Transitioning to early riser status, a full reversal

[Max0r]

Usually I regret talking about my own stuff, but I figure someone here could use the amusement & I could use something to keep me awake. I personally love the "all natural" sleep-when-you-feel-like-it method, which usually has me sleeping at completely random times and never sticking to a pattern, but that only works for me if there are no interruptions, like living with other people, neighbor noises, etc. So I'm SOL on that note.

Pavlina's articles on the subject "inspired" me, so 6 days ago I started getting up a little before 5:00 AM every day. I'm over the first major hump, which was the worst the first 4 days. I'm already starting to feel great affects, but still project atleast 4 more days of struggle before things become somewhat easy.

My struggle is an interesting one because my problem isn't getting up. In fact, I'm already awake for most of the 3am-5am duration anyway, lying there, ready to go. It's staying awake in the afternoon/evening that's difficult. It's funny because when I get up at 4:55 AM, I feel hot very easily, and like to have the AC on high. My body temperature is high. Come afternoon and evening, I'll be shivering and struggling to stay awake until 8-9pm.

This is probably because my usual patterns have been to go to sleep in the late morning hours, or early afternoon hours, and wake up at night, sometimes late at night, staying up all night of course. I didn't stick to any solid pattern, and sometimes my sleep would go all over the place, but that was the general leaning. So this early riser thing is in effect a complete reversal of my general sleep pattern.

I've been making progress. This is what's been improving over the past 6 days:

1. I'm maintaining wakefulness for longer stretches after getting up at 5am. At first, I became dead tired as early as 10am. Now I don't feel sleepy until 2-3pm, and it isn't dead tiredness, but a pretty solid sleepiness.

2. In the last 2 days, I felt more awake and energetic when getting up, than I have in a LONG time. I'm not even close to done adapting, and I already feel great... for a couple hours at least, and increasing.

3. I'm becoming less and less keyed up during the 1am-5am hours. Still not sleeping all those hours, but not having to get up and move around as much.

It appears that I'm approaching another major adaptation struggle, however, which will probably be the last major hump before the habit solidification phase.

It seems that while I'm able to hold off going to sleep closer and closer to the targetted bed time hours (10pm-12am), I am still not fully losing consciousness for any extended period of time between 10pm and 5am. In fact, last night I went to sleep around 8:30-9pm, so I was mostly partially asleep. It's like a state of lying there drifting between fully awake and conscious-but-out-of-it. As I get closer to 5am, it's more and more awake.

Perhaps this period of the transition won't be as hazardous as I'm making it out to be. By hazardous, I mean becoming easy to fall out of the pattern. I have noticed that a full night of non-sleep in semiconsciousness is still quite restful, just not as satisfying.

Several years ago when I was ~17, I actually had a week where I maintained a 9:30pm to 4:30am sleep schedule with utter perfection. It was VERY odd, I would lay down to sleep, and 1 second later I would literally jump straight up and look at the alarm clock: 4:30, THEN the alarm would go off an instant later! And I felt great! For 7 days it would feel like I was only lying down for 1 second, when actually ~7 hours passed. It's like an insta-blackout or something.

I can't deny the benefits of waking up at 4:30 to 5am for me. Because I have no compelling reason to be awake at any specific time at all anymore, I figured why fight it? Why not optimize my sleep if it doesn't matter what time of day I'm awake anyway? I'm considering trying the full 20min x 6 polyphasic sleep in the future, but there are some pre-reqs I have to take care of first, particularly in the realm of diet and solidifying an early riser schedule.

If I do ever try polyphasic, it probably won't be for months down the line.

Ok, I'll keep you folks updated if I come across another difficult evening/afternoon and need to write something, or if I just feel like amusing myself and others with my writings.

[Max0r]

Day 8



Intro
I was right about there being another major challenge after the first few days, but it wasn't what I expected. Yesterday, for the first time in this transition, I actually didn't feel like getting up with the alram. I still got up, but I felt like sleeping.

Unlike the first 6 days on this program, instead of being totally restless and ready to go by the time the alarm sounded, I lost this restless feeling about ~10-25 minutes prior to the alarm, and felt the most pleasant heaviness usually associated with a very deep pleasurable sleep.

