Can a night owl learn to be an early riser? I'm desperate!

[Crossfitgirl]

I've always been a bit of a night owl, but my sleep pattern is breaking me and I need some advice.
I'm late 30s, mum of 2 young kids and often solo parent through the workout week, I work 4 days in a highly stressful NHS role.

I'm absolutely exhausted. But yet I cannot / will not go to bed early. As much as this seems like an easy fix for lots of people, this feels like it's not a choice. By the time I've got the kids to bed and had my tea and done the jobs, its late and I end up scrolling, or playing games on my phone, reading MN, whatever it is. And I can stay up until the early hours. I KNOW I should go to sleep but I can't switch off - I have tried bedtime mode, deleting apps, all the advice and I feel ridiculous that a stupid thing like going to bed at a reasonable time feels so impossible for me.

Every morning I feel so tired and hate myself for staying up late, vow to get an early night and the same thing happens. I'm cranky with the kids, I'm tired and always rushing in the morning and I hate it. Kids always wake me about 6.30. I feel miles better when I get one morning to lie in at the weekend.

Has anyone else had any luck with changing their routine and sticking to it for a better night's sleep?
I want to be in bed asleep by 10pm and up at 6 with no problem. Currently I think I'm averaging about 6 hours sleep and I need to change.
I have ADHD which I think is playing a part, I'm quite stressed and don't get much me time.

Please fellow MNers give me your advice and please don't judge me, I need a way to be able to stick to bedtimes and I feel ridiculous enough as it is posting this.

I also have ADHD and struggle as you describe
Having a good book by the bed helps, to read instead of scrolling, and also air pods. Listening to Desert Island Disks is brilliant - it's distracting enough to engage the brain, but not interesting enough to keep me awake. I often wake up 6 episodes on, swap sides and go off quickly.

If that doesn't work, as I'm really buzzing, I have certain programmes recorded to watch really quietly. to help me sleep. Escape to the Country is good, and Repair Shop gets me off to sleep really quickly.

Good luck on finding a solution for you.

There are two issues here. One is you are a night owl, you won't be able to significantly change that. Two is that you're doing things at bedtime which keep your brain awake.

To try to adapt your nature you need to bring your bedtime forwards gradually, maybe 20 mins every 2 days. Keep your waking time consistent - this is, easy with the DC waking you.

You also need to stop stimulating your brain near bedtime. You must stop scrolling. Physical books, a TV program or music on a timer, knitting, whatever but not something designed to keep you up.

Magnesium (at least 200mg elemental), ashwaganda, melatonin may help.

of course it's HARD

but if you don't force yourself to do it, you won't achieve anything.
Keeping to having no routine and wasting time dumb scrolling is not the solution.
It's not that hard to put your phone away, leave it downstairs and go upstairs at a fixed time. That's what alarms are for.

Revenge bedtime procrastination! I'm rubbish at it too. I have time limits on my apps but I just end up disabling them. I will say this: on the days when I do manage to get my arse into bed at a reasonable hour, I do feel the benefit next day. I'm better when dh is here (body doubling). Maybe you could make a list of what needs to be done on paper after DC are in bed, put the phone away somewhere and just work through the list.

It’s not ADHD. There are actual genetic differences between night owls and people who wake early. You are biologically wired to sleep late, so you will find it difficult to get into routine of going to sleep early, ADHD or not. You can try to get into a routine, but it’s never going to come naturally like it does for people who are genetically programmed to wake early.

I think that's a good idea, as well as the other suggestion of enlisting a friend to check in (some sound behavioural science behind making public commitments when you really want to change something).

My DSis managed to change from what she memorably described as "Bertie Wooster hours" when she had kids. It was painful but she did it and hasn't gone back.

I do believe you've just made my point for me.

