How to Become an Early Riser

March 23, 2006 · 9 comments

Evan pointed to this old piece about sleep habits: Get up at a fixed time every morning and don’t go to sleep until you’re tired.

This fits my own experience pretty well. I’ve found that I wake up more well rested when I’ve had less sleep than I’d like to, but also, subsequently, that my sleep needs vary a lot more than I thought. And not going to bed until I’m so tired I have no trouble falling asleep has been a relief—no more lying awake in bed trying to sleep.

The breakthrough for me came when our daughter started waking us up at around the same time each morning. There’s simply no negotiating with a baby that’s awake and ready to seize the day.

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9 responses so far ↓

1 Robin Benson // Mar 24, 2006 at 12:47 AM

We have just moved from daylight saving to standard time, not that it's made no difference to our 25 month-old son ;o) What's the writing at the top of your photo Lars?
2 Lars Pind // Mar 24, 2006 at 12:52 AM

It credits Finn Føns, the photographer who shot it, and the paper it was brought in. There's a larger version here: http://pinds.com/files/lars-1.jpg
3 Heiðrún Hámundar // Mar 24, 2006 at 08:42 PM

My Hekla is a little bit diffrent from most children. She goes to sleep around 22:30 - 23:30 in the evening and wakes up around 10.00 - 11.00 in the morning. It's very good in weekends, then we can sleep longer, but it's not so good during the week when she stays up so late. Most parents talks about waking up around 6:30 - 7:30 every morgning;)
4 Robin Benson // Mar 25, 2006 at 11:17 AM

@Lars Nice photo. Quite a bit different from the other one similar to it. We took one side off Charles' cot (Stokke sleepi, of course) a few days ago to get him used to the idea that he can fall out of bed :O) So we were prepared for how ever many nights it took taking him back to bed after bedtime. The first night we heard a little voice at the door that said "hej!". Back to bed. That was it. It's been perfect since. I think kids are more tuned to daylight hours than adults. A Norwegian guy (and his wee daughter - he was a single dad) we met once didn't use artificial light at home at all except for the odd piece of writing on his laptop. He said it was the best sort of sleep to get (in sync with the light).
5 christina // Mar 29, 2006 at 01:06 PM

Amelie just switched from a nice 8 a.m. wake up to a 6 a.m. one, for no apparent reason. She gets me up by kicking me in the stomach. But we won't suffer long-- or rather soon we'll be suffering differently, as we take on a time change of 9 hours!
6 Lars Pind // Mar 29, 2006 at 01:10 PM

Too bad. 6 am would be pretty good for me, that you mean you'd be up at 3pm my time :) I'll see you on the other side.
7 Lars Pind // Mar 29, 2006 at 01:23 PM

Btw, ddin't you guys switch to daylight savings as well? Could that have something to do with her switch, (despite that DST is only a 1-hour change)?
8 Rasmus // Mar 30, 2006 at 01:07 AM

My little lad has a habit of sitting on my face and jumping. That's about 13 kilos of gravitational pressure put on an 8-hour old diaper. Makes snoozing downright dangerous.
9 Lars Pind // Mar 30, 2006 at 01:11 AM

Holy smokes, that does sound dangerous. So far ours can't stand, that helps ;)

Lars Pind

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