I did that for years with jobs that required it and didn’t find that worked for me.

That’s a bummer! Have you found out why that didn’t work? Perhaps something like caffeine or allergies was interfering with your sleep?

If haven’t found out, I wholly recommend doing a sleep study if you can. It can shed some light on any obstacles you may be experiencing. I’ve never done one myself, but I know people who got enduring benefits from the insights of their studies.

In my case it's probably a combination of undiagnosed ADHD and "revenge bedtime procrastination".

Came here to post this. I remember once when going back on ADHD meds, a very smart doctor adding 5mg of Dexedrine. At 5pm.

I asked him why he would prescribe a stimulant so late in the day. His reply was simply "it's so you can think of one thing instead of all the things".

Worked for me.

It doesn't work because I fall asleep easily in the early evening or the early morning, and not so much between them. It's not affected by seasonal light, caffeine, exercise, etc. I've never considered a sleep study because once I'm asleep I'm usually fine.

I think I effectively switched from a night owl to an early bird by having something I _really_ wanted to do in the morning that was actually physical (martial arts classes).

I remember the exact day my body switched - I was going in the early morning and my body was not approving of my initiative. Every morning was hell - but then one morning early spring we had a training outside - sunrise, early leaves on the trees in the park, we all got quite sweaty some of the guys started to take our tops off and it looked like a scene from a martial arts movie. I remember thinking this looks so cool - we’re training like our forefather used to.

Next day I woke up exact time I needed no grogginess whatsoever. Have been an early bird ever since, almost 10 years now.

Older people tend to get up earlier. There is a special place in hell for the Baby Boomers who insisted on a 7:30 start time for our office (though, of course, as the guy who opened every morning, I had to be there earlier). The anxiety that I developed went away when I left and could get up when I wanted to. There are many, many monrings where I lie in bed at 7:30 and think, "I would have had to be a Bukowski quote by now."

Alarms aren't foolproof though. I often shut them off in my sleep or sleep through them, so I have to keep the phone on the other side of the room AND change the alarm every week or two to prevent adaptation, and that still doesn't help if I can't fall asleep for whatever reason and end up sleeping through due to sheer exhaustion. What I've found that actually works well is alcohol; if I'm not tired at sleep-time, take a swig of 130 proof absinthe and I'll be asleep before long.

I set an additional alarm one hour before I need to wake up specifically so that I can get the feeling of going back to sleep. It has really helped.

I have found that vibrating alarms on wrist watches to be very effective. For over 5 years I've been setting a vibration alarm on my watch and another backup alarm on my phone. I never slept through the vibration alarm. Granted YMMV

Sleep for Android has some neat modes to try to prevent this. Even just the fact it colours the snooze button green and the dismiss button red is incredibly thoughtful and works well. My just woken up brain can somehow understand "red bad". If you're on iOS the alarms are caveman style. My partner sets like 20 alarms on her phone, it's hilarious.

> What I've found that actually works well is alcohol; if I'm not tired at sleep-time, take a swig of 130 proof absinthe and I'll be asleep before long.

I’d be wary of relying on alcohol to sleep, because the relaxation that it offers is somewhat distinct from a good night’s sleep.

Alcohol has been known to disrupt “REM sleep”, thus making your sleep phases inconsistent. In the long run, it might leave you with even poorer sleep quality.

Get a german shepherd dog. They will wake you up at the same time everyday whether you like it or not.

Haha, so true—whether it’s a German Shepherd or a cat, you’re definitely getting a "reliable alarm clock" that doesn’t care about weekends or your sleep schedule!

I don’t know about a German shepherd dog specifically. But my experience with dogs is that they will wake me up whether I like it or not… whenever they feel like it, even in the middle of the night. That can be severely disrupting.

That method nearly wrecked my life and didn’t change my sleep patterns

I do much better with no alarm clock and being in situations where i don’t need one. Allowing myself to naturally wake up and being in situations where variable times to naturally wake up are ok are very much better for my brain and overall health.

what helped me was to use an alarm clock.

but to go to sleep!

In my case, having a bedtime alarm would only leave me anxious and frustrated if I went to bed and failed to sleep at that time.

But I have tried something similar: setting an alarm to decompress before sleeping. No phone, no TV — just some quiet music playing or some books to read.

I still set this night alarm, but it is much easier to ignore it than to ignore my body’s natural tendency to lose steam after waking up early and having done so much during the day.

actually, I should correct my comment. Not alarm! but notification.

What helped was notifications leading up to bedtime. two hours, one hour 30 minute, "get to sleep". It sort of gives you context to wind down.

This is a fantastic way to give yourself an early heart attack.

I do a version of this where what I have is a fixed wake-up time WINDOW.

The window is 90m, to account for 90m sleep cycle. I set the alarm to whichever multiple of 90 falls within the wake up window.

As a result, I sleep somewhere with 7h to 7h30 consistently, with the odd ~6h sleep day or ~9h in special circumstances (being sick).

