Sleep is not the enemy

How do I get more sleep while continuing to do the things that matter to me?

I wrote this question to myself last week after once again failing on my promise to get more sleep. The end of the day comes and my good intentions to turn off the lights by 10:30 are abandoned as I play one more game of Tetris 99 or read a few more pages of my book (it's mostly been Tetris 99 over the last couple of months but reading a few pages before firing up the Switch certainly delays bed time). I jotted down a response to this question further down the same page.

View sleep as a component of these goals.

My original note has a question mark at the end, but after sitting with this idea for a week or so, I think it's the right answer. I've been viewing getting more sleep as a competing goal with all of my fitness/reading/general health endeavors. Sleep is a key contributor to success in those things rather than a conflicting obligation. I may lose some time by going to bed a bit earlier, but I will be much more effective with the fewer hours that I am awake. At least that's my current position on the matter.

My performance in my annual 10K relative to other years reinforced the role sleep plays in my efforts to live a richer and fuller life. I did not sleep well all week. My brain felt tired during the race. I went back and looked at what I was doing in the month before my best 10K back in 2017 (when I was about 3 minutes faster). I was getting up later a couple days a week, taking more naps on the weekend, and drinking less beer (partly because I was going to bed earlier on the weekends). My training over both of those years wasn't dramatically different, at least not divergent enough to account for those 3 minutes. Those differences in sleep between the two years aren't much, but it's enough for me to see how making getting sleep a component of my goals could be beneficial.

It's not necessarily the number of hours that I'm asleep that really matters. If I'm better rested, I can push myself harder on training runs. There are way too many times when I'm doing all I can to just get myself out the door. I get in the miles, but I'm not working on getting better. I'm happy to run at a moderate pace and be happy with the distance. That's the right approach for the workout sometimes, but I also need workouts where I am pushing my limits. That's a difficult challenge in the best of circumstances. Stretching myself like that when I'm barely awake is not a successful strategy.

More sleep is a good step to doing more hard things. I've been avoiding books that are challenging to read because I'm tired enough as it is when I do most of my reading. I don't know how much I get out of any book when I'm dozing off in the middle of a page. I definitely have no hope of making it through Proust or War and Peace when I'm just trying to keep my eyes open!

So I'm going to start working my way to earlier bedtimes. I'm shooting for 30 to 15 minutes earlier than normal this week. I will cut back again once that feels normal. If things feel better at that point, I will reassess my sleep requirements.