What time do you switch off the light?

Seriously in bed by ten, light out by ten thirty sounds perfect to me. I'm generally dragged awake about six-thirty to seven o'clock and if I did that regularly I'd feel great. It'd probably be the easiest and biggest single improvement I could make to my life, and I've no real excuse for not doing it.

But I don't obviously, there's always some other nonsense to do and normally it's about an hour later. So I'll say 'by twelve'.

I reckon if I could increase my sleep by even an hour a night it would revolutionise my life. It would probably be even more beneficial to me than quitting smoking. And yet no, I just don't seem to be able to. No matter how hard I try there's always something I need to do that takes me up to the wee hours. Early-to-bedders, how do you do it? Do you have to be disciplined or does it just seem natural? How do you fit in any time to do things after work? By the time I've come in and cooked and eaten dinner and done a couple of chores it's already 10:30...

Yes, i'm the same. I'd be happy going to bed at 22:30 but end up closer to midnight.

I used to go to sleep at 22:00 and wake up at 5:00 and that was great.

In bed by 10.30 aiming to be asleep by 11 but I'm stupid enough to leave my iPhone by my bed as my alarm, which means it's deadly if ILX beefs kick off around that time.

I have to get 8 hours of sleep a night, at the very least, or I start to lose structural integrity in my mind. Insomnia is the absolute enemy.

11ish, i often go to bed way earlier though, especially in winter, i watch movies in bed or whatever, or read.

Some time after 2am, though I'm always fighting to scale that back. I get up around 9:30. My job doesn't place many constraints on my schedule, though when things are really stressful I slip back into my old 4am->midday sleeping routine.

I just don't understand how to do it... I guess it comes from treating my day job as "just something I have to get out the way before real work starts". I seem to have something on every night be it organising a gig, seeing friends or my girlfriend, band practice, writing work or one of many other projects I seem to be unable to refuse.

That said I agree with WCC that ILX can eat into my time if I let it. Trying to avoid it outside work now.

i try to go before midnight, often go earlier. i read somewhere that you need 6 to 8 hours sleep a day and if you go either side of that then there's health issues, so i try to do 6 or 7 hours sleep every night. i'm near the beginning of a bold new adventure in not getting drunk twice a week and that makes the sleep management easier, the only chore i have to tear meself away from is playing Football Manager/listening to music too late

in bed at 12 on the dot, lights out at or before 12.30, alarm at 8, up around 8.30. honestly don't know how i would cope with an earlier start.

srsly think a shift in my work patterns that let me stay up til 2 and get up between 8 and 9 wd make me more efficient in the morning

About ten past ten. Wake approx 6am and read ILX, Guardian, Twitter etc on phone before showering at 7am or so. Can't function properly on less sleep than that, and like to ride in the mornings at weekends.

I'm usually in bed by 11:45-12:30, later at weekends. Light for all intents and purposes is out at that time as well (I often leave it on if my wife is staying up, which is quite often since she doesn't have to get up for work).

My alarm goes off at 6:45 to get up around 7. Not enough sleep for me so I tend to have massive lie-ins at the weekend and I don't think this is really working very well for me so far. This week I've had really bad insomnia so I'm not even getting 6-7 hours sleep when I'm in bed for 6-7 hours. My brain hurts this morning.

Social jetlag - http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-levo-league/sleep_b_1659306.html

I suspect shitty sleep patterns are a cause of massive ill health in the western world. And probably all around the world.

Aim for 11, in practice its closer to 11.30 or 12 but I'm rarely actually asleep before midnight.

7hrs sleep and I'm fine, 8hrs and I'm a zombie all morning.

Asleep at 10, up at 6. Need 7 hours of sleep, and need to get 8 more nights than not.

It's pretty easy - if I get up at 6 every morning I'm tired by 10. If I tried to get by on under 6 hours of sleep I'd be useless at work, and I love my work, so I hate to do that.

yeah i'm sure if i got up at six i'd be tired by ten - but who wants to go to bed at ten! what time do you need to get in for work, anyway?

I'm like one of those people who can eat and eat and never know when they're full, except with staying awake instead of food. The only time I feel tired is in the morning but I brighten up as the day goes by. By 11.30pm I'm firing on all cylinders. I find myself more creative and able right at the end of the day. There's something incredibly lucid about fatigue.

i feel less tired in the late evening than in the early morning but i like both times of day. it's scheduled work and the dictatorship of timetables that's the real villain here.

Go to bed at 4.30 pm, asleep by 5pm. Get up at 00.30. If I have a couple of days off work I may stay up as late as 11pm and get up around 7am.

it's scheduled work and the dictatorship of timetables that's the real villain here.

