I’ve made an experiment this year of trying to get as much of my exercise as possible in early in the mornings. The general idea is to be
up at 5:45AM and on my bike or the yoga mat by 6. I need pretty close to 8 hours of sleep per night, so this means I really need to be asleep by 9:45.
I thought this would be hard, but doable. My kids go to sleep a little after 8PM, so closing down my day and getting into bed by 9:30 is challenging and not possible 100% of the time, but it is doable.
The problem goes deeper, though. I’ve realized that my body just doesn’t want to go to sleep then and I end up lying awake. Sometime between 10-10:30 seems to be my natural “go to sleep” time.
This is inconvenient. I’m well short on hours in the day to accomplish everything I need to, and spend enough time at work, with my family and working out. Fitting in a decent chunk of time for exercise is much harder to do any other time of the day.
Still, I know people who have managed to reconfigure their sleep schedules- people who work “market hours” on the west coast for example, have to be at work before 5AM. Do they manage because they like the job, or are their bodies just more amenable to that sleep routine?
