How to find your individual sleep window.
Just like the exact time within the range of total of sleep you need is individual to you, the time window during which you sleep can be very individual as well. At our house, we turn into pumpkins around 9:00 pm but in other houses bedtime is rarely before 11:00 pm.
Dr Katharina Lederle, in her book, Sleep Sense - Improve Your Sleep, Improve Your Health, has put together a 5-night “sleep cleansing” regiment to determine your individual and ideal sleep window. Once you find this ideal window, if you can shift to and maintain that schedule, you’ll experience a better quality of sleep and reduce your risk of developing insomnia.
Here’s how it works:
Pull out your calendar and find a 5-day window when you can commit to not setting an alarm clock (this might have to be during a stay at home holiday for some of us).
No alcohol, no caffeine after 2 pm.
Try to use only natural light or keep your lights as dim as possible to block out unnatural light.
No devices with a screen 3 hours before bedtime (TVs, tablets, laptops, phones)
Go to bed as soon as you feel sleepy (do this for all the 5 nights)
Sleep until you naturally wake up
On the fifth night of doing this, take note of your sleep/wake time (this is your sleep window)
Strive to stick to this window as much as possible, but when you must compromise your wake time for an appointment, do not compromise your total time (go to bed earlier than you usually would) .
