21 Days of SLEEP! [21 Day Challenge]
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Here’s MY 21 Day Challenge:
For a LONG time, nearly the entirety of covid my sleep has been disrupted. My normal “night owl” schedule – sleep around 2 or 3 – turned into a crazy, stupid schedule, regularly seeing the sun come up before going to bed.
This schedule is NOT doing me well: I’ve noticed my sleep from 4 or 5 or 6 a.m. until whenever is NOT the same quality as my sleep starting at midnight or two.
Worse my household is full of interruptions so that I RARELY actually get more than about 6 1/2 hours of sleep.
The result!? Nearly constant migraines, horrible fatigue, depression and a lack of motivation.
I’ve struggled to get this back under control but am promising myself this 21 days to do what EVER is needed to get this under control.
Here’s the goal:
- 14 or more days, in bed before 2 am
- 7 days or more lights out before 2 am (both can be on the same day e.g. in bed and lights out before 2 counts as success for both of these)
- Aiming for 7+ hours of sleep for 14 days of the 21
- Strictly recording my bedtime for at least 18 of the 21 days of this challenge
I know when I’ve succeeded in getting at least 2 days in a row of 7+ hours of sleep I feel WONDERFUL. I can only imagine how good I’ll feel if I accomplish this!
Looking forward to seeing other’s 21 day challenges!
Your Partner in Success,
~ Mark
Okay… day before the official Challenge starts, but I’d like to set myself up for success by starting the habit now.
Measurable: statements like “make this year wonderful” or “do better at sleeping” are vipid and unhelpful. Mushy. What does “wonderful” or “better” even mean!?
Important I – you – set up measurements of where you want to get to with your Challenges; how far you got with a step.
To that end I am using:
- Sleep as Droid to measure my subjective hours and quality of sleep;
- Wellue O2Ring Smart Ring Pulse Oximeter to measure objective measurements of O2 level and help me stay in a better position for sleep (I snore, the ring sounds an alarm telling me to reposition myself for better sleep when my blood oxygen level drops)
The main measurements for success will be 1) when do I get to bed, lights off; 2) How long do I sleep (aiming for 7.5+) and lastly 3) my subjective quality of sleep
But baby steps first. Last night didn’t count but…
Bedtime (lights out): 5:44a
Waking time / Hours slept: 12:23p (6.39h)Tonight’s New Year’s Eve, so likely a poor night to start trying to go to bed early 🤣 but… this is where we’ve brought ourselves, Mark Farmer… this is where we’ve brought outselves…
Tonight’s goal: in bed, light’s off by 2a. Here we go!
Day 1!
Goal:
- 14 or more days, in bed before 2 am (Progress: -)
- 7 days or more lights out before 2 am (Progress: -)
- Aiming for 7+ hours of sleep for 14 days of the 21 (Progress: -)
- Strictly recording my bedtime for at least 18 of the 21 days of this challenge (Progress: 1 day/18)
Bedtime (lights out): 5:03a (41 minutes earlier than the night before)
Waking time / Hours slept: 11:43a (5.22h) (~1 hour less than yesterday)One step forward (lights off earlier) one step backwards (less sleep). Daily public accountability helps.
Goal tonight: in bed, lights off before 2a; 7+hours of sleep
It’s not too late to enter the 21 day challenge! 21 days will pass whether you choose and work towards success… or sit on your ass devolving. Which will you choose!?
Thats cool that your ring does that!
Have you thought about just going to be at 10pm or something? force your body back to a normal schedule?
I *have* thought about just forcing my body – both ways (when I wake up, bc that forced you to be sleepier in the evening for a virtual circle to get you back on track) and, to a lesser extent, going to be early.
The issue with just an earlier bedtime is laying in bed frustrated that you’re not falling asleep can be horribly fatal to a goal of better or earlier sleep: the frustration often sets a blockage in your mind that can result in insomnia or actually encourage negative behavior (such as doomscrolling because you’re bored)
But lately I’ve been EXHAUSTED within an hour after I eat dinner and *THAT* seems the magic hour if I’m to force myself.
