slacker tip du jour #1

When I don't have a schedule, like during summer vacations before college or during periods of unemployment, my sleep patterns get the better of me. Somehow, I was born on Earth (at least, that's what my parents told me) with a 26-hour sleep cycle. So, after a couple weeks without a schedule, I invariably find myself bedding down past dawn, and waking up at 4 in the afternoon.

Well, boo hoo, right?

At some point though, the back-to-school sales end, or my bank account runs low, and I rejoin the land of the living. Back in tenth grade, this meant waking up at 6am in order to catch the bus at 6:45, which took almost two hours to get to school. This month, I'm trying to adjust to East Coast time so as not to waste upcoming vacations in D.C. and Puerto Rico.

One of the perks of not having to work is the ability to run extended, unhealthy experiments on yourself. This is the process by which I stumbled upon the 48-Hour Cure for Night Owls. It goes like this:

Day 1: Enter nap
I add a nap to my schedule by staying up a few hours later (into late morning). That night, I'm snoring before midnight.

Day 2: Equalize nap-sleep
Extend that night nap as long as possible - at least four hours. Wake up in the dead of night. Go to sleep again late morning. Wake up around noon. This sucks, because my body is lobbying for something more like eight hours, but I have to turn this "full night's sleep" into a nap. Full day, then drop in bed at 9pm.

Day 3: Voila
Wake up at 5am, fully refreshed. Don't sleep again until nightfall. Done.

The key is to sleep twice a day, once a few hours past my current bedtime, once starting at my target bedtime. One is a nap and the other's for real. Next, simply swap the nap and the "full night's sleep", by lengthening the nap and shortening the "night's sleep". Then, drop the nap.

Now to actually getting some work done.