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Common Mistakes Made While Forming A Sleep Pattern
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Sometime back I wrote about How to Become an Early Sleeper where I highlighted all the do’s of becoming an early sleeper. Following are some of the don’ts; Common mistakes made while forming a sleep pattern:
Follow half the pattern
Becoming an early riser and an early sleeper go hand in hand. So does becoming a late riser and a late sleeper. A lot of times, we pick up one of these two aspects that we want to change and focus on it. What we forget is that we cannot change one and keep the other constant.
I tried waking up early and not bother about sleeping early. It did work. For a week or two. And then my system crashed since it was stretching. The problem with this is that when we are stretching we often dont come to know of it. Its only when our body reaches its peak of stretching and starts showing signs of fatigue and drowsiness that we realise that we made a mistake.
Make big jumps. 2-3 hours of change at once.
While trying to change sleep patterns, try going with smaller changes – 30 mins at a time. It is easier to adjust.
I tried to change my pattern from no pattern to becoming an early riser. In the initial days, this resulted in extreme drowsiness and tiredness during the day. If I slept through the day, there would be no sleep at night. And my old pattern resumes. I had to stretch through a few days of staying awake and fighting sleep during daytime to get into rhythm.
Assume incorrect sleeping hours.
Thanks to highly inconsistent sleeping patterns, I had mistakenly assumed that I need only 5 hours of sleep. The truth is, I can function with five hours sleep, but that’s not my optimal number of sleeping hours. Currently I sleep for 6 hours. And still, lapse and sleep more once a week. Now, my ideal sleep hours seems to be 6.5.
Skip more than a day
This is applicable for any habit that we create. Do not skip more than a day. It is difficult to resume the habit once we are on a more than one day break.
Once, when I lapsed, two days turned to three and then four and then there was no habit at all. It was like starting all over again. I now wake up at the same time all week round with not more than one day break. And this has helped me form my habit.
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Avani,
I totally agree with “try going with smaller changes”, which is true in every aspects of life. Once you master this technique learning a new good habit (or) undoing a bad existing habit becomes easier.
I just stumbled upon your blog and read several of your posts. Excellent article.
Ramesh
The Geek Stuff
Ramesh | The Geek Stuffs last blog post..Productivity Tip#1 for Geeks – Launch software using keyboard on Windows
@Ramesh: That’s right. Trying to go with smaller changes, not skipping more than a day are all habit forming points.
Avani,
Nice article. It’s important not to skip a day and also to keep forming habit for at least 21 days. It’s widely believed that 21 days of mental programming makes a habit a second nature for our subconscious.
Shilpan
@Shilpan: Thanks. I have tried the 21 day habit forming routine. While after 21 days, it did become very easy to ‘do’ the habit, it still did not become second nature to me. It’s very easy to slip back into the old self.
I am guilty of all of those listed. *sigh* But soon, I’ll get there!
Thanks for the inspiration Avani.
Tina
Tina Su – ThinkSimpleNow.coms last blog post..Connect with Your Creative Writer
Nice and wise words you write – but I think a lot of people will have problems implementing this in their lives.
I think it implements to have regular day to also have a regular night (sleeping hours).
Yesterday we have been to our pediatrician who is also working in a hospital. She told us that she had to do several night shifts lately. I imagine for a doctor working in a hospital it is difficult to develop such a regular routine.
For me similar applies. As working in IT I am also facing several day dynamics. For instance last sunday there was an incident so I started work at about 18:00 until 1:00 in the night knowing that I had to get up at 6:30 in the morning.
I also know other people who have to be ready for night alerts or doing dynamic night and day shifts.
But as you mentioned you are searching for your optimum number of sleeping hours I think this is the most important thing here for people with dynamic working hours: To find out the needed hours and try to get those somewhere within the week.
Martin Wildams last blog post..Hard excercise
Hi Tina,
Best of luck to you.
Hi mp3 download,
You are welcome.
Hi Martin,
Those who can implement this, should implement it atleast. I understand that sometimes work timings are highly unpredictable. In those cases I believe finding out how to fall asleep fast and deep is the key. How to do so … I still have to find out what works for me. I have read at a lot of places that meditating and reducing thoughts works well. Self hypnosis is also worth trying. Good luck with them. Do let me know if any of these click with you.
This is so true. When I was trying to get my daughter on a sleep schedule I put her to bed at the same time every night but would let her sleep in. Well, she never took her nap at the same time so it made putting her to sleep at night a struggle. Once I started making her wake up at the same time every monring she got on a schedule right away.
Hi Rachel,
Good to know it worked out for you
Great site and helpful information, thanks!