If I sleep 5-7 hours on the otherhand, I feel much better.

As a personal anecdote: I once slept for 10.5-11 hours a day for about 2 weeks. I decided that I need to catch up on sleep, so I went to bed at 8PM every night, fell asleep by 9 and awoke between 7:30 and 8. After about 2 weeks I stopped falling asleep by 9 and would fall asleep around 11 and wake up at 7, at which time I stopped my "sleep fattening". I did feel like a weirdo going to bed at 8, but it felt great at the end.

YMMV, but if you can sleep for 12 hours a night I would consider letting your body do it for at least several days to see if it would switch to a different mode that your would like more. My 2c.

source: am old.

Especially in the winter, waking up in a room with sub 30% humidity is brutal.

I had and have the problem that if I don't put alarm on, I will oversleep and my day gets kind of ruined. So for me I always have to set an alarm and if I feel tired and have nothing on morning I'll maybe bump it by an hour. For me the best sleep schedule is going to bed by 12-2 and waking up between 8:00-9:30. This way if I occasionally stay up till 3-5 my sleep rhythm won't be completely ruined.

I have experimented with various different tricks and styles, recently after a long vacation in different timezone allowed me to completely transform my sleep rhythm. After I came back I woke up automatically 6:00 sharp without any alarm, and I went to sleep 22-23 which was quite bizarre. Sadly though I enjoy late evenings much more than early mornings so even if I went to sleep 0:30 I'd wake up at 6, very tired, which led me to sleep longer and in the end ruining the rhythm.

But what I've found out is, that you want to wake up exactly during the light sleep cycle as that's when you feel no tiredness at all waking up. If you try waking up during REM or deep sleep it will feel like pulling teeth. For me the best time is somewhere around 8 if I go to sleep by 1-2 which counts up as ~7 hours. Should probably track it better but yeah. Also I bought wake-up light alarm clock which is interesting but I don't know yet has it actually an effect.

Although I have to say following an exact schedule is probably the best solution sleep-wise. Decide a time when you have to be at bed and an exact time when you have to wake up, no matter what. I think doing this during my vacation is what caused it to be so ingrained in my body that I was able to wake up at 6 without any alarm.

I feel like there really are people who have different needs.

I set an alarm for 6am, but even without one I'm up between 6-7.

Personally, I think the key for people who have a hard time sleeping is consistency. If someone is trying to go to sleep at 10pm Sunday through Thursday, but then staying up until 2-3am Friday and Saturday it's no wonder they can't get on a schedule.

A possible explanation is that you've trained your body to wake at that time -- but it isn't necessarily enough/appropriate sleep.

Without those feelings of tiredness, how would you know if it's training or your actual internal clock working correctly?

The whole thing is to listen to your body, the problem is when people do 12 to 6 with an alarm, while they'd actually sleep form 10 to 7 without external constraints.

Of course, lying down for a long time will have side effect on your muscles (headaches, groggyness) but I'm sure your body would return to normal sleep patterns after some time.

Check "Why we sleep" recommended elsewhere in this thread if you want to fix it.

Try to increase your bedtime slowly to 8 hours, maybe 9(but not much more than that) and keep at that for a while. See if there is any benefit.

It is unlikely that you are part of the tiny minority that requires less than 6 hours of sleep, so you should be sleep-deprived with only 5 hours.

Personal anecdote: my sleep patterns were very similar. Until I got diagnosed with sleep apnea. My body wanted more sleep – but the more I slept, the more apnea events I would have. So, I would wake up feeling like death, and with a headache, due to my brain getting starved of oxygen.

Not saying that this is your problem or that there is even a problem, but you could raise this issue on your next checkup. Maybe your doctor will have some suggestions.

Because it is weird, as you rightly point out. Trust your judgement.

