Fryingman's one month get your butt in and out of bed on time CHALLENGE!

OK, this is ridiculous. My bedtimes can vary as much as 3 hours from one night to the next. That's towards the extreme end of the spectrum but does happen. I'm sick of it. Everybody says that a regular sleep schedule and routine is very important for recall and lucid dreaming. I believe it, I had really good recall almost from the start of my LD practice, and at that time I had ideal conditions: to bed at the same time every day more or less, on vacation out of the city, house was in an absolutely silent location, pitch black nights, sleeping in a single bed (no bed partner moving around / snoring).

I do a LOT of day time practice, I journal fairly regularly (I *always* try for recall, and always reach for more and more), and yet my LD frequency is fairly stable at only about 3-6 per month. I go a couple weeks with nothing, get one or two, then a couple more weeks with nothing, then one or two, etc. My goal is multiple per night every night, so I have a ways to go.

So, what am I not doing right? Sleeeeeeep scheeeeeduuuuuulllle!!! My to-bed and up-from-bed times are all over the map. I go to bed late and compensate by staying in bed late. After all I want those dreams! My poor body must be so confused it's like it's always mildly jet lagged, it never knows when it's going to get some sleep.

OK so time to grab the bull by the horns. For one month I dedicate myself to going to bed before midnight (goal is 11pm but that's pretty hard in my family), and get out of bed no later than 9am, regardless of how much I've slept/dreamt. I'll consider longer sleeping and CAT after this month, I want to see the effect of a very rigorous to-bed and out-of-bed schedule. And no naps for this month.

Day 1: last night: in bed at 23:51, and out of bed at 08:58.

Anyone else struggling with a bad sleep schedule, the more the merrier, so join me for this experiment!

Great idea, good luck man!
Personally I'm not really struggling with this problem but I hope you'll manage to solve it.

Funny that you're posting this, I just finished doing the same.

I did it twice (to see how long it would take me to reschedule):

1st study:

- From 1-2am to 9am TO 11pm to 7am
- Posterior change: 23am to 6:30 am

8 days to start waking up consistently before alarm. Sleep inertia lasted a couple days, and returned when the 2nd schedule change (6:30am wake up time) was made, lasting for 3-4 days.

2nd study:

1am to 9am TO 11am to 7am
- Use of gradual approximations (of about 15minutes), starting at 8am and ending at 7am.

4 days to start waking up consistently before alarm (as of today). Sleep inertia lasted 3 days, symptoms of acute sleep deprivation were low and only observable in the first 2 days. This might be related to the apparent short time between the 2 studies (about 1 week) in which sleep schedule varied wildy.

Methods:

- Turning off the "big" lights at 9:30 pm maximum (never later than that), turning off all sources of light 30 minutes prior of heading to bed (compliance rate: around 70% because I got lazy sometimes xD).
- 10 minutes exercise in the first days right after getting up, and ingestion of big meals less than half hour after getting up.
- Immediate exposure to strong light (non-natural) after waking up.

Results:

- 1 long dream guaranteed after the first night of the procedure, average of 3 dreams recalled per night. No lucid dreaming practice was being made so can't comment on that. Sleep fragmentation still occurs, but nothing serious, simple windows of opportunity occurring around 4-5 hours after sleep that might be used for future WBTB. I'm glad I never have to hear my alarm again. Oh and since I'm waking up in the middle of the night, I'd thought I wouldn't know, but I "feel" when it's time to "get up". I guess it's because I feel refreshed at 7am unlike at 4am, when sleep inertia is still big.

Good luck :)

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Originally Posted by Zoth

Good luck :)

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Thanks! And good point about the lights. Kinda hard in a small apartment with 3 other family members, though. Maybe I'll go sit in the closet :). But getting to sleep at bed-time is almost never an issue for me, and not allowing sleep inertia (going back to sleep again and again after 8 hours, that first time is hard but then I can just keep sleeping well into the afternoon, but I wake up feeling terrible, very groggy, almost never lucid or even very aware under these circumstances, poor recall, too) - extra sleep cycles and no naps will pretty much guarantee that I'm tired at bed time. I'm using 1mg melatonin for the first few nights to make sure I don't toss and turn for hours, if I feel very alert at the required bed time.

Actually the time I tried staying off the computer for the hour ahead of bed-time I found it harder to go to bed, I think there's some sort of soothing effect while cruising the web...

Regular sleep schedule is good, but I personally think, that it's not the huge factor, which helps you with recall and lucid dreaming. Your body do the same procedure every night and it doesn't give a sh* when you go to sleep or when you wake up. Reasons why it's good idea, is that you turn your practice into habit, no people is disturbing and no light in the room. My sleep schedule will be from <dejavu as hell when I've written this sentence BTW>

My time schedule
1)Go to bed in the range 22:00 to 01:00
2)Wake up naturally after 4 hours
3)Be awake for min 1 hour - this actually helped me this morning, I do now experimenting with lenght of wbtb's and it appears that the longer wbtb the better chance to have lucid. I've awakened from 10 minutes great lucid and vivid LD at 09:19 this morning. During the hour wbtb - run, eat big meal and drink. I did this last night and it worked!
4) go to sleep with induction technique and don't se up alarm

Looking forward to the competition :P hehe

Well we'll find out. I have seen it written more than once here that routine is very important. Timing is absolutely important to LDing in many ways. And sleep schedule is one of the last things on "the list" of LD practice foundations that I do not already do. There are a few more things (incorporating meditation for one) I could do better but I think sleep schedule is the largest low-hanging fruit remaining.

