this post was submitted on 21 Oct 2024

93 points (97.9% liked)

Ask Lemmy

27240 readers

2804 users here now

A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions

Rules: (interactive)

1) Be nice and; have fun

Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them

2) All posts must end with a '?'

This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?

3) No spam

Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.

4) NSFW is okay, within reason

Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected]. NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].

5) This is not a support community.

It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions. If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.

6) No US Politics.

Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]

Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.

Partnered Communities:

Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

4 AM: Sleep or Make the Most of It? (lemmy.world)

submitted 2 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

42 comments fedilink hide all child comments

If you are awake at 4 am, and have to be at work at 7, should you even try to get back to sleep or should you try to do something with your time?

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

I vote this. The 90 minute REM cycle is no joke.

My personal sleep therapy approach:

Deduct 30 minutes from when you need to wake up. Set one alarm for this time, one alarm for your normal time. If you do nothing else, do this. It’s awesome, trust me.
Deduct another 30 minutes then figure out how many 90-minute periods fit between now and that time. Go to bed at the beginning of one of those periods.
If you need to go to sleep 30 or 60 minutes earlier for some reason, add another “snooze” or two at the end.

What this does:

Prevents getting up in the middle of REM, which is what causes you to feel like death even though you got enough sleep
Gives you a 30-minute window to fall asleep first
Wakes you up 30 minutes early in case something messed with your cycle and you feel like crap. Hitting snooze on your alarm clock gives you a bewildering 9-minute, 11-minute, or other arbitrary bit of extra sleep, but giving you a consistent 30-minute snooze period starts your morning with a reliable power nap instead of just gambling on your timing. You always wake up feeling good from a power nap.

Example: it’s 9 pm, I have to be up at 6. I set alarms for 5:30 and 6:00, then go to bed at 9:30 so I have 30 minutes to fall asleep, followed by 7.5 hours of sleep, which is 5 cycles. I wake up at 5:30, immediately kill the alarm, then wake up again at 6 and start my day.

Note: In general, I wouldn’t have three 30-minute snoozes. I’d just go to bed later. I try to avoid stacking two or more power naps at the end, but sometimes I will if I’m not going to be getting much sleep otherwise, like if I go to sleep NOW, I might get 3 hours.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Used to do this and it was wonderful. I have a smart watch to track sleep, I wonder if there's an app to automatically detect a certain amount of sleep cycles and wake you at a good time instead of guessing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

There are several Apple Watch apps and such that rather than use a timer, use various biometrics and movement sensing to try and identify when you’re out of REM and start a vibration alarm that increases over time across a 30-minute window. Depending on what smartwatch you use, there might be something.

Edit: on Apple Watch I have an app that does this called AutoWake (it has a companion sleep tracking app called AutoSleep) but I don’t wear the watch to bed anymore.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Android has a good one that's simply called "Sleep". They track your movement and try to estimate light sleep in a set period before your actual wake time.

It worked pretty good in the past (not perfectly of course) but I've been waking close to my wakeup time for years now, so I just use it for tracking.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Downloaded it and it looks neat. My issue is I actually have to activate sleep tracking and I definitely forgot the past 2 nights.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Pretty much what I do exactly. I have an app that notifies me 1hr before it's 8hrs from wake up time. So basically, I get notified 9hrs before I want to wake up. I go to sleep 8hrs before, but realistically fall asleep around 7.5hrs before I want to wake up. Then, if I feel groggy when I wake up, I do a 30min snooze. Sometimes I'll also take a caffeine/theanine pill before the 30min snooze. Then you reallly wake up.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The option to sleep an extra half hour when you don’t want to get up is key. I recommend it for anyone. It’s so worth it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago

I actually do this but for a different reason. I keep an alarm 15m before my actual alarm, which tells me to get ready to wake up. This gives me time to get comfortable waking up and wake up to the time I want to wake up. This works so well because I don't really want to hear the second alarm go off which incentivises me wake up atleast 5m before my second alarm.