In my experience it takes years for circadian changes to stabilize, at least once they are sufficiently disrupted (I have Non-24 and have been able to stop shifting my sleep for over a year at a time but eventually it comes back). At the same time, it seems to me that catching up on sleep is only really possible to a limited extent and only for a couple of days after sleep deprevation no matter how long the deprevation. Getting sufficient sleep for a while after sleep deprevation does seem to help reduce the effects of future deprevation, but I don't think getting extra sleep really helps. Keeping a stable circadian rhythm with suffient sleep is most important.

I suspect that if not something like apnea that 10-12 hour sleep might be due to how sleep is maintained. There is a sleep or awake switch in the brain and also a "maintain the current state" network. To make the shift to awake cleanly, the "maintain current state" system is likely stronger in the morning (on a circadian rhythm, not just "after you wake up") but if you manage to be sleeping at the time it kicks in more strongly it may keep you asleep for hours even without any particular need to be asleep. This isn't necessarily what is actually happening but I think it fits the evidence.

I don't think longer sleep is always worse than the alternative, however I suspect if it feels necessary then it is a sign of a more serious sleep issue and if it doesn't feel necessary then aiming for a regular circadian rhythm with sufficient sleep is a better option.

This was the case for me until I started (a) going to bed shortly after dark and (b) leaving the blinds open.

An really incredible thing happened: I started feeling tired around dusk, and awake at dawn.

Note that it's best to avoid/limit screens and LED lights past dark.

You're likely waking at the optimal time of completion of a complete sleep cycle. That doesn't necessarily mean you're getting enough sleep overall.

I force myself to not sleep more than 7 hours.

If you can get several weeks of vacation with no alarm, you may find yourself sleeping 10-12 hours a night for a while, but eventually it should decrease.

Now my body sleeps 8 hours and I wake up the same time every day.

If I stay up later than usual then I'll often wake up at the usual time and just sleep a little less, but sometimes I'll sleep a bit longer. Either way I still feel very tired breaking out of my schedule. I'm also lucky enough to have an employer allows a relatively flexible schedule so I could experiment with this for a while.

Or, try camping for a few days. Try not to look at your phone after sunset.

As far as the “work hard, play hard” mentality, I’ve chosen to work at startups/companies where I can come into the office flexibly (usually around 10) and it’s worked great.

One final note: I wonder if the rampant depression and suicidal thoughts I had as a teenager, that are now entirely gone, were a product of the fact that I was forced to wake up every day at 6 AM to an alarm. I was such an anti-social, depressed creep it’s terrifying to think we continually subject our children to this sleep-deprivating schedule.

The whole idea of 'natural' is normative garbage.

Let me guess, you sleep immediately on a plane as soon as doors close, too? We're not all built the same way.

Well that's a feature of our economy, and a whole other issue. Artifact of the industrial revolution if I'm not mistaken; "8 hrs of sleep, 8 hrs of work, 8hrs of entertainment"; which is obviously a lie and not much more than propaganda, but people seems to put up with it. It doesn't work very well you you add commute time, chores, &c. in the mix.

> Let me guess, you sleep immediately on a plane as soon as doors close, too? We're not all built the same way.

Quite the opposite, I always need 0.5-1 hour to fall asleep, and that's in my pitch black, noise free bedroom. Never slept in a plane, albeit I don't fly very often.

> The whole idea of 'natural' is normative garbage

You do you. Technology evolved much faster than our bodies during the last 200-300 years, our internal cycle still heavily relies on light (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm), now you can chose to ignore that or go with what evolution designed you for. You can brush of "natural" as being a hippie thing if you want, at the end of the day we're all slave to our bodies, better at least try to please it than to force it in "unnatural" processes.

I'm just a regular guy with a regular IT job, of course my experience won't match a factory worker, but if I can help a few people here and there I've done my part.

You're not mistaken, just missing the critical detail: it was a demand of the labor movement. An improvement over the nightmare of far longer hours in the early industrial revolution. But we've digressed.

> The whole idea of 'natural' is normative garbage

You do you. Technology evolved much faster than our bodies during the last 200-300 years, our internal cycle still heavily relies on light (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm), now you can chose to ignore that or go with what evolution designed you for. You can brush of "natural" as being a hippie thing if you want, at the end of the day we're all slave to our bodies, better at least try to please it than to force it in "unnatural" processes.

