"Early to bed, early to rise"...is not quite how it works.

So this job has really played a part on my sleeping patterns. I have always had in mind that a typical person needs generally 6-8 hours of sleep. And for me, I always thought that I needed at least 8 hours to feel fully energized the next day. Well, I have found out that that is not how it works...I have been trying to go to bed at about 10pm everyday to get up just after 6am for work. I came across a blog post this morning about becoming an 'early bird'. I apparently have been looking at it wrong the whole time! I guess to become an early bird is to pay attention to when you are tired. When you can't keep your eyes open long enough, that means you're body needs some sleep and that you need to 'hit the hay!' To keep a schedule, wake up every morning (7 days a week) at the same time and your body will adjust to that. Each night your body will know how much sleep you need, according to the time you wake up, which is why you need to get to bed when you are tired. To know whether or not you are trully tired enough to sleep try reading a book. If you can't make it through 1-2 pages of the book, that means it's time for bed. And if you try going to bed and you're laying there for over 5 minutes, you aren't tired enough. And it doesn't matter how much sleep you get or how little, it's what your body knows is what you need (if that made sense). Here is the website where the blog is that I read about. She explains things a lot more (and better) than I do, maybe they'll be more helpful...http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-early-riser/
Anyway, this is how I am going to be doing things now and I'll let you know how it goes...although waking up at 6 on the weekends might not be what I had in mind...I don't know if that'll happen, but we'll see!