I can function on six hours, but not well. I also can't easily take 15 minutes to meditate in the morning, because I have a two month old baby I have to help care for in the mornings. This somewhat limits my ability to meditate and exercise.
I would suggest meditating anytime in the day. I dont believe that it specifically has to be in the morning. It could be a placebo but just sitting still for a bit does some to help.
So typically I either get 6 hours or 7.5 hours of sleep a night, though if I ended up getting 3 or 4.5 one night I'll sometimes try to get 9 the next night. If I can't get at least 3 hours of sleep, I just stay up.
So it's possible the problem with 8 hours is that you're trying to wake up in the middle of a cycle and thus the sluggishness. Or maybe I'm just spreading pseudo-science.
That's basically how http://sleepyti.me works.
For eg I have experienced better quality of sleep after taking ZMA ( I weight train ). But I have heard anecdotes where people have said that its just a placebo.
Juat be honest with yourself.
Natural short sleepers who only need 4.5 hours exist. Most people who sleep that much are chronically sleep deprived but there are people who just genuinely don't need that much sleep.
https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000804.htm
I'm not a short sleeper but I need closer to seven hours sleep a night than eight.
It's more accurate to say that I wake up when the baby wakes up - I hear her start to stir because she's hungry/awake, and that rouses me.
But yeah, she also tends to wake up when one of us does in the morning, unless we're very quiet, since she's just about slept out at those times.
I tend to also let my wife sleep in and take care of the kid in the morning, since she takes care of her all day, and half of the night. It seems unfair to dump the kid on her in the morning, too, while I exercise and meditate.
> I would imagine you were sleeping in increments longer than 15 minutes
Some bad nights, you'd be surprised.
Waking up 15 minutes early to meditate (let alone do the exercise, etc) is perhaps possible, but since you're so far below a baseline of sleep quality and duration, you're far better off with the extra 15 minutes.
That's measured from start-to-start of sequential feedings, not end-to-start. Baby might be slow to eat, especially if breastfeeding -- baby is learning how and gaining strength to suck, mother's milk is coming it but may not be quite there yet -- so feeding could easily be 45 mins. If mother is really having trouble with milk she may use a pump afterward to try to get her milk to come in better, and baby may be supplemented via bottle, another 15 mins if you can overlap these things. We're down to an hour left to hit that two hour window, in which to get baby back asleep, maybe have to burp baby, maybe change diaper, maybe wash bottles.
It's very possible to have 0 minutes of downtime between feedings for multiple feedings in a row and it is relentless. I fell asleep standing up multiple times, not only did I not have time to meditate, I can't imagine I could have done it without falling asleep.
I hear some newborns are easier, so maybe you actually get 1-2 hours at a time, but that still must be brutal. Having a low total amount of sleep is one thing but never getting longer stints adds a whole other dimension to the problem.
That's all newborn stuff of course, it should get easier by two months. But that's what the parent of a two month old may be emerging from and is a starting point you might wish to consider if you seek to understand what some parents go through.
You are not gonna waste 15 minutes meditating, nor do you have the courage to...
It's like asking why one can't go surfing/running/whatever after a 14 hour work shift. Yeah, you still have 10 hours left in the day, but you hardly have the power at that point...
