I had a very unusual experience yesterday. As I was quite busy with school work, I ended up getting only about 4 to 4-1/2 hours of sleep the night before last (well below my usual self-enforced 8-9 hour sleeping schedule that usually still makes me want an afternoon nap). However, all during the day yesterday, I felt wonderful! I had been holding onto a migraine for about 5 days, and it finally went away yesterday after a slim night of sleep. It seems strange, does it not?

Yesterday, I actually finished up all my homework for the week, came home and cleaned my entire kitchen (even scrubbing the floors although I haven’t done that for almost a year), took my fiancee out for a fun early dinner (with two $5 off coupons I found bringing our total to only $6), spent some additional quality time with my guy, and then finished off the day with a 50 minute cardio workout burning about 500 calories. Yesterday was like the ideal day! Not only wasn’t I tired during the day or during my workout, I wasn’t even tired last night at my regular bedtime!

So, I decided last night that I should give this less sleeping thing a try. I mean, I certainly have heard of people causing themselves to “oversleep” and make themselves more tired. Besides that, during my time in China, I learned from some Japanese students that they believe in sleeping in multiples of 3 hours (3, 6, 9, or 12). Then, I found out that a lot of research shows that one sleep cycle is about 1-1/2 hours, and that you feel the most rested when you are waking up at the end of each of these cycles. This would correspond with me sleeping for about 4-1/2 hours (getting 3 sleep cycles). In addition, I found some statistics online comparing the length of lives of people based on their average numbers of sleep. Apparently, the people in the category that sleep 6-7 hours per night had a 15% higher rate of living than those that sleep 8 hours or more (during the six years of the study).

Although I’m not positive of how well this will work, I have definitely decided to try decreasing my sleeping time. Since I would like to try and follow all three of the previous guidelines, I believe I will first try sleeping 6 hours per night (although I will allow for about 6 hours 15 minutes when I get to bed since I may not fall asleep right away). From there, I will consider further modification based on how well I feel with this level of sleep.

Last night, I slept right around 6 hours. I didn’t feel quite as alert when I woke up today as I did yesterday (it took a few minutes to get out of bed). However, I am currently here writing this article, and I am feeling pretty good! I will continue to experiment with myself and the best sleeping times. I may try 5 hours and 45 minutes or 6 hours and 15 minutes as not everyone has the exact 1-1/2 hour sleep cycle. I really think that finding the end of my sleep cycles will help me to wake up feeling alert and energized. Wish me luck!