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I think sleep schedule is the largest low-hanging fruit remaining.

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what a lovely metaphor :happyface:

I am typically asleep by 10. I am up before 5:30 M-F. This is a problem as it is difficult to push back my to bed time. I have two small children, they have a bedtime of 8. This leaves 2 hours to prepare for the next day, unwind etc. Occasionally I get to bed by 9, but it is really not practical more than 1 or 2x per week. On the weekends I have more flexibility and have a 10-11 p.m. to bed time and a 7:30-8 a.m. wake up. I dont have much wiggle room in terms of adding hours of sleep, although I have a pretty regular schedule (barring LD attempt induced insomnia).


Best of luck, may you have excellent and truly productive results!

Day #2:

bedtime 23:18, woohoo, very close to planned ideal time (23:00). Have to start getting ready for bed at 22:00 in order to make it on time. Fell asleep quickly, was fairly tired in the 2nd half of the day. No melatonin, I will note when I used it by default I don't.

woke up 06:<something>, recalled, nothing at first, bummed a bit, but then it started coming in and ended up with about 5-6 scenes.
voice recorded for 2 mins @ 06:41
tried to sleep more but 07:40 up for breakfast duty.

A bit earlier than according to plan, but it's noisy outside in the morning even with earplugs and open window, closed window. It's going to be a long day so we'll see how I make it through. I will have to allow for a few days a week of getting up at 07:30-ish. About half in fact, so that could lead into a natural CAT rhythm! Except going to bed at 23:00 I should get up at more like 05:30 or 06:30 for CAT.....ugh.

edit: went for a nap, was feeling really under-rested around 10:30 or so. I don't consider this a failure since the no-nap rule is just to make sure I sleep well during the night, and I didn't really sleep enough I felt. Very sleepy at first and sort of tried for a WILD for 1.5 hours, got very close a few times, something always pulled me back, too aware I think.

Then just tried to sleep and slept for an hour, so all in all about the right amount of sleep for one night. Some fun dreams too in this hour :D.

Sleep schedule is a bit of a problem for me as well.
During the week I rarely get to bed before 11pm, and usually wake at or before the 6:30 alarm. The problem is I often don't get to sleep before 12, so it's only 6.5 hours sleep.
I'm fairly sure I'm chopping out one sleep cycle that I can see at weekends when I'm able to sleep in a bit, and it feels like that is the most likely time to LD, although my success rate is still quite low.

I'm convinced that longer sleep is the key, but lifestyle just doesn't allow it.

I also seem to wake quite often after a dream at about 4am, and I usually wake after each dream very briefly, although I'm not very aware as I do.
That bi-phasic theory seems to apply to me (sleep in 2 halves), in that I wake quite alert at about 4am.
I must try spending longer awake before going back to bed when I WBTB.

Day 3:

Bedtime about midnight exactly, at the extreme end of acceptable, and awake at 06:00. No recall at first, work for recall, get it, quick voice record, but I'm left very awake. I gather my will to stop daydreaming eventually and try to sleep, with an eye towards WILDing. I think I got almost as close as is possible to sleeping without actually falling asleep, I just couldn't let go of "something," whatever that was. Pleasant visualizations of flying/gliding. Up at 08:30 with no sleep after 06:00. Probably the nap yesterday sealed the deal with shorter sleep this time. Can't. Stress. About. Sleep.

Before waking, there were strange dozing on and off half-dreams about work, I was trying really hard to solve some problem in my sleep. I end up with pleasant, very physically/overt/daring flirting with two woman at a work event. And a new dream saying: "Oh, God, fucking sliced candy for lunch!?!?!"

edit: ok, out of bed fail today, but I was very tired from my too-early awakening. Went back to bed around 10:30 for a nap and another pseudo-WILD attempt, and got up due to noise in the room at 12:30.

Hour-wise it's not a fail but I really want to train myself to wake up by 9, not create some polyphasic schedule (which my schedule allows, but that's not the point of this month).

Some fuzzy recall, weird dreams.

A healthy sleep schedule is essential to becoming lucid. Especially at night and early morning, that's why it's best to sleep early and wake up early. I know some people can't do it because their busy lifestyle doesn't allow it, but it would be good to sleep at at least 9-10 pm and wake up at around 7. Some people need more or less hours until they feel rested, but getting enough sleep is also important. I think it's one of the most important things when it comes to LD that we ignore/fail to do.
Granted, I haven't had an awful lot of lucid dreams in 2 months, but every time it happened it was during a good night's sleep.