In the past month I have gotten myself back to a better schedule (only to f’ things up again), but the couple of days with early and adequate sleep are MAGICAL.
THAT is what I want.
And yea, the data the ring provides is interesting. Problem is the majority of the data is showing I snore and have mild apnea and there isn’t much you can do about that.
Not that I’m going to give up:
Part of this year’s focus will be losing weight (which can help apnea/snoring by ~10% or more); developing better habits, etc.
Thats why this challenge is so important to me!
Sleep is definitely important for health, so I’m happy you’re working on improving your sleep.
I think striving for 2AM as your bedtime is ideal. Maybe you staying up late after 5AM contributes to your migraines?
One of the things that help me sleep is to try not to work on my laptop too much before going to bed and stop scrolling Facebook or reading all different kind of articles on my phone trying to fall asleep. Have you thought about/tried limiting your screen time?
Computer time IS a huge contributor to the late nights. It’s just nighttime is my primary time to work and so much needs to be done – I’ll think, “I’ll just get this ONE thing done,” then that leads to “one more thing” and on an on and on… next thing I know it’s 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 am…
It’s the cycle that kills me: if I could get the earlier waking time, I could get more done during the day and then not need to stay up late.
A work in progress
Hmm perhaps you go to bed at a certain time regardless of what you haven’t done for the day. Sleep is important for health so getting good amount of sleep should be the main goal above anything else.
Really fractured sleep today: went to bed around midnight (I think), then woke ~2am? Back to sleep 4a-8:30a, then back awake. Back to sleep around 10:30 or 11a for another 1/2 hour to hour.
Migraine.
6 hours, 6 hours and 4.5 hours is crazy.
I’ve been through this before – the really off hours, trying to get back on track – so will persist. Think the only way is through this.
No graph to post; working to finish up work tonight to be in bed by 2. (crosses fingers)
No graph today; struggling with this.
In the end, I’d like this to be a story of taking new actions… not simply pounding my head on a wall. But… as of this moment: I pound on.
Sleep @ 3:30a (Yay! That’s a win.)
Woke at 7:30a, with a migraine, by my cat. (Boo… that’s a loss)
Suffered until ~10:30, drifting in… and mostly out of sleep, not wanting to take medication (which, ultimately, damages your health for the meds I take), finally relinquishing at 10:30ish to taking meds
Back to sleep until 130ishAgain, the focus in on new action. But I’ll also keep pounding a way, a bit, trying to force this because sleep is such an odd thing to get ahead of:
– There’s no way to FORCE yourself to go to sleep; and
– Sleep including timing, quality and quantity, is controlled by far more than simply your actions and decisions“Making” yourself go to bed at midnight (or even 2a), then laying there awake in the dark only COMPOUNDS the problem with frustrations, THEN making it harder to go to sleep.
So that will be it for now: a combination of forcing things and trying new action.
New action: BC sleep depends on circadian rhythms, a friend, a child psychologist used to suggest that there were magic moments to go to bed… and that, if you missed them, you’d have to wait ~4 hours for the next circadian lull before going to bed would work.
I’ve long noticed – erm… in my exhaustion – that my circadian rhythm takes a serious dip right after dinner (I tend to eat late). Confident that has to do with blood sugar level as well.
So lets play with that:
Tonight, I’m aiming at being in bed as close to 11p as I can; noticing when I get sleepy (I have a HORRIBLE habit of semi-consciously “fighting off” going to sleep WHY IN THE WORLD EXECPT FOR SHEER REPETITIOUS HABIT I DO NOT KNOW) and turning off the Ereader/phone/whatever at that moment.
From prior successes I DO know that an earlier bedtime and sleep earlier in the night is FAR more rejuvenating for me so… lets give THIS a shot.
Because, other than that, I’m pretty frustrated AND damaging myself with medicine to function at this point.
No graph today; struggling with this.
