For a long time, I didn't pay much attention to sleep.
I could sleep for four hours and still get through the day. That was normal for me. In college and university, I pulled all-nighters before exams, and it worked. I got decent grades. Sometimes very good ones.
My friends noticed.
They would talk about it. Asked how I did it.
Some were impressed. Others, jealous.
At the time, I liked that kind of attention. I did not think much about it beyond that.
Over the years, late nights just became part of life. Sleep wasn’t a priority, and it changed depending on work, travel, or whatever else was going on.
There was no fixed pattern. Some days were fine. Some were not.
I did not question it because nothing felt broken.
When things started feeling off
I started seeing the impact of this sleep debt much later in my life.
I would sit down to work and lose focus faster than I used to. Decisions took longer and were poorer. My head felt foggy quite often.
I was still working long hours, but it felt harder to stay sharp and active/alert.
At first, I blamed work. Stress. Life in general. Kids. Travel.
However, sleep kept coming up in the background.
Paying attention to sleep
So I started paying attention to it.
I read about it (Read Why We Sleep if you haven’t already!). I looked up research.
I even underwent a full sleep study (yes, wires and all attached to your body) to rule out anything serious.
There wasn’t anything unusual physiologically.
What really stood out was how inconsistent my sleep had been for years.
Some nights were short. Some were long. Bedtimes moved around. Wake-up times moved around.
Basically, there was no rhythm.
I am an extreme person by nature and tried fixing it all at once at one point. Sleeping eight or nine hours every day.
As you would have guessed, that did not last.
What I do now
Eventually, I stopped trying to be ideal about it and took a way more pragmatic approach towards sleep
I try to get at least six hours of sleep. Not every single night, but most nights.
Six feels doable. Anything less starts to affect the next day.
I also try to keep my sleep and wake-up times close to each other across the week. Not exact, though. Just roughly the same.
Tracking sleep
Recently, I started using the Oura Ring.
I was curious above all else. I wanted to see the data myself rather than guesstimate.
It has been extremely helpful so far (in a basic way).
Seeing data makes it harder to ignore what is happening.
A ring, a watch, or anything similar would probably do the same.
Changing how I think about sleep
One thing I had to unlearn was how I thought about sleep in general.
For a long time, sleep felt like wasted time. Doing nothing. Time that could be used for work, learning, or catching up.
That thinking is hard to shake if you grew up around hustle culture.
It took me a minute to realize that when sleep drops, everything else gets worse.
Focus drops. Exercise doesn’t give the results. Thinking slows down.
Where I am with this now
I still do not have a perfect routine. Nor do I aim for one.
I just try to avoid letting bad sleep become the default again.
Six hours or more. Fairly stable timing. Some awareness of what is actually happening.
That is usually enough to notice a difference.
I am still working on it. Some weeks are better than others.
But whenever focus starts slipping again, sleep is usually the first thing I look to.