I haven’t bothered. They won’t be little forever and my husband does his fair share so l only get up 50% of the time. I was late to the parenting party and have akways been a night owl

Thanks so much for all the great suggestions, I have just had a read through now. I started tonight by once the kids had gone to bed, asking chat GPT to walk me through my evening and keep me to a routine. It broke my time down into small chunks and gave me jobs for each chunk of time. I've done it all so now all I need to do is go upstairs, clean my teeth and get to bed!
I am going to buy one of those brick things I think. My only worry is if I do ever need to use my phone for example in an emergency, how does that work? I don't have a house phone and I'm regularly alone with the kids, and past experiences make me worry about this. But I do find it hard to just put my phone elsewhere, I like the idea of it being locked away I think I do need the physical block!

Going to have a re-read of all of these suggestions tomorrow too. For those asking, I'm not on ADHD meds and don't plan on it any time soon. I do have some herbal sleep aids like lavender tablets and nytol, but tbh I do think the main issue is my mindset, my phone addiction and my lack of routine and ability to switch off before bed. Like, right now I'm tired but I feel like I have 100 things to do when all I actually need to do is go clean my teeth and get my PJ's on.

X

I think you can change. But it takes determination.

I hope you will not see this message until tomorrow!!

Get yourself some melatonin gummies. Has done me the world of good 😌

@OchreSnake same age and exactly the same, doesn't matter how tired I am, at 10 o clock my eyes go ping👀wide awake. Mostly retired now and natural sleep window seems to be 2,00am to 9-10 am but worked today in A & E on literally 2 hours sleep but not ready to sleep yet🤷 spent years managing on 4 hours broken sleep when children were young. (Two of mine didn't sleep through til 4!) Can catch up when not working and can stay in bed in the morning for hours but feel i have to get up as people may call and think I'm really lazy😳 I'd much prefer to be a lark but genetically unable🤦

I was a night owl and now an early riser. It’s all about forcing yourself into a constant uninterrupted routine. You HAVE to go to bed earlier. Even if you can’t sleep at first eventually you adapt into the new routine.

Also cut out caffeine (except one in the morning) and alcohol. It took about 6 months of this and now I wake up like a Jack in the box.

I know you think it's all about your mindset, but if it was just that, this would be a lot easier. People with ADHD spend a lot of time being told - and telling themselves - to just do it, when pretty much the diagnostic criteria is an inability to just do it - at least, not to order.

If you're not keen on chemical assistance, you will probably need some other kind of external support. If we could do this stuff all by ourselves, we probably wouldn't have been diagnosed with ADHD.

Thank you for this. I think I needed to hear it!

Buying a Kindle worked for me, took ages to retrain my brain to sit and concentrate on one thing and not the endless doom scrolling though.

(Although I'm still not exactly a lark as you can tell but heading to bed now 😄 which is a good hour earlier than it used to be).

So, last night I put my phone on charge across the room at 10.30 and I didn't scroll or dick about at all, I got into bed and went to sleep!

I think because I'm so used to being exhausted in a morning that I always feel the need to prepare absolutely everything in advance the night before. Well last night, I didn't bother, and it felt a lot easier to get to bed early. And it didn't make that much difference to the smooth running of the morning. I did have to do a bit more trekking up and down stairs to get the kids clothes out, but other than that it wasn't too bad. Maybe 10 mins extra time needed?

Maybe I need to stop trying to do everything the night before to give myself more time and headspace?

Food for thought! That being said, although I had a great night's sleep I had terrible sleep inertia when my alarm went off and it hasn't worn off yet!

I’ve always been like this and I started to realise I really need that down time in the evenings so I started making sure I eat and tidy up before 8pm to ensure I have a few hours to myself, usually 8-10:30 and that helps. On the days I don’t get everything done in time I end up staying up late scrolling TikTok etc and the next day feel awful

You can unbrick your phone without the device in an emergency, you get a few emergencies and then it is more difficult but not impossible. Good luck, I know how hard this is and have been working at it for years. It doesn’t take much for all my hard work to unravel either, having to start again to get a good day/night routine but it is so worth it. The improvement isn’t dramatic but very subtly noticeable, becoming a slightly better version of myself in all ways.