23:07, Wednesday 20 Sep., 2000 Link

If I'm not as coherant over the next few weeks, I'd like you to know why:

I sleep about eight hours a night, more or less. Closer to seven recently, but that's still too much. Imagine: I go to bed at 11 (yeah, and read for a bit), wake at 7 (listen to the news). I could head down and sleep at 1, wake and up immediately at 7.30. That is 2.5 extra hours of life a day. That's 17.5 a week -- 37.9 days every year. Over a month extra a year!

So there's the motive. The method? I have a fixed getting up time, then I stabilise my time asleep at, say, eight hours. I never, but never, go to bed before the time at which I'd have eight hours sleep. I might go to bed later, but never before.

Now I reduce this time by five minutes a night (week nights only) and the rate is low enough such that my body keeps up, reducing my non-REM sleep and my half-sleep time. I start today: I get up at 7am, so I will not go to bed before 10.30pm, and I'll keep this steady till Monday. Then I start. At 25 minutes a week, I'll be on on just under 7 hours sleep by this time next month. A fortnight of extra life, every single year. Already! Wow.

I know this works because I did it before, five years ago. I got down from nine to only six and a half hours a night. Then I got ill for about two weeks, hallucinated really badly and had to sleep fourteen hours a day. No connection, I'm sure.