Surviving Summer With a Messy Sleep Schedule

by Doğu Alemdar

Have you ever wondered why some people choose to stay up late? That’s actually a very good question. Most people who do know that it might affect them negatively the next day, but still voluntarily choose to deprive themselves from a good night’s sleep. This may sound like a very selfish thing to do as it goes against the wishes of your body, but as a person who has had his fair share of sleepless nights I can tell you that sometimes you stop listening to your body and start listening to your mind. Looking back at the original question “Why do people choose to stay up late?” there really isn’t a definitive answer. It changes from person to person and from day to day. For some it might be that they have an assignment due tomorrow, or they have a big exam week coming up. And for some it just might be that they like the feeling of being alone with their thoughts. Most of the time with me it’s because I want to sit back, relax and enjoy some late-night gaming with my friends. Regardless of our different motives, what a large portion of people choose to stay up late have in common is that they like to be alone. It either raises their productivity or allows them to fully relax and clear their heads. In short, we all have our reasons for going to bed after the sun comes up, but as we all know “Every rose has its thorn” and in this article I will be going over some things that I recommend to survive summer with a messy sleep schedule. 

Before explaining the best way to manage your sleep schedule we must first understand what sleep really is. As humans we spend about one third of our entire lives sleeping. Fun fact compared to cats that’s actually not much as they spend two thirds of their life asleep. Sleep has many stages. The primary one that we should all know is REM sleep. REM stands for Rapid Eye Movement and managing this stage of sleep is a vital part of being energized after waking up. What happens to our body during REM sleep is simple, our heart rate increases, and our eyes start rapidly moving underneath our eyelids. However, what matters the most during REM sleep is what happens to our brains. Brain activity increases substantially during REM sleep and as a result we dream. REM sleep is where we are in our deepest stage of sleep and being woken up during REM sleep causes a lot of issues. Another important thing to know about REM sleep is that it does not go on forever. Our bodies enter this stage of sleep at certain time periods of being asleep depending on a lot of factors such as age and overall health. REM sleep has its cycles too. At first it may only last a few minutes but at about 6 hours into sleeping our bodies experience longer periods of REM sleep that can last up to about an hour. Like I said not waking up during REM sleep makes you feel a lot better. So, make sure that you adjust your sleeping and waking up time to not interfere with your REM sleep. How you can do this is actually pretty simple; begin with testing it out. Try and figure out how many hours into your sleep you dream. What you’re going to want to do is adjust your waking up time to either before that time or about 30-40 minutes after that time. Your general aim is to not wake up while you're dreaming. There are various sources online that you can use to figure out your own REM cycle. I would recommend checking them out to increase your odds of managing a messy sleep schedule.