Why I halved my sleep hours for a week

For the last few months I have been struggling with time management. Actually, I’ve been struggling with time management my entire life but my anxiety about it has been at an all-time high.  I’ve been feeling overwhelmed with work, housework, commuting and parenting. I’ve always loved structure. But I realized I was filling my waking hours with tasks that gave me no joy, going to bed each night exhausted and completely disgusted with my lack of progress toward my personal goals.

When was I supposed to do anything else? I was already at maximum capacity. Forget accomplishing any of my long term goals, I couldn’t even fit in time for yoga in the morning. I was fed up with the same thing every day without any progress. I went to google for help.

After a few minutes I found and interesting article on different types of sleep cycles. I found many resources on the topic. Some of these contained conflicting information; regardless of the differing opinions I realized that there were many people in the world that challenged the traditional view that adults should get 7-8 hours of sleep. Some of these people had maintained completely different sleep cycles for many years.

These articles made me question my own sleeping habits. Was my sleep schedule right for me? I aimed to get 8 hours of sleep per night. Was this too much for me? While I was in school I always got 4-5 hours of sleep per night. It seemed to be enough at the time. Could I go back to sleeping 4-5 hours per night? I had grown to appreciate my sleep so much that I hadn’t considered the fact that I may have inadvertently trained my body to sleep more.

I decided to give it a try for a month. It’s only been a week so far. I wake up an hour to 90 minutes earlier than before and go to bed about 2-3 hours later than my old bedtime. The mornings are amazing-after the actual waking up part. I’ve always been a morning person and enjoy having a morning routine that includes exercise, reading, time for prayers and reflection and still allows me to get to work on time. I know that for some people extra sleep is more valuable that these activities but that isn’t the case for me. If I can get by with less sleep, I prefer to. After years without, I’m also enjoying more time to work on passion projects after my daughter has gone to bed. I plan on taking naps in the weekend if I need them and mini-naps during my lunch break if possible.

It’s not all flowers and honey though. On day 2 I broke down and needed to take a nap during my lunch break. The next day I was tired at around 2 p.m. I decided to take a short break and go for a walk. The fresh air and exercise helped get me out of my rut. Since then, I always go for a 15 minute walk between 2-3 p.m. when I start to feel very tired. I consistently feel refreshed after the walk. On day six I felt extremely tired and I took a 90 minute nap. After the nap, I felt great again (I’m going to have a post on naps very soon). One day seven, I felt amazing.

I know that it’s only been a week and I may need more sleep in the long term. I also know that this sleep routine is not for everyone. I can sympathize with people that have other factors that don’t allow them to change their sleeping routines. But if I can train my body to function on less sleep without compromising my health, I’m going to at least give it a try.