Please stop telling people what time to wake up

Every Saturday and Sunday, I work a 13 ½ hour shift for each day. I started this shift at the beginning of August, so I had the chance to sleep in on Monday morning during most of my summer. I had noticed that, when the weekend was over and I was able to blissfully sleep without worrying about an alarm clock waking me up to get the kids up for school in the morning, I slept, on average, about 9 hours. I probably NEEDED that much sleep after being sleep-deprived all weekend and working long hours! Then the school year began again and, despite Monday being my Friday, Monday was Monday for my kids. The start of a new week and once again getting up in the morning for school. Both of my kids are night owls, so this was a hard adjustment for them to make. But it had to be done! We were once again living by the clock! This year, though, my oldest is busy with volunteering and my youngest is busy with gymnastics. So it’s not just school they have to worry about! But, yeah, Monday morning meant once again getting up early in the morning for them and once again getting up at 5 a.m. for me.

Except for THIS particular Monday morning! I had accidentally reset my alarm clock for 5 P.M. instead of 5 A.M.! D’oh! Hey, in my defense, I was really tired when I did that. (Maybe I should ask my husband to reset it to 5 a.m. for me after it wakes him up later in the day, after I’m gone for work.)

But this incident made me think about the whole sleep schedule thing. I had slept for 8 hours, without interruption. I probably NEEDED that much sleep! And we were able to manage it okay with me getting out of bed when I did. I still got my kids up for school in time and had SOME coffee. I didn’t get to have as much coffee as I wanted to, didn’t get to have time for meditation or stretching or reading like I like to do before the chaos of the day begins. Didn’t get to do my morning routine of checking the house, but I DID have enough time to feed the cat!

But it made me think about how, lately, I have been reading articles and blog posts about people boasting about getting up at ungodly hours of the morning to get more done, and how that’s not exactly feasible for everybody. I mean, sure, if you can do it, go for it. But if it’s not possible for you to do that, then that is okay, too!

There is no rule about when we are supposed to wake up in the morning. But there ARE guidelines on how much sleep we should get. But here again, it depends on the person. Not everybody NEEDS 8 hours of sleep. I know some people who can function just fine on 6 hours of sleep. It depends on the person.

And it depends on their schedule.

Last summer, my oldest was working at the ranger station near Blue River (in Oregon). As part of preparing for this, we had to time how long it would take us to get there and back from Eugene. We added a bit of extra time to compensate for traffic. Since my husband works at night and I was not working at the time, the job of transporting our teenager to work in the morning fell to me. After some more planning, it was decided that the best time to get up in the morning was 4 a.m. so we would have enough time to get ready to go (and for me to drink some coffee!). This worked well for us.

And, right now, for me, getting up at 5 a.m. is what works well for me, in order to get enough sleep.

That is the big issue here: Making sure that we get enough sleep. It’s not what time we wake up in the morning that matters, it’s that we get enough sleep.

It depends on the person’s sleep needs and their schedule.

So I think that instead of encouraging people to wake up at 3 a.m. or 3:45 a.m. or even 5 a.m., we should instead start encouraging people to get the amount of sleep that they need. If you CAN get up at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. in order to have a more productive start to your day, then by all means, do it! But if it’s not possible for you to change your schedule so that you can get enough sleep if you do that, then please don’t feel guilty about it.

Yes, getting up super early in the morning does allow us to get more done in our day, and that’s why I like to wake up at 5. Given what time I am usually able to go to bed, even on weekends when I am working, getting up at 5 works best because I get enough sleep and I can get on with my morning stuff before tackling my day. But some people might be getting enough sleep when they wake up at 3, 4, or even 6:30 a.m.  It’s just different for all of us and our lifestyle.

The amount of sleep that we need and can get is what matters. Not the time we wake up. I think it’s better to focus on our sleep needs rather than on picking a “popular” hour to wake up and forcing ourselves to adapt to a schedule that really isn’t healthy for us to follow. Just get the sleep that you need and worry about taking care of yourself instead of worrying about following a trend.