In the end, I’d like this to be a story of taking new actions… not simply pounding my head on a wall. But… as of this moment: I pound on.
Sleep @ 3:30a (Yay! That’s a win.)
Woke at 7:30a, with a migraine, by my cat. (Boo… that’s a loss)
Suffered until ~10:30, drifting in… and mostly out of sleep, not wanting to take medication (which, ultimately, damages your health for the meds I take), finally relinquishing at 10:30ish to taking meds
Back to sleep until 130ishAgain, the focus in on new action. But I’ll also keep pounding a way, a bit, trying to force this because sleep is such an odd thing to get ahead of:
– There’s no way to FORCE yourself to go to sleep; and
– Sleep including timing, quality and quantity, is controlled by far more than simply your actions and decisions“Making” yourself go to bed at midnight (or even 2a), then laying there awake in the dark only COMPOUNDS the problem with frustrations, THEN making it harder to go to sleep.
So that will be it for now: a combination of forcing things and trying new action.
New action: BC sleep depends on circadian rhythms, a friend, a child psychologist used to suggest that there were magic moments to go to bed… and that, if you missed them, you’d have to wait ~4 hours for the next circadian lull before going to bed would work.
I’ve long noticed – erm… in my exhaustion – that my circadian rhythm takes a serious dip right after dinner (I tend to eat late). Confident that has to do with blood sugar level as well.
So lets play with that:
Tonight, I’m aiming at being in bed as close to 11p as I can; noticing when I get sleepy (I have a HORRIBLE habit of semi-consciously “fighting off” going to sleep WHY IN THE WORLD EXECPT FOR SHEER REPETITIOUS HABIT I DO NOT KNOW) and turning off the Ereader/phone/whatever at that moment.
From prior successes I DO know that an earlier bedtime and sleep earlier in the night is FAR more rejuvenating for me so… lets give THIS a shot.
Because, other than that, I’m pretty frustrated AND damaging myself with medicine to function at this point.
Phenibut is supposed to help you sleep. ZMA and theanine also. But phenibut is the one that will fuck you up if you take it for too long (allegedly), so i’m guessing its the one that will actually put you to sleep LOL
Melatonin might help with the circadian rhythms.
Maybe keep some caffeine and water right by your bed so when you wake up at the time you want to start waking up at you pop the caffeine and drink the water to force your body onto this new circadian rhythm time.
@Koleah Haven’t ever heard of Phenibut. I’ll Google it.
I have used ZMA, melatonin and tryptophan.
ZMA really only gives me more dreams, but I’ve never found it to help me either fall asleep faster or sleep more deeply.
Melatonin HAS proved useful for shifting circadian rhythm and I do use that from time to time.
What I love and have had supper good experience with is tryptophan.
But, honestly, all are pretty lightweight.
Anywho… SUPER breakthrough: after being out of the Mastermind for 2 days and REALLY struggling with some super fractured sleep for 2 days (like, “go to bed at 11p and wake up at 2a, then stay up until 6a and sleep to 11, then go back to sleep until 2p with a horrible headache) last night I had a breakthrough:
Bedtime by 1:40a, sleeping until 4a; back to sleep by 4:20a, sleeping until 11:40 – so, like, ~10 hours of sleep.
As screwy as that sounds it was super good sleep and FAR more than I’ve had in weeks or months.
it also represents a major step forward with a ~2a bedtime and a semi-normal waking time. Woke feeling like a million dollars, the sleep even affecting systemic inflammation (aside from chronic migraines I also am usually HORRIBLE achy, stiff and sore in the morning – strong indicators of chronic systemic inflammation).
Last night I was feeling awful after 6 hours, 5 hours, 6 hours and 4 hours daily sleep so I threw everything I could at, including:
- Aleve pain killers (for a headache)
- CBD
- 1/4 Sumatriptan (Imitrex) tablet
- Turmeric
Working to put 2 nights of these together. Heading to bed shortly!
Thanks for the suggestions, Odmaa and Kolea!
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