A couple of years ago, I spent several months living a short day. I think I have non-24 hour Sleep-Wake Syndrome. Sounds impressive right? It’s not. I wrote about this in my other Blog (Agoraphobe Blog) a couple years back – right about this same time. You can search for it on that Blog if you wish.
What worked best for me was being up about 12-14 hours, and sleeping for about 7. So my “day” was about 20 hours long. It meant I was getting up at different times during the day… but it gave me an extra day or two each week.
It worked very well for me. I was less depressed, had more energy, and got a lot more done. It was great!
It sort of fell apart because it is so hard to coordinate with the real world. I gradually shifted back to matching everyone else. I have only half-heartedly tried it since. The last year+ I have had too many other issues to work on it.
Now I am trying it again… for the last couple of months I have tried, but failed to sleep a similar schedule.
The problem has been that I can not get up during the night when I should, and I just go back to sleep – the result is that I am sleeping almost 12 hours a day. That does not work well.
When I wake up at 3am, I am not tired anymore… but I can not get myself to out of bed. There is a mental block. I get upset, and go back to sleep.
I am going to continue to work on it… but I am very discouraged.