This is my problem, this is the first time I've had a job that is an hour commute on a good day and demands a 9am start (so I usually end up getting in at 8:35-8:50). My last job relocated offices and that took me over an hour so I figured this commute would actually be better, but at my last job I could roll in at 10am and no-one gave a shit.

The lesson here I think is commuting is not for me. I could go to bed at 10pm and then maybe I'd find the early start OK but I would then basically have no life at all during the week, not to mention what it would probably do to my marriage.

yeah i'm sure if i got up at six i'd be tired by ten - but who wants to go to bed at ten!

I suppose it depends what time you get home from work. If I'm in a busy period at work it's unlikely I'll be home before 8ish. I don't have to get in until relatively late and can sleep later, but in that scenario I'd usually be up until at least midnight just for the satisfaction and mental wellbeing that comes from having a proper evening.

If you're lucky enough to be in a situation where you can get home by like 6pm then it's less of an issue.

yeah i'm home before 6pm, closer to 5pm on a good night. pro tip - don't work in London.

I get up at 7 - 7.30am for a 9am start. I know if I started at 10 I'd just stay up till 3.30 each night.

Xp I work in London and my commute is a ten minute walk /braggin. I may not love my job but having 7 hours free every evening is a pretty good consolation.

With me it's less of a commute issue and more of a workload issue, most of the time I'm back at 6.30 which is fine by me, it's not like I'm planning on watching Neighbours any time soon.

it's all about Pointless these days.

that's a fine show

any time between 2.30 and 'lol sleep' usually.

I'm actually very lucky to commute into London from outside and still get home a little after 6pm if I'm lucky.

My hours are 9-6 so that's basically impossible.

commute is twenty mins and start/finish times are flexible so there's that.

lately the light goes off when it gets light outside. it's... not ideal.

it's less about a specific time to go to bed or even a particular number of hours i need to sleep as listening to my body clock - if i go to sleep when my eyes start closing naturally, i'm almost guaranteed a great night's sleep. in practice this tends to be anywhere between 11pm and 1am, and i usually wake up naturally between 7-8am. alcohol throws it off for me, though not as much as if i have to push through that tiredness barrier - if i've stayed up til 3am or 4am working (or even not working) i won't sleep deeply at all, will wake up at the same time or even earlier, and boy will i feel it the next day. hate my body clock for being such a stubborn cunt tbh.

going freelance did wonders for my mental health/stress levels/sense of contentment - not so much because of the hours, really. i occasionally do office shifts, like this week, and waking up is never the issue - it's more having to wake up and immediately organise myself to leave the house on time, which usually ends in trauma and failure, and then not having a proper evening because i get home at 7-7.30pm, veg out for an hour and then oh look only 1.5 hours til i have to start thinking about bed admin. it's utter shit and i have no idea how anyone copes. when i end up with freelance deadlines on top of office shifts (which always happens because i cannot organise my life and if i try it's even worse) my life becomes slightly hellish.

one thing going for regular work hour fascism is that it forces you to get into a routine and to order one's life. If I were freelance I'd probably have a really strange sleep/wake cycle of 18hrs on, 10hrs off or something and while that would be cool for a bit I'd probably end up getting disorientated and alienated by it.

my body clock would...not permit that

today was amazing though - had so little sleep on sun and mon nights, spent tue wanting to die, finally filed my last piece and left the office at 8.30pm, fell asleep almost as soon as i got home - woke up naturally at 6am and went for an amazing run

i feel fucking radiant today

probably change this if & when my course starts in a couple of weeks. For 4 months over spring I was having to get up at about 6.30 to make sure I was out the house about an hour later. So was having to go to bed about 10.30 then read a bit.

Now don't have that impetus but still getting to bed by about midnight & reading for a while.

I normally get home just after five, except when I play football straight after work.

Usually in bed 11:15 to 11:30, lights out before midnight. I'm unconscious within 1 to 2 minutes of turning out the light. Upside to that is that lack of insomnia apparently gives me an extra hour in the day compared to most everyone else; downside is that I can't read in bed.

I try to be in bed by 10, asleep by 10:30, but I'll go through phases where I'm in bed by 9:45 and asleep by 10 or in bed by 10 and don't go to sleep until 11:30 (reading, not tossing and turning). But it's always somewhere in that area. Weekdays I get up around 6:15 to 6:30, weekends that I am not otherwise engaged, I try my damnedest to sleep in as late as I can and make up any deficits, but I'm usually up by 8.

I can deal with getting ~ 6 hours one night, but if I go two or more nights with six or fewer hours of sleep, I completely lose the plot. I just feel mentally and physically like complete shit. That feeling is so bad that my desire to get enough sleep and avoid it is far greater than any pleasure I would derive from staying up a few more hours in the evenings.

When I was in my partytime 20s, my sleep-related rule was "four to function" but I'm older now and the thought of getting only four hours of sleep makes me want to vomit.

