One of our lesswrongers has a 9pm alarm. The 9pm alarm is a trigger for him to decide what time he is going to bed. It is not “go to bed” but “work out when I am going to bed tonight”.
Seems like a solution not commonly mentioned. Otherwise—if you expand the problem more I can try to offer suggestions...
I do this, though I hadn’t heard of other people doing it before and use it slightly differently. Mine is set to 9:30pm and it is a marker point for me to use when keeping track of time late at night.
If you have the kind of schedule where you get home at 6pm and use a computer until late, then it’s easy to lose track of time until it’s suddenly 2am. Having a marker point closer to your sleep time (say 9:30pm for a 11pm bedtime) helps in keeping up your internal clock and signals when you need to make schedule modifications in order to finish things up before you need to sleep. I think this is also a good idea to create the form of alarm that will get you to go to sleep but also avoid Hyperbolic Discounting at the last minute.
You underestimate the number of things I have tried :-) But thanks for the suggestion nonetheless. The problem isn’t as bad as it used to be. I have some grip on it. Part of the problem is being father of four sons...
certainly I do, The interesting thing about this idea is that it’s not about sleep so much as planning. I only know about it because I heard the alarm and asked what it was. If you do try it; do update LW about it.
I do something like that. I have to. I know from long experience that I need 6 solid hours of sleep. Add padding at the beginning for actually falling asleep of 30 minutes (I have worked hard on getting that down but 30min about is it).
I know when my children will wake me up the next morning and/or when I will have to get up the latest to get them to school/kindergarten (and there is no-one I can fall back to to do it). So on most days I know when I will have to go to bed the latest. At best I can squeeze out an extra 10mins in the morning. And the latest is usually is. I’d like to get to bed earlier as 6 hours doesn’t allow for catching up on lost sleep days before—what sometimes happens. My sons actually know about this and my oldest asks me: When will you go to bed in the evening. And most times I plan midnight (the convenient schelling fence). But seldom make it. Reflecting on the fact that I might be more productive if I didn’t build up sleep deficit doesn’t seem to help. Probably I’m shifting unproductivity around. The evenings are my most valuable time...
A suggestion:
One of our lesswrongers has a 9pm alarm. The 9pm alarm is a trigger for him to decide what time he is going to bed. It is not “go to bed” but “work out when I am going to bed tonight”.
Seems like a solution not commonly mentioned. Otherwise—if you expand the problem more I can try to offer suggestions...
I do this, though I hadn’t heard of other people doing it before and use it slightly differently. Mine is set to 9:30pm and it is a marker point for me to use when keeping track of time late at night.
If you have the kind of schedule where you get home at 6pm and use a computer until late, then it’s easy to lose track of time until it’s suddenly 2am. Having a marker point closer to your sleep time (say 9:30pm for a 11pm bedtime) helps in keeping up your internal clock and signals when you need to make schedule modifications in order to finish things up before you need to sleep. I think this is also a good idea to create the form of alarm that will get you to go to sleep but also avoid Hyperbolic Discounting at the last minute.
You underestimate the number of things I have tried :-) But thanks for the suggestion nonetheless. The problem isn’t as bad as it used to be. I have some grip on it. Part of the problem is being father of four sons...
certainly I do, The interesting thing about this idea is that it’s not about sleep so much as planning. I only know about it because I heard the alarm and asked what it was. If you do try it; do update LW about it.
I do something like that. I have to. I know from long experience that I need 6 solid hours of sleep. Add padding at the beginning for actually falling asleep of 30 minutes (I have worked hard on getting that down but 30min about is it). I know when my children will wake me up the next morning and/or when I will have to get up the latest to get them to school/kindergarten (and there is no-one I can fall back to to do it). So on most days I know when I will have to go to bed the latest. At best I can squeeze out an extra 10mins in the morning. And the latest is usually is. I’d like to get to bed earlier as 6 hours doesn’t allow for catching up on lost sleep days before—what sometimes happens. My sons actually know about this and my oldest asks me: When will you go to bed in the evening. And most times I plan midnight (the convenient schelling fence). But seldom make it. Reflecting on the fact that I might be more productive if I didn’t build up sleep deficit doesn’t seem to help. Probably I’m shifting unproductivity around. The evenings are my most valuable time...