For a few years now, my sleep schedule is and has been messed up, whether because I was on my phone in bed or procrastinating on schoolwork and staying up late to finish it. During winter break, it wasn’t uncommon for me to sleep at 3 or 4 AM every day. Once we returned to school, my sleep habits barely improved, shifting to sleeping at around 2 AM daily. This left me with only about 5 and a half hours of sleep. As a result, I ended up getting drowsy almost every day in 3rd or 4th period and struggling to focus in class, negatively impacting my memory and performance. I would drag myself through every class, regretting not getting more sleep the previous night, and I typically relied on weekends to get my rest. So, to fix this bad habit, for my 7-day challenge, I decided to commit myself to sleeping by 12 AM every day.
Day 1
My challenge started on Tuesday 1/16. To ensure I’d sleep by 12AM, I scheduled accordingly and finished up my homework earlier. Settling into bed by 11:40, I thought it would be hard for me to fall asleep due to the sudden change in sleep schedule, but contrary to my beliefs, I fell asleep quickly, catching up on some much needed sleep.
Day 2
The next day, I still woke up groggy at 7:30AM as usual, as I’m not a morning person. I felt slightly more energized, so I wasn’t as drowsy during 3rd and 4th period. I went through the rest of the day feeling fairly energized as well. Once again, when I got home, I allocated time to each assignment to finish up my homework before 12, then got into bed at around 11:50 and fell asleep.
Day 3
On Thursday, I got up at 7:30 and went through my regular routine. During class, I felt a little more awake and didn’t struggle to pay attention. The rest of my day also went well, and I didn’t have any issues staying alert. However, this afternoon, I procrastinated and planned poorly, underestimating the amount of time I needed to do my homework and ended up staying up another hour for an art assignment. At this time, I felt tired despite usually being awake at 1 AM. I ended up sleeping at around 1:20 AM, and I felt the consequences the day after.
Day 4
The real obstacle was on Friday. First, I was incredibly sleepy and more reluctant to get out of bed more than usual. The combination of the cold weather and lack of sleep was enough to keep me in bed for another few minutes. I knew I would probably find it difficult to get through the day as it was, so I decided to drink some tea. Despite this, I still felt tired during second period, but managed to get through the rest of the day. Since I knew the next day would be the weekend, it was much harder to commit myself to actually sleeping by 12. I also had some more caffeine after I got home, which left me lying awake in my bed, tossing and turning from insomnia. I’m not sure when I exactly fell asleep on that day, but it was definitely past 1 AM.
Day 5
With the arrival of the weekend, my body’s biological clock kept me in bed, until finally waking at noon. After this restful slumber, I went about my day as I would on a typical weekend, having breakfast, watching videos, playing games, and doing a bit of homework, but leaving most of it for the day after. I begrudgingly got into bed at 11 PM, reading novels on my phone for another 40 minutes before drifting off to sleep.
Day 6
On Sunday, I woke up at 10:48 AM, then lazed around for another hour before getting up to have breakfast and starting on the piled-up assignments I saved the previous day. The assignments ended up taking longer than I thought, and I only finished about 10 pages of notes and two worksheets. Glancing at the time, it was 1:05 AM and I still needed to study for a test the following day, but weighing out my options, I decided to study for a half hour before going to bed and studying the rest in the morning.
Day 7
Although I slept later than 12 AM, I woke up 10 minutes earlier on Monday. The cold from the morning rain woke me up even more, and I spent a lot of the morning trying to get a last-minute review for my test. After eating lunch, I was revitalized. When I got home, I finished up my remaining notes and other assignments, then got into bed and slept at 12 AM.
Overall, although I failed to break my bad habit a few times, this was a rewarding experience. I found that sleeping earlier did help improve my mood and energy levels throughout the day, but it was also incredibly hard to commit myself to it because of how long my habit has persisted.
While I’ll continue to prioritize studying over sleep, and my workload likely won’t allow me to sleep before 12AM every day, I’ll try to sleep earlier when I can, especially on school nights with smaller workloads. However, for the most part, I’ll probably still end up sleeping past 12 AM semi-regularly.
