EXTREME Night Owl

[mrcockburn]

When I was a kid, I bounced out of bed at 7 am, happy as a lark (excuse the pun). Now at 22, I can't fall asleep before 5-6 a.m., and on weekends, I'll roll out of bed at 2pm.

It's disgusting.

Is it at ALL possible to become a natural morning person (I don't mean just waking up early, but actually being INCLINED to), or has genetics fucked me?

My mother was always a morning person, my real dad died young, but he was a bum ISFP ( ), so he was probably not an early guy, so he screwed up my genes, I'll bet.

 

[rav3n]

Is it possible that you're going to end up like many of us on this site who live on 4 or so hours a day?

 

[The_World_As_Will]

I say accept the fact that you'll probably end up getting 4 hours of sleep and just make the best of it, I know i've certainly have, and bah who needs proper sleep anyhow?? lol yay for having a completely fucked up sleep schedule lol

 

[mrcockburn]

Is it possible that you're going to end up like many of us on this site who live on 4 or so hours a day?

During work/school days, it's more like 3 hours.

And my mind and productivity suffer - caffeine doesn't compensate much anymore. I'm one of the unlucky people who absolutely REQUIRE 7-8 hours sleep to be 100% effective. I can function on less, but I'm just barely scraping by.

And the only way I can get 8 hours is if I adapt to PREFER earliness.

 

[Tallulah]

I think you can retrain yourself to be a morning person, though all kids seem to naturally wake early (probably because they're made to go to bed at 8). I'm an extreme night owl, but there've been times in my life that I trained myself to go to bed before midnight and get up early.

Is there a reason you want to be a natural early bird? My mother seems to think I sleep the day away, but I haven't found that anything interesting happens before noon. That's SJ propaganda.

 

[Arclight]

When I work days I readjust to a day schedule and probably function better over all.
But if I take a week off, 3-4 days in I am falling asleep by 5am.
I just love the solitude of night.

 

[mrcockburn]

I think you can retrain yourself to be a morning person, though all kids seem to naturally wake early (probably because they're made to go to bed at 8). I'm an extreme night owl, but there've been times in my life that I trained myself to go to bed before midnight and get up early.

Is there a reason you want to be a natural early bird? My mother seems to think I sleep the day away, but I haven't found that anything interesting happens before noon. That's SJ propaganda.

Because of my schedule, as well as the fact that I'm in rhythm with the rest of the world. It sucks when you can barely do your errands on the weekend, because the bank, apartment laundromat, campus and anything else closes when you're just waking up!

Even working for myself, I have to communicate and meet with clients/employees, and that's not really possible at 2 a.m.

Even at college, there really aren't any night classes. You INTPs are simply too resigning to problems and issues.

 

[Orangey]

I have tried and tried again to retrain myself, but it never works. I've gone for at most two weeks on a "normal" sleep schedule, but I always end up fucking it up on off days. If I don't go to bed before 10 (which, who the hell wants to do that?), I get an energy spike and basically can't go to sleep after that. It's like there's a sleep window but I deliberately miss it because I don't want to live like an old fat lady.

 

[NPcomplete]

I think you can retrain yourself although the process is extremely tedious.

Over the summer last year, I had become an "extreme night owl" but eventually had to make myself go to sleep early (1 am haha) and wake up at 7. Now because of school, I go to sleep usually between midnight and 2 am and wake up at 0630 but I use the weekend to catch up on sleep..

Oh I forgot, on weekends, my schedule gets very messed up because of my trying to catch up. So I'm a zombie on Monday and Tuesday, "normal" on Wednesday and Thursday and almost dead on Friday. Lather, rinse, repeat.

 

[prplchknz]

you're 22 that's normal. I wouldn't worry to much about it, until you have to get up at 7, and you'll probably retrain your body to get up early and go to bed early.

 

[garbage]

My sleep doctor once advised me to stay up once for ~36 hours in a row, then get to bed at a "decent" time, in an effort to "restart" the ol' body clock. It didn't particularly work for me, but it might work for someone else out there!

I've also resigned myself to just being productive in several-hour spurts starting from 10am onward. And, screw it; prescription sleep meds do wonders for me.

 

[mrcockburn]

I have tried and tried again to retrain myself, but it never works. I've gone for at most two weeks on a "normal" sleep schedule, but I always end up fucking it up on off days. If I don't go to bed before 10 (which, who the hell wants to do that?), I get an energy spike and basically can't go to sleep after that. It's like there's a sleep window but I deliberately miss it because I don't want to live like an old fat lady.

you're 22 that's normal. I wouldn't worry to much about it, until you have to get up at 7, and you'll probably retrain your body to get up early and go to bed early.

