Wrapping up on the leftovers for this post with some thoughts on my fourth and final New Year's Resolution.
Move my bedtime forward as far as possible
As mentioned in leftovers #1, this is the resolution directly addressing my sleep quality goal. This resolution may have actually retained a direct quality on January 1 ("improve sleep quality") but in practice it made sense to reframe the idea into the current form. What I quickly learned this year is that the best way to measure sleep quality is an honest self-evaluation right upon wakeup, with a sluggish or reluctant start hinting at overnight problems. I reasoned that the combination of early wakeup and high energy from the get-go would define success, but lacking any obvious ways to control the latter I turned my focus to the wakeup time.
The challenge with wakeup time is that there is an obvious answer - just set an alarm. Sometimes obvious answers have a way of discouraging us from thinking through a problem and determining the best path. We know that the solution to smoking is to stop smoking, but if that was the solution everyone would have quit decades ago. Still, I stumbled into this trap initially, setting an early alarm and deciding that success was equal parts discipline and willpower. In hindsight, a two-fold criteria for success saved my resolution. Sure, I was up early enough at the start of the year, but I was always lacking in terms of those initial energy levels. You could argue that I was succeeding just by waking up earlier, but to me it had no benefit if I sat through a groggy morning or dragged myself through the rest of the day. Why craft a process for enjoying life if you don't enjoy the process?
It helped at this point to return to an idea I had read about a few years ago regarding James Milner, a midfielder with Liverpool FC. Milner's issue was that soccer games would sometimes end at ten or eleven at night, which meant he stayed up until the early hours while he wound down from the energy of the match. He would wake up the following day in mid-morning, which threw him off his usual six-thirty cycle. The adjustment, outlined briefly in this article, was to always wake up at six-thirty. What I applied from this logic was that a consistent wakeup time enabled the body to work more efficiently, which in turn should lead to better sleep quality. I therefore stepped back my alarms to a wakeup time that I could meet throughout the week, which initially meant I was only waking up ten or fifteen minutes earlier than I was at the end of 2021.
Over the course of the following few weeks, I moved the wakeup time forward five or ten minutes per week. I noticed that once I got into this pattern, strength built on strength and enabled me to start beating my alarm clock in the morning. This led to the predictable result of having an easier time falling asleep at night, since I was up for longer during the day due to my early wakeup. At this point the cycle was obviously reinforcing itself, suggesting that getting myself across the finish line for this resolution was only a formality, but I held my horses and let the alarm creep forward on a conservative schedule even though evidence suggested that I could handle larger increments of earlier wakeup alarms.
I think this was a wise approach. Although I am not a professional soccer player, like Milner there were instances where late nights challenged my new routine. I don't have the luxury of catching up on sleep with a nap, so in my mind it was better after a late night to sleep into the morning rather than enforcing a strict wakeup. This at least allowed me to wake up with the right energy. The next trick was returning to the wakeup time. I realized after a little trial and error that the best way was to catchup over two days, with the first day taking on a majority of the burden. For example, if I woke up ninety minutes late one morning, the next day I would set the alarm for thirty minutes late (a catchup of one hour, or 66% of the lost time). The second day I would return to my set time, which was the remaining catchup of thirty minutes. I suspect this worked for me because it seemed to keep my body within the rhythm of the sleep schedule while allowing enough sleep to regain my energy. As long as I'm returning to my wakeup time while maintaining good energy at the start of each day, I'll probably stick to this tactic.
It may also be obvious, but I'll state it anyway since it's important - using this approach means I can't oversleep the schedule on consecutive days. This is fine by me. In some ways, this gets back to a thought I mentioned in the first leftover about food - don't have two bad meals in a row. In this context, what it means is I don't have two nights of oversleeping in a row. However, I'm happy to allow for one, particularly if I sense that I need it. Usually I will have one day in the week (often Sunday) when I don't even bother with the alarm, reasoning that if I sleep past my wakeup time then I must have needed the extra rest. The key is knowing my plan to get back on track within a couple of days. If I step back far enough from these examples and think about it more broadly, I see that this is more or less my general philosophy to life - it's fine when things go wrong, but don't let anything go wrong two times in a row.
The unexpected result of completing this resolution is the way it changed my view on screentime. There is a consensus among certain types that exposure to various screens is a disruption to the body's sleep rhythm. No doubt about it, one of the key tactics for me in terms of sleep quality is to have my phone on the other side of the room, far out of arm's reach (this also makes it hard to sleep through the alarm, but that's not why I do it). However, I no longer have confidence in the idea that screens should be avoided for around two hours before bedtime. It still sounds like it might be true, but it hasn't been true for me at all in 2022. Now that my body is used to falling asleep between eleven and midnight, it seems that being on my phone or computer up until eleven has no effect on my sleep. This isn't to suggest that there is no downside to screentime before bedtime, but for me I think this is a case where the body's rhythm might be strong enough to override the effect of screentime.
Endnote
0) Good idea, but why...?
It's probably important to clarify the inevitable "who cares?" question. After all, there isn't any specific need for me to wakeup early given my current set of responsibilities. For me, the matter came down to when I felt was a better time to be awake. In essence, I compared my latest waking hour to a hypothetical earlier waking hour, then tried to determine which one was my preference. In my 2021 sleep schedule, my last waking hour was usually midnight to one, so the question for 2022 was whether I preferred to be awake at this hour rather than seven to eight in the morning. All I did in those late hours was read, but I can also do that if I wake up early, so to me it was obvious right away that finding a way to be up earlier was my preference.
