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Comment by subash_8848 | Hacker News Reader

I used to have the same problem. I used to sleep around 2-3 am. I tried everything from turning to a strict schedule to putting phone in a different room but none of it worked. Then read about Chronotherapy where you delay your usual sleep time by 3 hours every day for a week until you reach the desired time then you stick to it. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronotherapy_(sleep_phase) Now I go to bed around 10:30 and it has vastly improved my wellbeing.

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I had no idea there was a name for this. I tried this in college (during an extended college strike, so no classes). Starting from a place of extreme isolation and (situational/seasonal) depression, attempting to integer overflow my sleep schedule left me absolutely messed up. I saw the light through my window for an hour a day, and the only time I left the room was to eat at the cafeteria, if my waking hours happened to align with their hours.

In the end, I wrapped around too far and achieved nothing.

For someone like me, I wouldn't recommend this. Because if you're like me, going to sleep on time isn't actually too difficult, provided:

1. You put real effort into going to bed on time, and

2. You're not in a situation where you're spiraling and afraid of facing the next day.

> where you delay your usual sleep time by 3 hours every day for a week until you reach the desired time then you stick to it.

Could you elaborate a bit more on how this works? Are you saying you’re going to bed 3 hours later each day for that week?

The linked Wikipedia article mentions doing this with an hour offset each day (as an example) start with with Day 1 sleeping from 5pm to 12am which doesn’t make a huge amount of sense to me without additional context of why you’d start at that particular time…

Sounds interesting all the same.

For example if you usually sleep at 2 am, you start by sleeping 3 hours later at 5am then sleep at 8am the next day then 12pm, then 3pm after that and so on until you reach the desired time. Seems weird but it works wonders. You may need someone to keep you accountable and stick to the set schedule for the week though.

Ok got it. I may give this a try!

How does it work when you have rigid responsibilities during the week?

Work/kids/pets, etc.?

Well, it seems like you can't do those things when you're asleep... I suppose either you find a way to move those responsibilities to when you're awake or you can't use this technique.

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