Over on the latest retirement post, there is mention of retirement allowing night owl activation for one of our correspondents, citing to bed at 1 a.m. and then up at 7 a.m., which seems astonishing to me.
I love going to bed early and always have. When working, for years I had a commute into Brum, needing a 6 a.m. alarm to beat the traffic, going then to bed about 9 p.m.
I thought that retirement would mean late nights and lie-ins, but I find I seldom have that in me. 10 is late for me and does me fine. I usually awake around 7 a.m. but, bar trips downstairs to let the dogs out (and in again) and make coffees/matchas for me and Mrs Og, seldom get dressed until 9.
if I am out, I am able to stay alert and awake (ish), such as this w/e, when I am in Manchester for the Folk Festival, with the festival club capable of running over until 1 a.m., although I bid my adieus at midnight last night.
So, then, afterwordistas, are you early birds or night owls, bedbugs or livewires?
Do tell.
Bedtime?
by 31 Comments
The many posts you get from me in the middle of the antipodean night indicates my predisposition. I was up early in my career but never went to bed early.
It’s midnight here. Mrs Wells in bed 2 hours ago. I like the idea of getting up early, in the crisp country air but it rarely happens. Disrupted sleep doesn’t help.
Finding that retirement has shifted my clock just a little later. To be used to be 11.15-11.30, now around 11.45 except for Saturdays, that tend to go to around 12.30. Awake used to be 7.15-7.45, usually dependent on time of year, but now 7.45-8.30, although Sundays it can go up to 9.00. The nicest part of comes when I’m half awake and know I can go back to sleep for another 20 minutes or so.
In bed by 23:00 and lights out at 00:00 if possible. During the week, alarm at 05:50, then wake the kids at 06:30 for 06:45, apart from the weekly swim, a minute over the road at 06:30. I sometimes wake in the night, but usually drift off again, though I’ve been known to compose AW posts in those wee* hours.
Saturday is an hour later to get up, Sunday two.
I guess I’m an owl.
*middle age, so much to answer for.
Generally 10pm to sleep for me these days, up around 8 as I sleep fitfully through the night, often awake between about 4 and 6.. Since our clocks changed last week have been struggling to get up a bit. I don’t generally use an alarm clock unless I have a flight/train to catch or need to attempt to drag my teenage daughter out of bed, I very rarely sleep late, an exception being getting home from hospital emergency department a couple of weeks ago at 1am, I then slept until 10.
I am The Nightowl.
Have been since long before I retired.
The Internet made an old-established practice even more so, especially after I stopped smoking tobacco and pot.
TV-bingeing has been added just lately. I’m currently bingeing Northern Exposure on Amazon Prime.
During the later years of my working life I’d be up around 5:00-5:30am for coffee, toast and web-browsing. Out the door for work Monday to Friday and occasionally Saturday at around 7:00, home again 6:30-7:00pm (2:00-3:00 usually on working Saturdays) and then up until 1:00am.
Five hours bed-sleep a night seemed enough, with maybe a short nap in my chair after my evening meal.
These days, fully retired, I get up later in the mornings, anything from 7:00am-10:00 but I tend to stay up even later. I have been known to not hit the sack until 3:00am, though I almost always nap in my chair late-morning or afternoon for an hour or thereabouts.
Possibly to do with my nocturnalism:
In my working days I drank no alcohol Monday to Thursday nights unless I was at a gig. And then only if the bar was in the same room as the music. These days I may have a large G&T late in any evening if the mood takes me. Most Friday nights I have a few beers or a bottle of wine while chatting on Zoom with friends. I don’t go to pubs at all except for gigs or an occasional social gathering.
My practice of only drinking alcohol at gigs where the bar is in the same room mostly still holds, although sometimes I will drink nothing even then.
