Resetting ones' whole biological clock?

Question

Everyday, I struggle to get up at around 7:00am to get ready for collage at around 8:00am. Over 95% of the days, I either:

(i) Miss the first class of collage

(ii) Not able to Brush and/or bath, and other activities to be done in morning.

because of not being able to get up.

After completion of classes, I come back to my room, I am tired and have not got enough sleep, so I sleep for 2-3hours

At night, around 11:30 when I actually want to go to sleep so that I can wake up early the next day, I am just not able to sleep. I do nothing, just laying in bed, drinking water, walking around but not able to sleep for upto around 2-3am and so again I am not able to get up in the morning.

My problem is that my whole biological clock is highly screwed.

What I want: To be able to get up everyday in the morning at around 6:30 am, so that I am able to get ready and attend the classes. My attendance in classes is going low, because of which I can be prohibited from giving the final exam by the institution.

Also, I want to be able to fell asleep at around 11:30pm or 12:30am or whatever time is right to get enough sleep to wake up without any trouble in the morning at 6:30am.

Answer 1

Get up earlier and do a powernap after class.

It would be best for you to stop sleeping in the afternoon, but you have developed a habit of sleeping after you get home from class and that habit is extremely hard to get rid of. So, when you get home and get an urge to sleep, sleep for 20 minutes and then get up, wash your face in cold water and go do something that will keep you awake (that is, not learning but going out, cleaning your room, whatever). That way you will kill your need for afternoon sleep.

Simultaneously, set your clock for 5:30. And get up. Do not allow yourself to set the alarm for 5:30 and then just lay in bed till 8 knowing that you set the clock to early anyway. The idea is not to give you more time to get up, but to make you more tired in the evening. So, set your clock for 5:30, get up right away and go take a shower. And then do something till the time you have to go to college.

Then when you get home just do a 20 minute power nap and you'll be ready for sleep by 10pm. With time move your clock from 5:30 to 7 and after a few months of this routine try getting rid of this power nap.

I hope this helps.

Answer 2

I have always had one natural technique for resetting my clock, and lately I've taken to an artificial one, which is easier and surer.

The natural is pulling an all-nighter. When I used to have my sleeping patterns all messed up what I'd do is forego sleep that night, hold on up till around 7-8pm and then sleep super early out of exhaustion, getting about the two nights worth of sleep and waking up at 6am naturally. You may have to go to bed earlier, but I found 7pm was good enough for catching up on debt.

Nowadays I'd rather take a melatonin pill (0.3mg is enough for me) around 1 hour prior to my target sleep time, and crash beautifully up till the next day's early morning. It's what I usually do on Sundays that I wake up past noon and want to sleep at most at 11pm.

Answer 3

If you have an iPhone, the Sleep Cycle app (99 cents) can be a nice tool to help get your sleep patterns better calibrated. There might be something similar for Android.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sleep-cycle-alarm-clock/id320606217?mt=8

Answer 4

Have you talked to a doctor about this? There are various health issues which might be contributing to your bad sleep habits. And some would only require changes in diet and activity, since you seem reluctant to try sleeping pills.

Also when napping during the day do it in at most 30m bursts. This will prevent you from going into deep sleep, making it more likely for you to feel sleepy in the evening. There are some great and easy tips in http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-early-riser/

Have you tried drinking camomile or vallerian tea in the evening? There is a lot of sleep hygiene information out there which could help you make the transition into a better sleep pattern.

Answer 5

One thing you should try and only for the time you need to modify your sleep habits : Bore yourself.

You are a human being and despite that every metabolism is different (some people can perform really well after 4-5 hours of sleep while others will be tired all day long), fatigue is inevitable.

If you are more of an anxious or easily stressed person, your metabolism will likely combat fatigue by making you think of everything that is left to be done, the outcomes of what you are actually doing, what will happen tomorrow, etc.

I personnally succeeded to make my mind give up fighting fatigue late in the evening in one simple solution : boredom !

When you get home and you have eaten your last meal, do not turn on the computer, do not turn on the TV.

You should also turn off your cellphone till the morning because otherwise you would subconciently "wait" for some of your friends to text or call you.

Go for a walk, talk to somebody, or else, just sit on the couch and free your thoughts. After an hour or two of doing nothing, you will begin to be bored, and that will trigger your mind to think that the only possible solution remaining to stop the pain of being bored is to go to sleep.

Do that for a couple of days, and you will be able to gradually make your body aware of the fatigue and you will know better when it triggers the need for sleep.

Answer 6

I had the same problem. I'd toss and turn in bed for hours, often until the sun came up, because my mind just wouldn't go to sleep!.

I recently found that I was able to reduce the amount of time I spent trying to go to sleep from hours to minutes, by doing the following:

1. I now wear a light-blocking sleep mask, like 40 Blinks, with convex contours over the eye-socket area, so that my eyelashes (and by extension, eyelids) can move freely. This is important, because it allows me to be in complete darkness, even before my brain is ready for me to shut down for the night.
2. Before bed, I bring up a long-running TV show on Netflix, start it playing, and then turn off my monitor. I adjust the sound so that I can only barely make out the voices. I then listen to the show, and I find that, after 20 minutes or so, I'm asleep. I've had the best luck with foreign-language nature documentaries, and forensic analysis shows (such as Bones).

Answer 7

here is an esoteric one; I am not sure if it's true or not

In an experiment from the strange-but-possibly-true category, scientists have shone a bright light on the backs of human knees and, in some mysterious way, reset the master biological clock in the human brain.

Those treated with the light had their biological clocks advanced or delayed up to three hours, enough to overcome the fatigue associated with familiar forms of jet lag or insomnia. Why shining light on the knee would have this effect is a mystery.