Regarding my use of term "deep sleep"
Do not confuse "deep" sleep that I talk about, with the officially named cycles of "deep" sleep. By deep, I simply mean characterized by a huge polarization with consciousness, like real sleep, not some weak ass ****. Something as far from waking state as possible. I don't think in terms of sleep cycles. I've had some of my deepest sleep spent entirely in dream states the whole time I was sleeping ~30-60 minutes, feeling like my body was heavier than U238, waking up shivering because my body temp was so low (took over 30 minutes of physical work to stop feeling cold indoors), but extremely energetic and full of life. NOTE: that's an example from my past. It hasn't happened during this early riser transition.

Sleep quality during night
Although I still feel somewhat sleepless during the night, there are moments where it feels like little to no time passed, but actually 5-6 hours passed, which indicates I am sleeping. I suspect that once I fully optimize my sleep, I will be averaging less than 6.5 hours per night.

Waking up
For the past two days, I actually felt sleepy upon the alarm going off at 4:55 AM. This feeling was stronger today than yesterday, so it looks like I'm transitioning into the next major "obstacle" to the early riser optimization. I find it pretty funny that it took me an entire week of adjustment just to get to the point where most people start at with this So I guess I'm way behind compared to most of you.

I anticipate that this will continue to get worse over the next few days, making it possibly a more trying adjustment period than days 1-4. As such, I've instituted a wake-up procedure that I've found helpful in the past, to help solidify the wakeup times.

Morning wake-up procedure
This procedure consists of immediately going outside and running, followed by resistance training, followed by showering. Today, I skipped the resistance training, because I was still considering the possibility of this procedure and didn't think of the resistance training yet. Tomorrow, the resistance training will be added in.

These actions are in stark contrast to lying down and resting, and it is this huge contrast will make it very clear that 4:55am is wakey time, not sleepy time.

Wakefulness and energy levels during course of day
I find the sleepiness upon the alarm going off fades away very quickly, and while in the past 2 days, I haven't felt that same spunk I felt on days 5-6, my energy/wakefulness is actually more stable and long lasting. Less drama, more substance. I find that from 5:10am to about 5pm energy is stable. Doesn't seem like much, but thats actually almost 12 solid hours! 5pm-7pm my energy drops off and I start to feel sleepy, but it's no longer dead-tired.

I'm noticing an interesting phenomenon between 7pm and 9pm: my wakefulness starts to increase again. It isn't the same stable core of energy as earlier in the day, but it's the feeling of wakefulness and lack of desire for sleep. This is probably due to the lingering effects of having usually woken up around those hours for months.

Back when I was 16-17, whenever I instituted early riser schedules, I had this same experience prior to full adjustment: as soon as my bed time rolled around, I would suddenly feel like sleep was the last thing I wanted to do.

Because of this, I would jokingly say that one's bed time when adjusting to an early riser schedule is the moment when they no longer want to go to sleep. And during this stage, there's a lot of truth to that

Considering a pre-sleep procedure
During the times I experienced the maximum benefits of an early riser schedule years ago, I had wakeup and pre-sleep procedures. Typically, they're called "rituals." I don't like to call them rituals because that implies they are some kind of life-long thing done simply because that's the way it's always been done. I also know some people are in love with their rituals. If I am following a habit, it is only because:
1) I unwittingly fell into the habit.
2) I engineered the habit for a specific purpose.

Habits are not to be trifled with.

This being said, I am considering some kind of 30-60 minute pre-sleep procedure. I'll experiment tonight to figure out some sort of protocol.

Caffeine
The day before starting this program was my last day of ingesting caffeine. I regularly drank multiple energy drinks per day, and usually a large helping of Mountain Dew. I haven't had any problem staying off the ****, mainly because I never drank that stuff for a pick-me-up anyway. While I'm not denying the possibility of a low-grade stimulant addiction, I just loved the taste/texture of the beverages. I once drank 5 Bawls (thats like 5 coffees on crack) and passed out immediately. I woke up with a keyboard imprint on my face 2 hours later. (keyboards are surprisingly soft!) My body's relationship with caffeine and energy drinks is definately odd. I would think nothing of drinking 10-15 different energy drinks in the course of 6 hours during a LAN party with my friends (and pissing every 20 minutes). I actually find it easier to stay awake for extremely long periods of time, if I do not ingest any drugs at all.

Nonetheless, it is clear that caffeine interferes with my ability to sleep, even if it does it in not quite the same way as with other people.

I had little trouble giving up these drinks. In fact I still have two big-ass cans of Max Velocity in the fridge. Not even tempted, although not repulsed either.

Diet
My diet is completely ****ed up, and I have not made any alterations to it for this sleep program, except cutting items with caffeine. To make up for my loss of my favorite beverages, I have replaced them with sugary fruit drinks, gatorate, and a bit of soda (its amazing how many sodas are caffeinated, so selection is limited).

