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Steve Pavlina: Go from Night-Owl to Jaybird

May 24th, 2005

Personal improvement maven Steve Pavlina offers his insights into changing from a “night-owl” to a “Jaybird”.

Quotes:

The solution was to go to bed when I’m sleepy (and only when I’m sleepy) and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days per week). So I always get up at the same time (in my case 5am), but I go to bed at different times every night.


I go to bed when I’m too sleepy to stay up. My sleepiness test is that if I couldn’t read a book for more than a page or two without drifting off, I’m ready for bed. Most of the time when I go to bed, I’m asleep within three minutes. I lie down, get comfortable, and immediately I’m drifting off. Sometimes I go to bed at 9:30pm; other times I stay up until midnight. Most of the time I go to bed between 10-11pm. If I’m not sleepy, I stay up until I can’t keep my eyes open any longer. Reading is an excellent activity to do during this time, since it becomes obvious when I’m too sleepy to read.

His finding is that he now sleeps roughly 90 minutes less per night, but feels more rested. This results in enough extra waking hours in a week to make up more that a full work day.

One quibble with Steve’s following assertion: people who sleep 8+ hours a night are usually getting too much sleep. Actually, sleep experts tell us that the optimal amount is around nine hours for most individuals.

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Entry Filed under: Popular, Sleep