I always used to be a night owl and generally wouldn’t go to bed much before midnight. This always worked well for me as my boss was in the US (and me in Singapore) so I had many late night conference calls. I balanced this by being out of the office by 4pm and spending all evening with the kids / wife before starting work again about 10pm. I always struggled to wake up in a morning….
Now I’m retired, I tend to sleep around 11.30pm and am up at 6.45am to go for a swim with the wife before she goes to work. I never ever use an alarm and seem to wake up naturally around 6.30- 6.45am. I sleep solidly through the night and generally am asleep within 10-15 mins of going to bed. My Apple Watch tells me I average 7hrs a night, so I guess okay.
During Covid our evening meal got earlier and earlier and ever since, unless we are with friends, it is a rare occurrence if we have not finished the main meal of the day by 6pm latest.
Few hours of telly and up the stairs around nine. Fiddle around on the phone (everything from the Guardian to some weird guy driving a truck into a lake) and lights out by 1030. Apart from several visits to the loo, it’s then a straight run through till seven the next morning. Stagger down stairs, make tea, back to bed and Wordle. It’s a mad mad world.
As mentioned on the retirement thread, we are my parents.
I’ve always been an early riser – it was a right pain when flat sharing at college and having to tiptoe around! While I used to get up just before 7am, that’s now slid to 5am with no alarm. It’s good because it means I miss the main traffic going t work and am usually working by 6:30. Bedtime has similarly slipped earlier and I’m forever falling asleep in the armchair so I now have an alarm set to wake me up so I can go to bed! Usually in bed by 10:30, if I’m going out for the evening then I like to make sure I have a nap at the end of the afternoon.
Mrs. T is still working and is out the door at 8. She goes up just after 10. I tend to be a bit later but I like to read before sleep and generally switch the light off before 11. We’re later at weekends. Also we don’t drink during the week – only Friday Saturday and minimally on Sundayso that’s generally a bit later. In the winter if the wood burner is going I do like to sit up late with a whisky and some vinyl spinning. Maybe bed after midnight.
When I worked I was usually up at 6.30 or earlier but now I lie in the pit with a tea brought by the fragrant Mrs. T and do the Wordle, Connections and Quiz of the Day and read the paper (just ditched the Indy which is an appalling rag and subscribe to the Graun again). Suitably depressed I head straight for the shower then have brek with some crap on telly – currently rewatching Fauda.
By choice, I have a swap at work, so I only work the early shifts. That can mean starting at 0330, with an alarm at 0145. Much prefer it that way round; I hated finishing a shift after midnight, then having to ride the motorbike home when knackered.
But that’s work. As Retro knows, when it comes to play, I am the one singing and dancing all night.
I used to be on the early morning treadmill for work until retirement, usually getting to work at stupid o’clock. Those days are long gone and now it’s bed around 1000 to 1030 and getting up at around 7ish (depending on the season) and back to bed for a bit of browsing and, yes, cuddles.
My internal alarm wakes me at 6am no matter what time I go to bed nor what I’m up to the next day. I love the dawn walk with the dog and so does he. Blissful. I have been known to nap for 45 minutes on a Friday afternoon. Doesn’t happen often enough for my liking.
I have never been able to get up in the morning naturally waking up – alarm call at 6:21 (I despise even times), and a looped snooze, porridge and coffee, quick fag, and I’m ready for work start at home around 715 (never easy though).
Without the alarm (and some weekends prove this) I’d still be in me pit at 1000.
How do people wake up so early and be ready for the day without batting an eye lid?
I will never know …
Bedtime is a routine: dogs out at 10pm, watch News til 1030, go to bed when local news starts
(unless it’s the weekend, and then it is “just time for one more drink, and I wonder what’s on Amazon Prime, That’s TV, or Sky Docs)
6.21 okaaaaay
6:21 alarm is the oddest thing I have read all week. Sane people always stick to even and whole numbers don’t we? I bet you have the car aircon set to 20.5!!!!
I have a hospital appointment next week at 12:31.
