Sleep is always an interesting topic. I’ve had my times in my life where I would be waking up begrudgingly before 6am to get to my dayjob at the time. I’ve had times where I was staying up till near 2am or later, fairly regularly and sleeping in until right before I was due to start work for my current all remote job. My commute was one step to get from my bed to my desk.

Lately, I’ve been going to bed more frequently between 10pm and 12pm, and surprisingly, waking up fairly normally not long before 8am. This has me wondering why.

For now, I’m blaming my purchase of an Oura Ring (affiliate link). They’re definitely gamifying sleep, in my mind, and they regularly have my “ideal bedtime” somewhere in the range of 9pm to 11pm. This is all based on their sciences and calculations, through a smart ring that I wear on my finger throughout the day. Every morning when I sync up, they give me a “Readiness score”, a “Sleep score”, and an “Activity score”.

The readiness score is how well they think I would do with activities of all sorts throughout the day. If they calculate a lower score, they’ll say “probably best to take it easy today and keep it at a rest day” or if it’s higher, they’ll be like “you’re ready to take on the day!”.

The sleep score is how well they think your overnight rest was, including how much time you were perceived awake, how much REM sleep you got, how much light sleep, and then how much deep sleep. They also track resting heart rate and temperature.

The activity score is more or less how much you’re moving during the day, how frequently you’re moving and how much, any vigorous activity you’re doing etc.

A detail that’s bothering me a bit, is it seems to be a struggle to fall back asleep regularly. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, but then it’ll be a struggle to fall back asleep. May need to look into that. Hopefully it’s not a sign of something from the end of this post.

I think my change in sleep pattern is probably a combination of some dietary factors, the fact that I’m coming up on 40 years old in a month, and me just playing the game that Oura is presenting. I know my dad also slowly transitioned into a morning person, but I don’t want to face the possibility that I may be a person intended to wake up before 7am yet.

Update

Upon further reflection I believe much of the change has also come from the pandemic. With in person becoming limited to closed for a long time, and coffee shops beginning to reduce their operating hours even after “returning to relative normal” my habits were affected.

I would very often go find a coffee shop after my gym time, which was often in the 5-6pm range, to finish up my dayjob work. So I was drinking coffee from essentially 6-8pm timeframe.

Nowadays that same coffee shop closes daily at 5pm, and unless it’s a rest day, I’m not getting over there ever. I may do an occasional evening visit at closer locations, but in reality, I’ve reduced my coffee consumption window and limited it largely to the morning or occasionally 12-2pm. I have to believe this is one of the larger changes that has affected my sleeping habits, in addition to my ideas above.