While I do not plan on altering my diet for atleast the first 30 days of this program, if I find myself compelled to manage it in any way for the purposes of helping the sleep program along, then changes will be made before this.




Namaste forum goers. I'll update if I "feel" like it.

[silicon toad2000]

awesome work so far.

I tried the early riser thing and failed, I had too many involving things happening right before my bed time so I rarely wound down in time to get enough sleep.

The pre bed ritual is a good idea, perhaps I would have been more successful if I had instituted something like this myself.

[JimOfferman]

Having a pre-sleep "procedure" worked wonders for me!

As a kid, I never had any sleep problems... I'd just fall asleep whenever I felt like sleeping and rose bright and early every morning. Then, during my college years, I found I had increasing trouble with falling asleep. Most of the time, my mind would be racing with all of the unsolved problems (good and bad) in my hand.

I picked up reading in bed as a pre-sleep habit and before long, my brain was trained to understand that "reading in bed" meant "it is time to quiet down and go to sleep now". I'm fairly anal about following the procedure these days... even when I am dead tired at five in the morning (usually after a good night of partying), I will first read a book and then go to sleep.

The upshot is that I never have trouble sleeping - other than the minor "inconvenience" that I am always up bright and early, even after those long night parties... well, maybe not always bright, but definitely always early.

Jim.

[Max0r]

Days 9 and 10

Check out this wallpaper I made a couple years ago:

http://home.comcast.net/~maxizzle/habit1.png

My efforts with early rising are very closely mirroring this graph so far. Will they mirror the downswing of difficulty?

I feel like I've been on this early riser transition for 2-3 weeks now. It's encouraging to see I've only been at it for 10 days, because I'm still far from full adjustment.

Waking Up
Today, day 10, I had the most difficult time getting up of this entire project. I actually hesitated as much as 3 seconds to get up when my hand hit off the alarm. It may not seem like much, but the pull to lie back down was very strong, and it felt like I hesitated for long time. Day 9 was like this too, except only a 1 second delay, and not as much of a pull to go back to sleep.

In some ways, Day 9 was the worst... my internal dialogue hit me very hard and loud as soon as the alarm went off, it quieted down more into the background after I ran, lifted, and showered, but still had some nasty flareups during the day. It took me about 30-80 minutes longer to go through the wake-up procedure because the inner dialogue was beckoning me to just stand there thinking about things.

Day 9
In some ways, Day 9 was the absolute worst day of this project. Along with the difficulty getting up and the crazy internal dialogue, there seemed to be this great profusion of negative energy and events around me, including external negative influences from another. I was incredibly paranoid that day.

Nonetheless, I was not tempted to give up the early riser program or the "no masturbation" 30 day program either. It shouldn't come as a surprise to me that when I save up my sexual energy, hidden inner negativities will become unlocked and swirl around for conscious viewing again.

Day 9 Sleep Quality
Since I'm aiming to get more rest with less sleep, I went to sleep around 10:40pm last night. A strong sleepiness actually hit me around 8:30-9pm, quite suddenly. Strangely enough, that entire night it seemed like I was sleepless, even though my aching body was craving lying down. I woke up atleast a few times, although I could not tell how much time passed between those wakings, nor was I really aware of how long I was awake. I never was compelled to get up, however, and I was mostly out of it. I know I got rest, because my energy has been completely stable since I ran and worked out this morning.

Waking hours
Despite the increasing difficulty of getting up at 4:55am, and being awake a lot during my set sleeping time, I cannot ignore that my 5:30am - 9pm waking hours are gaining a rock solid energy level stability. It seems I can go at it all day, working on whatever. It actually seems like I have to intentionally relaxify things and set the mood toward my bed time, or else I can just keep going. For instance, the sleepiness last night did not hit me until I decided to start on a pre-sleep procedure.

Yesterday, I did notice a slight slump when I let myself just sit there and not really accomplish anything. It wasn't a feeling of sleepiness, but of overall fatique and misery. It seems the more I pay attention to internal dialogue and just think about things, the more that happens. As soon as I picked up and started working on something or doing an engaging activity again, I was fully awake and energetic.

I'm not yet "feeling great" (those couple hours of high energy on days ~4-5 were a fluke, or alpha reflection) or experiencing any elevated mental clarity, but the day-long sustained energetic stability is definately unusual for me. I suppose most people already can work all day, but at this time, it is an accomplishment for me.