Unfortunately on weekdays, I already have to wake up at 6:30 a.m. Yet I can still never sleep before dawn...my stubborn fvcking body! :steam:

My sleep doctor once advised me to stay up once for ~36 hours in a row, then get to bed at a "decent" time, in an effort to "restart" the ol' body clock. It didn't particularly work for me, but it might work for someone else out there!

I've also resigned myself to just being productive in several-hour spurts starting from 10am onward. And, screw it; prescription sleep meds do wonders for me.

I tried the 36 hour trick (unintentionally) before. Sadly it didn't do the trick...I was just a delusional bear the whole time.

And sleeping pills didn't work for me! I waa still laying in bed trying to conjure up yawns.

Goddamn it people....it looks like it's genetic.

 

[King sns]

I've been on the same sleep schedule for years through thick and thin. I just don't fall asleep until midnight or 1. End of story. I can stay up later if I want, but no earlier. I normally start yawning around midnight. (Thankfully my work goes along with that now.) If I sleep in/ don't put an alarm, I always sleep till 9:30 or 10. But if I work 7-3. I'm screwed. It's not a terribly bad schedule to be on, but it would be nice to change it if I could. I read somewhere (I don't know if it's true or not) that your GI system has a little bit to do with your sleeping. (It shuts down at a certain time and wakes up again at a certain time.)

 

[rav3n]

One way to get to sleep earlier is to physically tire yourself out. Do you work out consistently? If not, you could try to work out after dinner to the point of exhaustion for a month, so your body gets conditioned to being tired in the evenings.

 

[thisGuy]

Yup, sleep time used to fluctuate between 12am and 7am. Effects are not good - productivity takes a dive, profs ask you to prove your enrollment status or leave, marks jump off a cliff and die.

Solution? Don't sleep one morning (so stay up for 30+ hours) then go to bed at about 11pm or 12am. THEN GO TO BED ON TIME THE NEXT NIGHT. And the next night. And the next night. The key here is consistency. You NEED to go to bed the same time for atleast 5 sleeps. Get that bitch of a circadian rhythm right. Then and only then can you allow yourself to stay up an hour late on special nights.

Also, no matter how much sleep you get on the weekends (8hrs or none), wake up at the right time (or at least within 1.5 hrs of your normal waking time)


Yes, I have a patent pending on this process. I was the chief investigator and the chief test subject.

PS: If you really are an entJ, this should be much easier for you than it is for me...BELIEVE lol

 

[thisGuy]

nah...im not sure if insomnia is genetic.

is it that you are so tired you can't sleep? sometimes even your eyes hurt? its ok...just make sure to not sleep at all till the next 11pm arrives.

also, don't go from computer screen to bed...im pretty sure that keeps me awake...its the brightness, breakdown of a certain vitamin in your eye makes your body think its daytime. go have a glass of water and try to relax. then go try to sleep

 

[mmhmm]

i used to stay up til 5-6am in the morning be at yoga by 9am,
up until last month. i was able to that because i was sleeping
twice a day. 6-9am and nap around 6-8pm.

now i'm sleeping once a day. and can't make it past 1 am.
get up at 5.30am. the quality of energy is much lower than when
i was sleeping twice a day.

 

[swordpath]

Naturally, I'm a night owl. If I didn't have day time commitments, I would definitely be nocturnal as a mofo. When I was on an ultra normal schedule was when I was deployed actually. I had to get up every morning at about 7:00 and spent long, hot days outside and was so exhausted by the end of the day that getting to sleep at 9pm was pretty consistent.

 

[Stigmata]

From the age of 14 I've managed to survive on roughly 3-4 hours a sleep of day and still function efficiently. The downside of that is I can't actually have a sustained sleep cycle at normal hours without either waking up intermittently, or only managing to stay asleep for about an hour; I've basically given up on trying to reestablish a sleep schedule beginning at what would be considered normal hours. Basically, I stay awake until I'm absolutely exhausted and then just crash, otherwise when I attempt to go to sleep my mind continually races in an seemingly infinite amount of directions.

 

[Usehername]

I'm having trouble converting to morning persondom, though I'm trying hard. I have to be up in 5 hours for work and I can't mentally wind down enough to get to bed on time earlier.

I agree with Ignite, it's easy when you're physically exhausted. I could fall asleep in Mozambique with no power (aka air conditioning) by 9 pm too. The sun wears you down if you're outdoors in some serious heat.