Relearning sleep

I was really tired today. I stayed up till 2:30ish helping kids in SigSys and then had to get up at 8 so that I could do the reading for my 10 o'clock class. Long story short - I decided I'd take a wonderful 20 minute nap.

I figured it'd been a while since I'd done these, so I gave myself 25 minutes before a single beep from my cell and 30 before my actual alarm. I figured I'd be good to go with 10 whole minutes to fall asleep. Wrong.

I got maybe 3 minutes of sleep.

So it's time to train. I should be able to fall asleep within a minute and wake up 30 seconds or so before my alarm rings. This is a skill worth having.

Practice is real easy, but somewhat frustrating.

1. Set two alarms.
1. One of them is for 21 minutes from now and is gentle. A single beep or something.
2. The other is f'serious and is 22 minutes from now.
2. Get in bed.
3. Relax. Meditate or whatever. Sleep if you can.
4. When you hear the beep: Get Up.

That's it.

It's annoying until you get good b/c you tend to just be in bed awake for 20 minutes. But one does get good with practice. After a bit, the second alarm will be completely useless and, for me, I started waking up about 30 seconds before the beep after some practice. This is what I did before starting biphasic freshman year and not losing half an hour from each time I went to bed was quite helpful seeing as how that'd be 20-something percent of my sleep time...