Don't know what happened to day #4, but it was pretty much a disaster, in bed at 1:11 or so (family urgent situation required it), out of bed I think 11:30 with some up time in between? Precisely the sort of day I"m trying to avoid. Fail.

Day #5: in bed just after midnight, up around 10? Awake since 7:00, kept trying to go to sleep, kept getting close then bed/noise disturbance. Not a bad fail but not a success.

Day #6: in bed close to target time, 23:xx, out of bed 08:00, yay. Final waking somewhere around 07:15? Pretty good recall across multiple wakings and no super long back-to-sleeps. Actually, excellent recall at 04:00, I had probably a dozen different short scenes with transitions in them, kind of unusual for that early, but with getting to bed earlier it's actually getting close to my sweet spot time.

Day #7: things are looking up. Got to bed around 23:15-23:30, and out of bed at 09:30, spent 06:00 - 07:45 or so awake recalling dreams and thinking about work. A couple of wakings in the night where I did some quick recording: 02:30, 05:30, 09:18, pretty good recall, a number of different scenes.

Got to sleep reasonably quickly, wasn't instant, but I had a lot of drowsiness to sink into. Fought hard for back to sleep at 07:45 but eventually made it!

Day #8: LD #23! To-bed on time, about 23:30, yay! Fall asleep fairly easily with a deep well of drowsiness waiting for me, I'm anticipating my wife coming to bed a bit later and waking me up which keeps me awake but I eventually choose to ignore that and just fall asleep. Wakings at 5.5 hrs, 7.5 hrs (LD), up for probably an hour recalling and recording and thinking about the dream, slept again and woke at 11 hrs. Oops. Upset I overslept, I'll have to set an alarm to catch that. I'll have to exercise extra long today to make sure I'm tired for the night.

Day #9 to bed on time, up early for breakfast duty, tired all day
Day #10 LD #24 (brief FA) out of bed late, but making up for several hours insomnia. LD while dozing in and out of sleep.
Day #11 LD #25 to bed late, 01:00, bad, but out of bed 09:30, hour count OK, nice aware LD.

Day #12, LD #26, to bed before midnight and up at 08:30, good good night for sleep schedule

Day #13, end of LD streak (3 days in a row, 4 in 5 days, :banana:). Regular sleep schedule ROCKS. Oh and almost lucid this night too, just missed a while-"waking up"-lucidity moment leading into a FA that was vivid and clear, where I had strong location knowledge awareness, but was otherwise un-noteworthy (just lay there observing). To bed at just after 23:00 (success!) and so I was not annoyed when "volunteered" for breakfast duty at 07:40. I probably could have gotten lucid if I didn't have to get up as I was very close to getting back asleep and had that "lucid" feeling, but amount of time in bed, (if not total sleep hours) was just about reached.

Lost count of exact days, but 3 days later since last report, several nights of very light recall, I had my first TWO-LD night last night! #27 and #28. To-bed time nice and early last night, about 23:20. I indulged in back to bed after getting up around 07:40 because I spent an hour or more awake, and I wanted to see if I could ride the LD momentum for more LDs. Didn't work out, but dreamed a bunch more, fragmented recall but a nice "female interaction" non-lucid amongst the weird wacky stuff.

Holding steady on the schedule despite the low recall dry nights in between. So far I think this experiment has been a resounding success. The thing will be to see how well it holds after the competition ends.

LD #29 last night of competition (Saturday March 22, 2014). 4 nights of very deep sleep with good to-bed times and out-of-bed times, always with some recall, sometimes fairly detailed, but dreams not aware. Last night to bed way late and up way early because wife is travelling. BTB got me some near lucidity levels of awareness and life memories in a lot of dreams, much detail forgotten though.

So regular sleep schedule plus intense exercise plus good diet has moved me into a realm of very deep sleep which I need to break up a bit in order to get lucid I think. Good news is that I tried for a WILD in this morning's BTB and made it to sleep (I "aimed" to err on the side of sleep so I would dream regardless) in not very long.

So despite a few off nights mostly sticking to the schedule. I think this really helped in my biggest LD streak yet of 7 in 10 days.

Approaching the end of the month! Wow so soon. Where things are heading:

1) my to-bed time variance has really dropped, I mostly make it to bed by midnight.

2) I started sleeping really really deeply recently, to the detriment of recall and LDing, and I think that's because I have a fairly intense exercise schedule. I've concluded I need more sleep as well, and am experimenting with late morning and afternoon naps.

3) I achieved my best LD rate so far: 7 LDs in 10 days during the competition with the new sleep schedule. I'm pretty sure the sleep schedule helped that rate. I also hit 3 days in a row, 4 in 5 days, and 2 LDs in one night.

4) After the competition entered a bit of a relaxation/dry spell again. Recall is building back up, in fact had an almost-lucid (or indeed a lucid waking moment but I don't like counting those). Need to find a way to keep the intensity up without getting tired. Getting enough sleep as well as regular sleep may be the trick.

5) My out-of-bed time varies still, based on how much I sleep during the night, and required morning duties.

Not a perfect month, but much much better than I've ever done. So all in all a success I'd say!