Did in my last cat, current one only has whole numbers.
In related number news, the TV volume is always an odd number.
Don’t they all get nine lives?
I’m between 11-midnight generally and up before 7am. In recent weeks I have taken to listening to the sleep-assisting podcasts that concentrate on a subject in a soothing/boring voice. The deep breathing, swooshy music wellness ones are not for me. I choose one that lasts no more than an hour but I barely make it to 10 minutes most of the time – which is good.
One good tip though is to set it to switch off at the end of the episode. When I forgot to do that one night, I went to sleep listening to facts about the Roman Empire and woke at 3am with the voice still talking – but now the subject was sombreros.
I’ve never been a morning person. I tend to fall asleep around 2am, though I might have been reading for two or more hours before that. (Just in from a jazz club as I type… it’s the weekend…)
I’ve made a point of waking before 8.30 on several days recently in order to spend 30 minutes making incessant phone calls to a surgery to try and get a doctor’s call back (they don’t do appointments – just that first come / first served call back). Hours wasted on that so far.
I’m self-employed so I work until 7pm (Mrs H insists on that cut-off) though I’ll often do a couple of hours 10-midnight if I’m busy, which has been the case in the past few weeks. I like working in that late evening period – more focused. I usually work at weekends if I have stuff in the in tray – I’ll be doing that tomorrow afternoon.
I try to get to bed by 11, because I know that at 5am the kookaburras will kick off, whether the sun’s up or not.
Then you ask yourself, is it worth trying to go back to sleep, because before long the little corellas will turn up – hundreds of the buggers. Very often they fly down the gap between our house and the neighbours, and the noise is appalling.
And then, nanoseconds after 7, the lawnmowers start.
Australia is a morning country.
I’m rarely in bed before midnight even though the rest of the family have been down since 9 or 10. I do my chores of an evening with music in the background. At weekends I watch football or golf with a guitar on my lap and a Budvar to hand. Before hitting the sack, i do Phrazle, Quordle and Wordle in that order to switch the brain off from the day. A 7.15 alarm or the kids or the cat wake me up during the week and early activities mean no lie-ins these days.
I’ve always been a night owl as are all my birth family. I could ring or message them at midnight and be confident of getting a reply. As it happens, I haven’t slept well in around 6 – 9 months. I average just over 5 hours, 6 on a good night and most weeks there’ll be one or two nights with three hours or less. I haven’t had these issues in a long time and last time it was stress related. This time my main stressor is not being able to sleep. Understandably this has a draining effect and impacts my mood, energy levels and concentration. Magnesium has helped reduce the fatigue. Hopefully this is a temporary condition because I love sleep.
I generally go to bed earlier now. I’ve learned if I go to bed when I’m tired, I get off to sleep better. If I push through it and carry on watching tv or whatever, I struggle to get off. Normally in bed by 10:30 – sometimes before 10:00. I normally wake up regularly throughout the night. Podcasts and a Bluetooth eyeshade with little flat speakers are my friend at these points.
I’m the ultimate night owl…during the weeks I tend to go to bed at 05 or 06:00, sleep until 11 or 12 (I don’t start work until 14 or 15:00) – six hours of sleep is enough for me, five’s OK too, but 7 hours is too much.
On Friday night I just can’t make myself go to bed…I stay up until late mornings usually (anything from 08 to 11:00) and get up in the afternoon. I hate going to bed, always have.
As a child I would lay in my bed for hours and hours before being able to fall asleep, entertaining myself with making up stories in my head. Sometimes I’d pretend that I had “woken up” after a couple of hours and get to sit with the family watching TV for a while, before being tucked in again. I probably didn’t need much sleep then either, because back then I was always the first one up, early in the morning. I’d make myself breakfast and play quietly or read a book until the rest of the family got up, hours later.