There's an Android app called "Sleep" where you set an alarm window and put your phone on the corner of your bed, and the alarm only goes off when it detects you're a little active already and not in deep sleep (using the accelerometer to detect movement). If it doesn't detect enough activity it'll go off regardless at the end of the window.

It has a bunch of other features as well (rating how well you slept and detecting patterns to give advice, a snore detector, etc) but that alarm is the one I use it for.

Have you ever heard the saying “correlation is not causation” ? Couldnt it be that you already had a good enough health to push you to adopt a better sleep schedule ?

for me the best way is to not worry about sleep at all. After many decades of abusive relationship with sleep. I've had enough. If it comes it comes, if not then thats ok too.

I stop reading this 8 hr nonsense or fearing an early death from not sleeping. whatever.

One thing I've done is create a "color clock" using a smart bulb that changes color based on a daily schedule. So at 8:00pm the bulb has a dim orange glow, this changes to dim red glow at 9pm and then turns off at 10pm (sleep time). Its a really nice relaxing way of ensuring a regular sleep pattern (no longer clock watching etc).

Most people have to wake up at a fixed time for work and school their entire lives. I don't think that's what sleep hinges on, else everyone would have good regularity and we'd take it for granted.

It's your behavior and attitude towards going to bed.

For people failing for a long time at fixed wake-up schedules or still feeling like shit after months of doing it: giving up is fine, and it frees you to explore what works for you.

It might change depending on the seasons, and you might more or less sleep depending on what you're doing at that time.

Waking up at the same damn hour everyday to deal with my kid's school was an utter pain for years, and I got in a better health and shape once I could adjust depending on my daily condition.

It still have a set of fixed alarms, but regularly ignore the first ones as needed, and only wake no-matter-what for the last one for my job. I heard from other coworkers doing the same, and it was a game-changer for most of us.

> For people failing for a long time at fixed wake-up schedules or still feeling like shit after months of doing it: giving up is fine, and it frees you to explore what works for you.

Another piece of anecdata from someone who used to be like this for years. I first noticed that regular alarm sounds annoyed me and eventually I would get used to turning it off and going back to sleep (that is until I HAVE to wake up). I then figured that if I set up an alarm with a song that I like, it would make waking up more enjoyable. Which I eventually did. The first few weeks, I enjoy waking up and in a sense look forward to it, but after a certain amount of time not only I get used to it and the cycle continue, but I also can't stand that song anymore (RIP rolling in the deep, chainsmoking, ...). I randomly stumbled upon the app sleep for Android that has a feature I didn't know I needed, putting a playlist as an alarm sound (I shuffle it of course). Now every morning, waking up is an adventure, and more often than not I end up singing along. Now months in, I haven't failed to wake up even once. And I don't have any alarms on Sunday, yet I still wake up without it.

That is with the caveat that I know I need between 7:30 and 8h of sleep, and I stop all screens by 10 (night time feature of Android is very helpful in this regard). Except my ebook reader than I use without backlight.

Finding what feels natural can sometimes be a matter of listening to those instincts rather than pushing against them

I agree with this except for the early part. At least personally waking up at about 8 works for me, that way I’m not waking up before sunrise in winter which makes me unhappy quite reliably.

A lot of people are weirdly proud of how early they wake up, and I’ve literally been shamed for waking up late, called lazy etc in a casual sense but that’s nonsense. I just work later.

I think you have a key component in good sleep but there are 2 more imo.

The first is that phones and light break our natural sleepiness triggers and the second is that we don't exercise our bodies enough because of our sedentary lifetstyle.

I used to struggle with terrible insomnia and I still get bouts of it time to time but I've also found it's related to my laxing my 3 rules.

If I have a good workout about 5x a week, I turn off my phone and the lights 30 minutes before bed and take a good long shower in the dark and I have a regular alarm set at 7am that goes off 7 days a week, I'm almost guaranteed a good nights sleep every night. It also had the added affect of ridding me of my night terrors and sleep walking I used to have frequently but I'm 90% certain that was correlated to me using my phone in bed and it causing my brain to enter a weird state where it never really turned off.

Shutting off your phone and lights early is especially smart. It lets your mind and body transition smoothly into rest mode

I think it makes the biggest difference out of my habits. I kind of picked up on it when I realized that I never struggled to sleep when I went camping out in the woods. My body would instantly fall into sleepiness when it got dark out because I had no artificial light keeping me up as well as no easy access entertainment like TV

In these conditions, your body just knows when to shut down and recharge

I'm going to "yes, and" this with just one more thing that may seem obvious: almost any amount of alcohol is enough to throw that pattern out of whack.

The older I get the more reluctant I am to make the trade. Few glasses of wine with friends is hard to pass up though :)

I do none of those things and have great sleep.

I think a solid rhythm is important!

Just here to confirm. I have facetime setup at 5am in the morning with my family across the pacific. I've also started to exercise regularly. It's been 2 months and my sleep pattern is exactly like yours, and I feel exactly like you do.