My point was that it's kind of silly to talk about nature or natural in this context. I'm a regular IT guy, too, and unless I abscond to a place where I don't have to work ever again or have full control over my schedule, the moralisms are just salt in the wound. Most people aren't sleeping enough because of work demands and stress, not because they didn't read an article which says obvious things - yeah, we all know about natural light, blue light, screen time and caffeine at this point. What we don't know is how to pay a mortgage and 'go natural' simultaneously.

A lot of people eat like shit, don't exercise (enough), come back from 8 hours of sitting at a desk to do what ? Sit on a sofa and empty a few beers. After a while, when their body can't "catch up" they feel the effects and wonder what happened.

> But we've digressed.

Yes, too bad HN doesn't really work for longer conversations.

> An improvement over the nightmare of far longer hours in the early industrial revolution. But we've digressed.

Sure, but what is it now ? For most people in 1st world countries it isn't about survival, especially for us, IT workers. Albeit poor people in countries completely rejecting socialism ideas still struggle just as much as 100 years ago. The survival nightmare isn't there anymore. Now we're suffering the blowback of an economy that can't sustain itself without constant growth.

"The necessity of production is so easily proved that any hack philosopher of industrialism can fill ten books with it. Unfortunately for these neo-economist thinkers, these proofs belong to the nineteenth century, a time when the misery of the working classes made the right to work the counterpart of the right to be a slave, claimed at the dawn of time by prisoners about to be massacred. Above all it was a question of surviving, of not disappearing physically. The imperatives of production are the imperatives of survival; from now on, people want to live, not just to survive." - Raoul Vaneigem

I call that my weekend alarm clock. When I was younger I'd stay up late on the weekends and wake up an appropriate 8-10 hours after I fell asleep. Now I can go to bed whenever and still wake up at 6 am to the thought of "Hey, do you think that crack you noticed yesterday is a sign of foundation problems? When do you want to fix that sink? You really need to think about getting the deck replaced."

I do this once a year for one month for general health purposes.

I am no less groggy in the morning. (No alarm means I wake up at 4AM or after 11 hours.) I am no more energetic. I sleep about the same number of hours as I did otherwise. Generally speaking, I noticed no physiological changes other than (a) craving sugar and (b) losing weight (due to cutting out alcohol and related foods).

(Granted, I haven't been chronically sleep deprived for years.)

For what it's worth, I have the same anecdote. I don't see any dramatic difference. Same with avoiding caffeine and I normally drink a lot of tea and coffee.

You're at the baseline they were already talking about.

I'm frequently acutely sleep deprived. (Which is relevant within the context of a "catch-up sleep" article.) And while I don't use alcohol and caffeine to support my sleep cycle, I certainly take each frequently.

Cutting them out had no dramatic effect on my sleep quality. TL; DR Results from cutting out alcohol and caffeine may vary, and not everyone's body knows how much sleep it needs.

What has worked the best for me is having an alarm for 7am, 6-7 days as week. If I am having heaps of trouble sleeping I'll disable it and maybe sleep 1hr more, but in general I keep is consistent, and when I wake up it takes me a much shorter time to feel human again.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10849238

You need activity/exercise for good sleep.

Is that due to the sleep, or the lack of work and general de-stressing?

  avoid artificial light after 8

Once you get used to a couple candles carried (per person) and maybe one in the room for general illumination—which only took me a couple days—electrical multi-room illumination at night seems irritatingly bright and kinda insane. Sort of like when you cut out soda and then try one after a while and are put off by how cloyingly sweet it is.

[0] I wouldn't do it again without a shaded candle holder, for instance, otherwise you end up looking at them by accident all the time which is painful when your eyes are adjusted for low light. Would probably need to bump up to three candles to account for the shade.

You don't have to go to bed at 8, just don't stay in bright light at least a few hours before you want to fall asleep.