Late Wake up, Late Bedtime. A Vicious Circle

How many people planned to establish a daily routine and they all wanted to start by getting up at the same time. However, the time we get up is directly affected by the time we go to bed. These two concepts are interconnected, but for some reason we often prefer to ignore this fact.

Yes, there are often days when you need to go to bed later. For example, there’s a lot of work that needs to be done urgently. Sometimes a meeting with someone lasts late. Often, you just want to watch some YouTube videos. And so we go to bed late.

We force ourselves to get up for work in the morning, which means we don’t get enough sleep. This fatigue is passed on to the next day or week. As a result, on Saturday or Sunday, we sleep late, get up around noon, and then can’t fall asleep again on Sunday night. On Monday, we have to go to work, we get up early, and we’re still sleep deprived. Does this sound familiar?

Everything described above is familiar to many people, but not everyone notices it, and some do not want to admit it. Some people try to fight this phenomenon, while others believe that it is a normal mode of human existence. And all of these people will be right.

Everyone has their own truth and it has the right to exist. However, we all want to improve the quality of life, and getting up late does just the opposite.

My goal was to figure out how to get up early in the morning. This is after I realized that getting up at, say, 5 a.m. has a very positive effect on my well-being, creativity, and inner peace and confidence.

I mean, I wanted to get up in the morning. But I didn’t think it would be so hard to do. And eventually I realized why. The answer was on the surface, right in front of my nose, but I didn’t notice it.

I tried to wake myself up with an alarm clock, but it didn’t last long and didn’t become a habit. When I realized why I needed to get up in the morning and really wanted to, I managed to do it a few more times (not in a row) on enthusiasm and inspiration.

But I still couldn’t get up at the same time in the morning. Do you know why? Let’s go back to the answer that was “on the surface.” And it sounds like this: “Late to bed, late wake up.”

It’s impossible to get up in the morning if you go to bed late. This means on a regular basis. You can force yourself to do it once or twice, you can even exhaust yourself with a disciplined rise in the morning, but if you have chronic sleep deprivation and constant fatigue, it will only harm your health.

Here, I try to research and give advice in the opposite direction, namely, how to improve your health.

We have already realized that sleep is a very important aspect of our life. Getting up early helps to establish the body’s internal rhythms, is synchronized with nature, and is generally a very good habit.

But on the other hand, there is a need to sleep a certain number of hours, for example, 7 or 8. And it is logical that in order to get up at a certain hour in the morning, we need to subtract these 7 or 8 hours from the hour when we want to get up. This will be the hour when we should be asleep.

It is important: we do not just have to go to bed and lie there for a long time to fall asleep, but we have to be asleep. To do this, we need to go to bed even earlier. Few people pay attention to this at the beginning. I didn’t pay much attention either, and I didn’t really understand why I couldn’t form a stable habit of waking up at the same time in the morning.

As you can see, if we want to get up in the morning, we need to go to bed earlier. This, in turn, also has pitfalls that I have seen in my experience. To go to bed earlier and not toss and turn in bed, you need to be a little physically tired. But it is important not to be overtired.

If you come back from the gym at 9 p.m. and go to bed, your over-excited nervous system will not let you fall asleep for a long time. As you can see, practical experience shows that you need to plan everything in advance, as well as how complex this system is.

You should also not stay too long on social media. It is especially harmful to pick up a smartphone before going to bed. What do we do? When we get into bed, we scroll through our Instagram feed, browse Facebook, or watch YouTube videos, and sometimes fall asleep to them.

Any interaction with a smartphone or computer keeps our brain active. Even if the body is tired, the brain is excited at this time, so it’s likely that even if we lie down and close our eyes, we won’t be able to fall asleep quickly.

You will need to wait until the processes in the brain slow down. Everyone has an individual inhibition period. It is recommended not to use gadgets at least 2 hours before bedtime. It is better, for example, to read a book with a calm, neutral plot, and this can help you fall asleep faster.

Yes, sleep is part of a much larger, complex system that affects our body, mind, behavior, habits, character, and life in general. Everything in this complex must be balanced.

As soon as one area is out of balance, all the others are also disturbed and this causes an imbalance. Unfortunately, most people have disorders in one area or another.

When someone tries to improve one area, they forget (or don’t know) that all other areas need to be improved as well, and few people can do this, and many get frustrated and leave everything halfway.

So let’s start with the fact that everyone can try to shape their day so that they go to bed earlier. To do this, you may need to change not only your habits but also your social circle. We should do the best we can here.

For example, if we work a lot, it is unlikely that we will be able to go to bed without finishing our work. However, there is a chance to go to bed early and get up in the morning, for example, at 4 am to finish the work. I tried this and my personal results were very good.

All other less important things that we used to do in the evening or later in the night should be postponed to another time or stopped altogether.

So, if you see that your body needs to get up early, but you can’t get it to work, start by going to bed early. It’s the early bedtime that few people pay attention to and try unsuccessfully to establish the habit of getting up regularly in the morning.

How to get to bed earlier is your personal business, imagination, and work on yourself, but each such step is a personal victory, and the end result is really worth it.

Warning: this article does not constitute medical advice. The article contains the author’s personal opinion and personal conclusions and observations. If you have problems with sleep or are interested in other issues related to it, it is better to consult your doctor.