You go to bed pretty early, like within a couple hours of sunset early, let yourself wake up naturally around midnight, stay awake doing low-key activities (sex, have a snack, read a book by candle light, talk to your bedmate if they are up, etc. basically candle-light-or-darker activities, a low-wattage warm white bulb on a dimmer does nicely, as do flickering candelabra bulbs) then around like 2-3, fall back asleep until a bit after dawn.
Thats the sleep pattern humans had, as far as we can tell, for all of history before the invention of artificial lighting (its mentioned so casually, with zero explanation, in historical documents as to just be the de facto experience), and its a pattern a lot of people naturally fall back to, but with improper timing so they don’t make it to the second sleep phase, and just end up with a dysfunctional rhythm that has them waking at 4. Or they fully fall into the pattern and feel great, like my retired aunt, but are worried because it’s “not normal”.
In my experience, “sleep experiments” are practically impossible if you live with any other humans. Your schedule kind of has to follow everyone else’s, otherwise you end up lying awake in bed for hours with a eye mask and earmuffs while everyone else is stomping around lol
Humans slept twice in history because it made sense at that time. During winter, it was dark for 14 hours, which is way more sleep than what most people need. It also made sense to wake up and tend to the fire etc.
Humans in other situations, even modern hunter gatherer tribes, are very flexible with sleep. Some sleep through the night in one block, staying up later. Some wake up very early. Some take shifts or wake up multiple times during the night. It’s a relatively modern concept that every person must sleep exactly 8 hours in one block; the reality is everyone’s circadian rhythm is different. This was a beneficial trait for most of our history; it helped survival if a few people were awake during different times of the night.
The problem is, that we now all have clocks in our pocket, and time-based obligations. You can’t go to bed at sundown, because you’re probably still at work at that time, and haven’t even eaten yet. You can’t sleep in, because you have to get ready at 5am. If you wake up during the night, it’s just a loss of sleep hours, there’s no fire to tend anymore. As a society, we’ve also decided that sleep is a waste of time, and tried to replace it with caffeine.
I dunno what the solution is, but it’s definitely a problem.
When I was younger this was true for me, but these days once I wake up I tend to stay awake, so this is the worst outcome in my case.
I wonder if second-sleeping would help you.
You go to bed pretty early, like within a couple hours of sunset early, let yourself wake up naturally around midnight, stay awake doing low-key activities (sex, have a snack, read a book by candle light, talk to your bedmate if they are up, etc. basically candle-light-or-darker activities, a low-wattage warm white bulb on a dimmer does nicely, as do flickering candelabra bulbs) then around like 2-3, fall back asleep until a bit after dawn.
Thats the sleep pattern humans had, as far as we can tell, for all of history before the invention of artificial lighting (its mentioned so casually, with zero explanation, in historical documents as to just be the de facto experience), and its a pattern a lot of people naturally fall back to, but with improper timing so they don’t make it to the second sleep phase, and just end up with a dysfunctional rhythm that has them waking at 4. Or they fully fall into the pattern and feel great, like my retired aunt, but are worried because it’s “not normal”.
In my experience, “sleep experiments” are practically impossible if you live with any other humans. Your schedule kind of has to follow everyone else’s, otherwise you end up lying awake in bed for hours with a eye mask and earmuffs while everyone else is stomping around lol
Humans slept twice in history because it made sense at that time. During winter, it was dark for 14 hours, which is way more sleep than what most people need. It also made sense to wake up and tend to the fire etc.
Humans in other situations, even modern hunter gatherer tribes, are very flexible with sleep. Some sleep through the night in one block, staying up later. Some wake up very early. Some take shifts or wake up multiple times during the night. It’s a relatively modern concept that every person must sleep exactly 8 hours in one block; the reality is everyone’s circadian rhythm is different. This was a beneficial trait for most of our history; it helped survival if a few people were awake during different times of the night.
The problem is, that we now all have clocks in our pocket, and time-based obligations. You can’t go to bed at sundown, because you’re probably still at work at that time, and haven’t even eaten yet. You can’t sleep in, because you have to get ready at 5am. If you wake up during the night, it’s just a loss of sleep hours, there’s no fire to tend anymore. As a society, we’ve also decided that sleep is a waste of time, and tried to replace it with caffeine.
I dunno what the solution is, but it’s definitely a problem.
https://www.sleepjunkie.com/history-of-sleep/
In middle school, I set an alarm for 1-2 in the morning just to wake up and go back to sleep.
Came here to say this. It’s not so fun two hours later, laying in bed unable to fall back asleep.