I'm like WmC - as soon as I put down the book and close my eyes, I'm asleep in minutes or less. Jeff has tried to talk to me seconds after I close my eyes only to have him yell at him for waking me up (that aforementioned need for sleep causes me to be really grumpy if somebody disturbs my rest). On the flip side, I sometimes get early morning insomnia where I'll wake up at 4:30 am and not be able to fully fall back asleep.

On the flip side, I sometimes get early morning insomnia where I'll wake up at 4:30 am and not be able to fully fall back asleep.

Ditto. This morning I woke up at 5:40, laid there for 10 minutes wondering if I'd drop back off, thought 'well, that's that' and got up. Sitting on the back deck while the sun rises can't be beat, and my schedule allows me to power-nap during the day.

Anywhere between 10:30 and midnight depending on how stubborn I'm feeling. Get up at 6:30/7 for work at 8am (20-30 min commute).

I do a lot better on 7 or 8 hours sleep. 6 starts to feel painful if I do it too many days in a row. But I definitely have that feeling of GODDAMMIT THIS IS MY TIME I DON'T WANT TO GO TO BED YET

It is 9pm and I am struggling to stay awake.

(But I know if I turn off the light and try to sleep it will not come.)

at the beginning of the year i radically adjusted my sleeping schedule so i could go to bed early and wake up early -- only managed it for a few months (after doing this chrono-adjustment thing that was kind of painful to get myself at the desired sleep cycle) and it was great to wake up at 5 every day and go work out but i couldn't hang out with anyone. so once i thought i had tricked my body into thinking that this was the new world order, i started hanging out here and there and it all turned to shit, and now i'm struggling again to get to bed before 12. i can't sleep unless i'm exhausted, and i just kept staying up later and later till I wound up back where i was last year.

i couldn't sleep last night and once it passed 3, i said fuck it and just stayed awake. feel like a zombie.

In bed by 10, asleep by 10:30. I get up at 6:15 and s l o w l y start the day. Leave for work before 9 am most days, get home from work around 8 pm - let's me miss most of the traffic each way. One day a week I try to work from home, sticking to a similar morning schedule (even with the alarm off I'm still awake by 6:30) but ending at 5ish. The weeks I don't get that one day at home are a struggle.

I miss my old 3pm-11pm newspaper shift more than anything, because it let me wake up whenever the hell I liked.

Currently in bed at midnight-1ish asleep by 2, up at 7 for work at 8. And I hate it, deeply. I wouldn't be asleep before 3 if I had my way, but I can't function on such little sleep.

thread prompted me to hit the hay at 10.30 tonight. Slept for a whole hour. Fuck you, thread.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

fall asleep with the lights on, radio blaring.

Just overheard someone say they're in bed by 10pm which to me is o_O I mean, if you work full time how would you get anything done outside of work ever?

yeah 10 p.m., and the asnwer to that question is: I don't

before 4

I had two years of not working and getting all the sleep I could sleep, and I still napped in the afternoon if I tried to read a book or something. I try real hard to get to bed by 11ish which means it's usually about 12 :-(

At 11 I start thinking "ought to go to bed" thoughts but it usually takes until around 11:40 or later to turn the light out. I think I need to rediscover how to live on less sleep as I probably get more than 8 even on weekdays.

When I moved from my last place (got up 6:30, needed to leave the house at 7:15) to here (get up 7:45-8, ought to leave the house at 8:25, sometimes leave the house at 8:45 and nobody has told me off yet) I was all ~OMG imagine the free time!~ but so far I'm going to bed at much the same time because I always feel tired in the mornings and have yet to realise that's just a natural fact of mornings rather than a sign I haven't slept enough.

I feel adequately awake most of the time once I get to work, but like kinder when I was unemployed I'd sleep until 10 or so, get up, think "ok, today is the day when I do useful things ALL DAY", sit around until noon, and then feel completely can't-keep-eyes-open drained and go back to bed for a couple of hours on top of my 9 hours. Ugh. I guess I need to focus on that remembered zombie feeling every time I think how nice it would be never to work again.

Usually around 11 though a couple times this past week I've read until past midnight. I get up at 6:30 so I was paying for that the next day. Ideally I'd be an 8 hours every night type of person but that would require me to go to bed earlier than I'm willing to. I already resent the fact that I have only about 5 hours between when I get home and when I need to get to bed. Stupid work.

On the other hand there are nights every couple weeks where I'll fall asleep on the couch at around 8 and just transfer my still half sleeping self to bed a couple hours later while never really waking up. I don't resent those nights though because I choose to go to sleep way early then rather than feeling I have to because of work the next day.

I've got a really loose work schedule, so my bedtime varies week to week. Lately, I've been crawling in bed sometime during the 2am hour. I voted "Before 3am".

