After a wonderful summer, I’m starting to get up early again as part of my routine. It’s not a huge adjustment because almost all summer I was out of bed before 7am and often woke up minutes before an alarm set for 6am. But, I’ve found trying to get up between 5 and 5:30am a bit tough the past few days.
I have never needed a lot of sleep. Back over a couple decades ago when I was a fairly new teacher, I used to routinely sleep for 4-5 hours a night for 3-5 nights a week. Then I might feel tired and need 6 or 7 hours a night for one night before starting another 3-5 night streak of only getting 4-5 hours. This worked for me. Once a colleague told me I was going to die 10 years younger because of my lack of sleep. That night at 1am I sent him an email that said something like this: ‘So, I did the Math… if you live to 80 and I live to 70, I will have been awake for more time than you.’
I have definitely started requiring more sleep and looking back, I do think there were times my sleep pattern wasn’t healthy. For me, now, I think 7 hours is my ideal but there are times I can’t get to bed at 10pm and so I make do with between 6 and 7 hours sleep. That seems to work for me, but sometimes on weekends I will try to get a bit more. What I won’t do is get much more than 8 hours on any night. If I sleep for much more than 8 hours in a night I get a headache and my back will ache as well.
I know that averaging a little less than 7 hours per night a week will seem like not enough sleep for many. I also know that sleep is an important part of being and staying healthy. So while getting very little sleep was like some sort of stupid badge of honour for me when I was younger, I now appreciate how important it is. I will start going to sleep earlier and trying to keep my average sleep time at 7 hours a night… and after getting to bed after midnight and having my alarm go off at 5:30… that will have to start tonight.
