My schedule used to be all over the place (especially when I was in college), but over the last few months I made a conscious effort to go to sleep by 12 am and try to wake up around 8 am on days I don't practice lucid dreaming.

I set aside Mondays, Wednesday, and Fridays for WBTB. On those days I go to bed at 12 am, wake up around 5 am, and stay up for 30 minutes before returning to bed. I usually wake up around 9 am instead of 8 to give myself that extra bit of rest I missed out on due to interrupting my sleep.

Over the last couple of months I've also gotten into optimizing my sleep, here's my pre-bed routine:

- I make sure to turn off all electronics about 2 hours before sleep. The light from electronics can be a false signal to your brain that it is still day time. I also got a free app called "flux" that actually adjusts your computer light as the sun goes down so it's less likely to keep you up.

- I often have trouble falling asleep due to stress and excessive thinking, so I take a hot shower about 90 minutes before bed, and that helps me fall asleep much easier.

- Once I'm out of the shower, I put on some soothing ambient music and meditate before sleep. I also use this as an opportunity to prime myself for lucid dreaming (eg. remember to do my dream recall, focus on my lucid dreaming goal, recall common dreamsigns etc.)


Optimizing my sleep has allowed me to be a lot more consistent with my lucid dreaming training. Another benefit was better, more restful sleep which made me a lot more productive throughout the day.