Sleep pattern adjustment

As suggested by Jessica, this seems like a good idea: How to Become an Early Riser (Part II).

I don’t care about getting up early, per se. I care about being able to fall asleep when I need to and being up and aware at a consistent time. Given the value of evenings for social events and speaking to friends back home, I think I will aim for rising at 9am, with the hope that I will end up normally going to be around 2am.

Perhaps I will finally be able to knock this off my 43Things list.

Unrelated, but scary: There will be virtually nothing left to fish from the seas by the middle of the century if current trends continue, according to a major scientific study.

See: Worm, Boris et al. “Impacts of Biodiversity Loss on Ocean Ecosystem Services.” Science. 3 November 2006: Vol. 314. no. 5800, pp. 787 – 790. (Oxford Full Text)

Author: Milan

In the spring of 2005, I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in International Relations and a general focus in the area of environmental politics. In the fall of 2005, I began reading for an M.Phil in IR at Wadham College, Oxford. Outside school, I am very interested in photography, writing, and the outdoors. I am writing this blog to keep in touch with friends and family around the world, provide a more personal view of graduate student life in Oxford, and pass on some lessons I've learned here.

7 thoughts on “Sleep pattern adjustment”

  1. Not so much luck with waking at 9:00 today, but I am ill and this is probably not the best time to initiate a new regime.

  2. I find his pattern & advice quite troubling. For a start, if that fellow is rising at 5 and not usually sleeping until 10 or 11 then (as far as I understand it) he is not getting enough sleep. The average for the UK is slightly over 8 hours – noticeably more than that fellow’s 6 to 7 hours. There is also evidence to suggest that insufficient sleep is harmful, reducing people’s performance at work, causing car accidents & having negative health effects including reduced immune function and depression.
    While some of the stuff in that article is plausible (albeit obvious) it is mixed in with stuff that is dubious and unsupported. Given that, you might be better off taking advice from a reputable source. There is a factsheet published by the Royal College of Psychiatrists at (link) which might interest you. There is also some information at the website of the Sleep Research Centre (link) which includes links to a number of refereed papers.

    References: see (link) for a breakdown of what Brits spend theitr time on, and link) for risks of sleep deprivation.

  3. Sarah,

    Thanks for the information. I converted the raw URLs you posted into links, so as to be cleaner looking and more convenient.

    I was a bit concerned about this fellow’s qualifications myself, but I remain willing to accept the possibility that always getting up at the same time would be beneficial.

  4. Sarah would be quite horrified if she’d followed the link to Steve’s discussion of polyphasic sleep. For about five months he was sleeping just 2 hours per day.

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