I’ve been trying to fix my sleep for the last several weeks. The last few days have been mostly normal.¹ In that I’ve been going to bed around midnight and waking up with my alarm at 8:30. I’ve felt much better, and I don’t need a mid-day nap so often.

This has been good and a welcome change. But I’m finding that the wake up time is just not working for me. 8:30 is just late enough that it screws up my preferred lunch time, 1 p.m. For some reason that time feels right for a mid-day meal. It’s also early enough so that dinner won’t come too late and send me to bed on a full stomach.

Right now I have a two part plan.

First, I’ve decided to start dialing back my morning alarm in 10 minute increments. I don’t have an end goal in mind. I’m going to move the alarm back every three days. If I can get a routine going with a wake-up time of around 6:30-7 a.m. I’ll be happy.

Second, I need to fix my worst morning habit: checking email & RSS before I’m out of bed. This keeps me in bed longer, and delays the start of my day. The first step is to move my phone (which is also the alarm clock) out of easy reach of my bed. If that doesn’t work, I’ll have to block it’s Internet access for the morning hours.

I think my previous attempts at getting into a regular sleep pattern were too aggressive for the amount of sleep I was getting. Now that I’m sleeping better, a more gradual change should work.

Hopefully, I’ll be ready to go at 8:20 in the morning.

1. Meaning that I’m not using the OTC sleep pills to get to bed. ↩