[reversecs]

I have bipolar 2 and the difference between losing an hour of sleep and not is tremendous and consistent. I will be deeply sad and demotivated the next day, no energy to do anything without a extreme amount of willpower.

I have a nice mattress but I stopped sitting on it or laying on it unless I'm going to sleep. I make sure for the hour before bed I turn off overhead lights and just use a lamp, and in the last hour I also refrain from screen use, except for brief moments. No matter how tired I am, I wait until the end of the hour to crawl into bed (build sleep pressure if it's there). Finally, and I just discovered this several weeks ago, I play white noise off my Google home (rain noise actually). That last step has added atleast an hour to my sleep every night, and I suddenly started having dreams again. And give yourself lots of time so that you never need to use an alarm.

A week of that routine and you will be falling asleep and waking up in extremely consistent ranges night to night. My target sleep is 10-630 and I estimate that I'm falling asleep 2 minutes after getting in bed and I wake up between 610-630 everyday.

Results: consistent mood, lower appetite, probably better learning and memory.