I'm clinging on to the fact that once I get a car I should have an extra hour or so per day...

Currently 1.00am and getting at 7.30am.

It feels like not quite just enough sleep - I could do with another half an hour.

"Not as early as I should" is my answer.

This waking up pre-dawn, getting up before 6 is starting to get on my nerves.

I really try to make it to bed before midnight. I actually succeed maybe 25% of the time. I have to get up at 6:45. I definitely don't get enough sleep and it's a real problem. I'm sure I would be healthier and more successful if I went to bed earlier.

what's weird is that I'll feel tired all day and then suddenly when the sun sets I'm suddenly wide awake and feel like doing stuff.

I'm also one of those people for whom there's never more than a 20-second wait from lying down to being asleep. If I have time to even think about the fact that I'm not asleep yet, I consider that uncomfortable. Please don't hit me.

I get around 6-7 hours of sleep, probably need more like 7-8, plus awake-time to lie in bed and collect myself in the AM so I don't have to rush so much. So I should be going to bed at 10pm and yet perish the thought. I don't get home til like 7, and that's if I DON'T go out or do anything.

I try to be asleep between like 10:30pm and 11:00pm weeknights, because I generally get up between 5:45am and 6:00am and bike to work (where I shower, etc.), and am at my desk by 8:00am. But it's very, VERY rare for me to sleep through the night. Often I'll fall asleep around 11, then wake up at like 12:30 or 1:00am and lie there for half an hour trying to fall back asleep. And (TMI!) I have an overactive bladder, so I'm usually up at least 2-3 times a night for the bathroom. Basically my sleep life is fucked.

And yeah, in terms of "getting other stuff done," it doesn't leave me a lot of time at night. So my weekends get taken up by laundry/housework/shopping. We just recently decided to dump our satellite TV provider, though, so we have no cable or dish service. I'm hoping that motivates me to get off my butt and do things around the house more. Or go out.

Before midnight, but it's variable. If I'm really drained, I'll go to bed at 10 or 10:30. If not, I might be up til 1. I have to get up at either 5:50 or 7, depending on whether I have the kids. going to bed at 2 and getting up at 5:50 is not recommended, but I've done it now and then.

Ideally, around 1. Up at 6:45 during the week, not much later than that on days off because the kids are up anyway. About twice a week I stay up past 3, sometimes for work but often for no good reason (music, reading). About once a week I crash after a late supper, sleep from 9 or 10 until morning. Several times a week I'm woken by the kids or the pager.

Used to function fine on 3-4 hours sleep for 3-4 days in a row, but can't get away with that anymore. Used to be fine until late afternoon after an all nighter but now I'm a zombie if I don't sleep at least a couple hours. Getting older.

No problem falling asleep immediately every time, with the exception of some nights when I stay up too late and the adrenaline kicks in.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Oh man what a rough night's sleep that was. For some reason my heart was racing and palpitating all night so much so it kept me awake. That's not normal is it?

Not really. But you're, what, 32 now? And I get the idea you don't have the healthiest lifestyle so it's not surprising.

Were you excited about seeing these results?

They're pretty boring.

Doc said my heartrate's actually fine so panic over, although last night at 3:30am while I was lying there it felt pretty frightening. The Fear.

My older brother spent a night in hospital when he was about 32 after heart palpitations came on during a game of five a side, and he had it again earlier this year (he's 42 now). Medical advice was eat better (his diet is fucking atrocious), stop smoking (he didn't smoke much at all, but enough), get better sleep patterns established, drink less, etc etc etc.

in bed by 11, lights out by 12 and up by 8 - very standard fare but after years of experimenting that's a schedule I'm pretty content to settle for. otoh - alcohol, even in really small quantity, really screws up my pattern and my needs. Just a single pint seems to require me to sleep an extra hour to compensate for the shitty quality of my sleep.

For me it's caffeine that irretrievably fucks up the quality of my sleep. None after about 3pm for me, if I want a decent night. Not even chocolate, after about 8pm, as I keep discovering when I'm stupid enough to eat dark chocolate just before bed and end up tossing and turning from sugar and caffeine. :-(

I got told to lay off tea and coffee (although I rarely drink those after 5pm) and strangely enough to suck an ice-cube if it comes back. I eat very healthily, do exercise every day but could do more. I smoke about 1-3 cigs a day, maybe more if I go out on a weekend, although I want to have quit by my 32nd birthday which is coming up. If it's down to anything it could well be a lack of sleep and too much stress - just moved in, a couple of months ago, to a new place which I love to bits but received a letter only the other day saying the landlord wishes to completely renovate the place and as such all tenants will be forced to move out, which is really unfair especially considering I paid for a new landline to be fitted for internet. But I digress, I've had about an hour's sleep.

the sole 'after 5am' vote, i am the wiiiiinner ohihatelife.