As a teenager my night owl personality was cranked up to eleven, and it didn’t really work well with school (which I hated anyway) so I’d miss the first half of the school day most of the time. Sometimes (well, quite often actually) I wouldn’t even bother going there, and go to a museum or the public library instead, or take a day of going to the cinema to see three or four films – or just stay in bed, reading and listening to music.
I quit school as soon as it was legal for me to do so, then started working, which was difficult for the first few years, until I got a job where I could choose my own work hours. Before that I would come in late to work almost every day…good thing I was great at my work once I was there, so didn’t get fired… The hours I work now are ideal, although working at all isn’t…I’m really looking forward to retirement!
That won’t happen until at least five years from now, ten in a worst case scenario.
But I’ll probably keep the same hours as I do now, minus the defiant “staying-up-til-noon” on Fridays. But getting up at 11 or 12:00 is basically the ideal, to be able to get things done and meet up with friends and family during daytime.
On rare occasions I have to get up really early for some appointment that can’t be changed, and it works if it has to, but is a real pain in the arse.
I often think that I would have had a completely different career if I had been able to go to school later in the day and if more jobs worked late hours, but I’ve never wished that I wasn’t a night owl!
No set pattern. Can be in bed as early as 8.30 although watching tv until 10.30/11pm.
Not unusual to wake up at 4.40/5am for no apparent reason but can generally get back to sleep
Since retirement I will often have a brief nap mid afternoon but never for more than one hour – often only half an hour. I really feel that I don’t need any more than 6 hours sleep a day – very rare that I would sleep the recommended 8 hours.
Don’t get me started on waking up. 4am like clockwork. Not every night but I’d say most. Several nights running and I’m like a zombie. I had to cancel a day out on the motorbike last week because I was so tired it would have been dangerous. A mate recommended some Boots herbal sleep tabs which relax you rather than knocking you out and I’ve tried them if I have two sequential bad nights and I’m like the walking dead and they do seem to help. Much as it’s fun posting the Wordle score at 4.15am I’d really rather not.
Yep me too. It’s 5.30 now but we weee asleep circa 10.30pm so that’s enough sleep.
We have switched to Decaf tea which seems to have improved the sleep quality.
I stop coffee at lunchtime though we mix up a jar of half caff with a bag of medium and a bag of decaf anyway. I do allow myself a real tea in the afternoon because I’ve never found a decaf tea I like. I just seem to have difficulty with my brain waking up at 4am and I can’t shut the bastard up.
Me too, although it’s usually 3:30. No idea why. I saw a tip the other day for going back to sleep. Close your eyes and alternate eye movements left to right, counting down from 100 each movement. The suggestion was that you won’t get much past 70 but I haven’t tried it properly yet.
I always resent those old Kellogg’s cornflake adverts showing a young family leaping out of bed with happy smiles in the morning.
I’ve always woken at 6am*, regardless of what time I went to bed. Recently, I’ve started waking between 5:00 and 5:30, but as I usually head up to bed as News at Ten starts up, and read for half an hour or so, so get seven hours unbroken kip (if I’m lucky and don’t have to get up during the night).
If I sleep for longer, I wake up with a headache. If I drink enough water before bed to avoid the morning dehydration, I have to get up during the night to pee, so broken sleep, and feel worse.
(*) Including during my student years. I’d be waiting outside the launderette at 7am on Sunday mornings, my weekly washing done before breakfast, then off on my bike into the countryside. I don’t think I ever went to bed before 3am, usually pickled, and I doubt I was safe to operate heavy machinery, or two wheels on a public highway, the following morning.
Bed usually between 10 and 10.30, up between 6.30 and 6.45 to get breakfasts ready for the workers. Later at the week ends.
Early morning is my favourite time of day, though I seldom make the most of it. As a kid I had a morning paper-round, enjoyed playing on local footie pitches or tennis courts before 7 am. Being up and out before anyone else on a snowy morning was like being in Narnia. On holiday, being on the beach as the sun rises … bliss.