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Comment by mickeyp | Hacker News Reader

The solution for me -- believe it or not, call me crazy -- it to go to sleep when I'm feeling sleepy and tired. I tend to read in bed; at least an hour before I want to actually sleep, I'll read. Sometimes I get to the point where I can't keep my eyes open after 30 mins in which case I pack away the book or kindle and go to sleep. Sometimes I read a bit longer than the prescribed one hour until I get to the point where I'm sleepy enough to go to sleep.

End result? I'm never tired in the mornings and I often wake up naturally before my alarm clock rings. I also don't have massive "crash and burn" effects on the weekends where I sleep for much, much longer.

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You are far from crazy, it's just the opposite - you're doing exactely as one should. For (very) detailed explanation I warmly recommend "Good sleep, good learning, good life" [0] by dr Piotr Wozniak.

[0] http://www.supermemo.com/articles/sleep.htm

Depends on the book, sometimes I just keep reading and reading until the sun starts rising. I force myself to put down the book and try to sleep at least an hour or 2.

The key here is reading a book rather than your phone, laptop or some other bright screen which would stimulate your mind and prevent you from feeling sleepy.

I find that when I do this the only time I have trouble getting out of bed is when I know there is something I don't want to do on my schedule.

I often do the same though I have found different lighting levels to help set myself into a "preparing for sleep state". I try to mirror the same settings I would use if reading a paper book, even when reading on iPad.

Ceiling lights on, bed made: awake time.

Nightstand light on, 2 pillows propped again headboard to lay/sit up more: reading time.

Lights off, 1 pillow: sleep time.

This works for me when I am on vacation or moving a lot, instead of looking at my computer for 9+ hours.

But most of my days fall in the latter category, and if I stay up until I am tired, I end up sleeping every ~26h or so, and that ends up being troublesome quite quickly :(

"Sometimes I get to the point where I can't keep my eyes open after 30 mins in which case I pack away the book or kindle and go to sleep. "

Agree and I would add that an excellent way that I have found to get back to sleep (if you wake up in the middle of the night) is to do something similar. Although there are many things that say otherwise, I actually find that I can pull out the iphone, read for 30 to 40 minutes (even with the bright light) and I will fall back to sleep for the rest of the night. (In other words when laying there for 5 or 10 minutes doesn't do the trick.)

If I do that, I sometimes will just stay awake all night and not fall asleep at all. Very frustrating how hard I always find it to fall asleep.

Me, too. Worse, when I go to sleep "naturally", the best case is that I don't fall asleep at all and zombie the next day.

The worst case is that I do fall asleep, but wake up broken in some way: usually, it's cranial misalignment which gives me a massive headache the entire day.

you fool! If you don't get the exact prescribed amount of sleep down to the minute, you're going to die a day early.

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