Friday, July 10, 2026: 8:43 PM: I adjusted my sleep schedule again after 30 days of working with the changes I made on June 10th. I’m still getting up at 5:00 AM; I’m just going to bed at midnight now. This is because of what I’ve noticed in the watch data since I started working with it on March 16th.
Prior to June 10th, I had set things up so that my wind-down period started at 7:00 PM and bedtime was at 9:00 PM. Then, on June 10th, after noticing that the best I could do in one night was around 6 ½ hours tops, I changed things so my wind-down period started at 9:00 PM and my bedtime was at 11:00 PM. And here’s where things got interesting.
I’ve noticed that my deep sleep cycles are longest when I only get about 4 ½ hours of sleep. I also noticed that my longest deep sleep cycles occur between 1:00 AM and 2:00 AM, with shorter ones, when totaled together, nearly equaling the length of the first cycle, occurring between 3:00 AM and 5:00 AM.
Between 1:00 AM and 5:00 AM, I don’t wake nearly as much as I do when I go to bed between 9:30 PM and 11:30 PM and sleep all the way through until 1:00 AM. So, in a nutshell, I’m only sleeping about 40 minutes out of every hour I’m in bed during the first half of the night. Then, starting at 1:00 AM, I am sleeping 55 minutes out of every hour all the way up until the alarm goes off at 5:00 AM.
This information leads me to suspect that I actually need less sleep than the 6 ½ hours I originally thought I did. More realistically, I probably only need the 4 to 4 ½ hours I’ve experienced on those nights when the deep sleep cycles were 38–47 minutes in total, coinciding with me getting to bed after midnight.
On the nights when I do sleep for 6 to 6 ½ hours, my deep sleep cycle barely lasts 20 minutes, if that. And while I feel okay when I’m lucky enough to get that much sleep, I also feel fine after only 4 ½ hours of sleep with the 50% longer deep sleep cycle.
So, also noting that it takes me about 15 to 20 minutes to fall asleep once I get into bed, I’ve set things up so the wind-down period starts at midnight and bedtime is at 12:30 AM. I’m going to do this for the next 30 days and see how it goes.