Set the alarm for 6:30 every single day including weekends, as everything I read suggested. Twenty-two days in. I still fall asleep somewhere between midnight and 1:30, still feel wrecked at 6:30, and now I am also tired on Sundays which I was not before. Is three weeks too early to judge, or does this just not work for some people?
If you have been persistently exhausted for a long stretch despite reasonable habits, mention it to a doctor rather than assuming it is a discipline problem. Plenty of ordinary things cause it and none of them are fixed by a stricter alarm.
Three weeks is enough to expect some signal, so something else is holding your sleep onset where it is. A fixed wake time does not pull bedtime earlier by itself — it only works when it is paired with the two things that actually move sleep onset: bright light soon after waking, and dim light in the last two hours before bed.
If you are on a lit screen until 11:45 and then trying to sleep at midnight, the alarm can be as consistent as you like and you will still fall asleep at midnight. Dim everything in the flat from about 10, get outside within half an hour of the alarm, and give it another two weeks before judging.
Dimming the room lights matters as much as the screen, and people usually only do the screen half. Overhead light off, one lamp on, from 10pm.
I am definitely on a bright laptop until I close it and get into bed. That is an obvious hole in what I was doing.
The Sunday tiredness makes sense — you removed the weekend lie-in that was quietly repaying some sleep debt, without yet fixing the debt itself. That is a real cost of the transition rather than a sign it is failing.
For me it took closer to six weeks before bedtime drifted earlier on its own, and it only happened after I stopped napping on the sofa at 7pm. Small evening naps are invisible and they eat your sleep pressure.
@septic_sean · 6mo ago · 3 replies
Also worth asking whether 6:30 is the right anchor. Some people are genuinely late-shifted, and forcing a 6:30 wake against a 1am sleep onset just produces chronic short sleep, which is what you are describing. If your life does not actually require 6:30, an honest 7:30 that you keep is worth more than a 6:30 that costs you two hours a night.
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@slowmiles_kat · 6mo ago
That is a very common reason to pick a wake time and a very bad one. Pick the latest one your commitments allow and you will actually keep it.
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@ridgeline_rowan · 6mo ago
It does not, honestly. I picked 6:30 because it sounded like what a disciplined person does.
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