedule.

I need 8 hours of sleep. Having tested 6-7 hours for about 8 months, I am genuinely more productive come Friday should I sleep well Mon - Thursday