My mood isn't yet elevating per-se, in fact if anything, more misery is coming to the surface. I've noticed that whenever I engage in breaking my own destructive habits and working to replace them with constructive ones, all this latent, subconscious misery of mine comes out of the woodwork of my being and swirls around so that I feel it on a conscious level. This raises a point of decision:

A) Turn back so it will "go away" again.
B) Keep moving forward.

In many ways, I've been A with my life. I've noticed that whenever choosing option B and continuing to go forward, usually the misery gets worse until one day it peaks and then starts to fade away. This seems to be very much like the nature of toxin/waste removal in the body. First you have to upset the solidified toxins so they desolidify and float around in the bloodstream and lymph instead of clump in organs, then you've got to have the fortitude to tolerate the elevated level of pain and sickness that comes with having the stuff in the blood while doing that which is necessary to get it out of the body through the excratory channels, instead of taking the coward's way out and letting it settle in various areas of the body again. You may not feel it when it's in the organs as much as when its in the blood, but it's still there, killing you in subtle ways.

Pre-sleep procedure
I've worked out a rough two-phase pre-sleep procedure. It isn't as step-by-step as the wake-up procedure. This pre-sleep procedure begins when I feel like winding down, anywhere from 30 minutes to a few hours before I go to sleep.

The first phase of the pre-sleep procedure consists of:
- Taking a final drink of water, based on my levels of hydration. I'll do this atleast 30 minutes prior to lying down, but ideally 1-2 hours prior.
- Turning down the lights as much as possible.
- Cutting off all communication with people, no phones, e-mail, instant messengers, forums, or whatever
- Changing into sleepwear (or nakedness, if applicable)
- Cleaning up my space, putting away any work I was doing
- Brushing my teeth
- Preparing my sleeping area
- Setting/verifying my wakeup alarm

As you can see, the initial phase takes maybe 5-15 minutes.

The second phase consists of reading until I start falling asleep while reading, or until i decide to lay down. It could also consist of doing nothing but going straight to sleep, or of other relaxing activities. For now it's pretty much reading.


Dietary parameters
I'm instituting these general dietary parameters:
1. No large meals after 2 pm.
2. No food/drink 4 hours prior to going to sleep, except water and small amounts of organic fruits/veggies (if available, i'm not yet making it a requirement to eat them)
3. Be careful not to indiscriminately over eat

I decided on these parameters after eating a large meal on Day 8 at 7pm and going to sleep 2.5 hours later. It interfered with going to sleep, and that whole day I had eaten a lot more than usual, as a strategy to be more awake. Good sleep isn't compatible with being stuffed senseless. Granted, in certain scenarios, one can have a large meal and go straight to sleep and be totally asleep. However, such a protocol is incompatible with this early riser program.

Negative Influences
My waking hours are further complicated by many negative influences, and sometimes it was almost tempting to just rage and wallow about how every time I try to get something done, people around me attack my attention. This sleep transition is really helping wake me up to this stuff at an accelerated rate. More and more I'm feeling what is called "energy vamping" and I'm also becoming very sensitive to energetic fighting, i.e. getting in ego/idea wars with people. I'm also becoming extremely sensitive to the energy vamp "wallowing in self-pity/hatred" behaviors. I'm not only more sensitive to others doing this, but also notice very quick if I'm doing it. I've found that in the past few days, I've had to be very vigilant and proactive about making sure my attention was focused on what I wanted to focus on, and this mostly involved thwarting the efforts of perceptual persuasion of others, as well as sprinklings of my own habitual (for almost two decades) leanings which are mostly fueled by the internal dialogue (not what it says, per se, but how it encourages analyzing, thinking, mental masturbation, dwelling).

This includes making sure I do not turn this public log of mine into a mental masturbation session. I feel that I'm already treading into mental masturbation territory, but the positive trade-off is that it's solidifying the early riser program for me.

[takkaria]

How's this going for you now?

[EnduranceNinja]

I hope the project is still going well for you. I am at day 5 of getting up early. I understand your problems trying to stay awake in the afternoon. Just like you around 2-3pm I feel a huge need to nap. One day I successfully did a 30min power nap. And one day I broke down and took a monster 3hr nap. But I have still successfully got up at 6am for 5 days. I have had some help though sat.&Sun. I had to work at 530am so I had no choice but to wake up early. I use to rarely remember my dreams but since starting this I am having good sleep and remembering my dreams. I am averaging my bed times 930 to 11pm. I feel motivation is wahts getting me up so I wonder what will happen when that stops. So please Max0r keep us informed.