Part of the problem is that children occupy a lot of your time. After you get them in bed, it's tempting to stay up later than one usually would in order to have some personal time. This doesn't change the time that the human alarm clocks go off, though, and it can quickly spiral out of control.
It gets better. When they are older you can include them into your passion projects, or whatever sort of hobbies you have. This part is great because you are both teaching them and having fun at the same time.
I say this all the time because it showcases how little time you have with them, but you only have about 1,000 weekends with them until they are adults. It all happens so fast. I enjoy the time that I spent with them, especially over the last year when we were all together as a family for so many months. I, myself, am nearing the end of those 1,000 weekends with my oldest and I miss some of those human alarm clock days when they were up early and just wanted to play together.
Do you find your sleep skews? Any longer (2-3 week) vacations I've taken I've found that my waking up time keeps skewing even if I'm not going to bed later. Maybe I've never seen the end where it stabilizes.
My sleep cycle naturally drifts infinitely by some 30 minutes a day on average.
It makes life strange at times, especially on this latitude. Imagine waking up at night through a whole winter, not seeing the Sun for months.
I've tried to hold steady cycle but I just grow more and more tired every day until finally the alarm fails to wake me. School was hell. Was absent a lot simply for sleeping.
I was exactly the same, a lot of reading about sleep and strict sleep hygiene fixed it. There are lots you can do but briefly just go out for a jog when you wake up. You need the exposure to blue light to help set your circadian rhythm. The exercise increases body temp which helps bring forward your circadian rhythm.
Basically your habits are probably shifting your circadian rhythm back 30min a day, and if not you can have habits which bring forward your circadian rythm
My wake up time is a 2 hour window between 7:30 and 9:30 but usually around the middle of that. It varies day to day. Whether it's earlier or later mostly depends on how much exercise I do the day before. My training has large spikes where I go out rock climbing all day and then have multiple "rest" days so I let my body get whatever sleep it needs.
At the beginning of the pandemic, no one in our family had any fixed time obligations other than my afternoon meetings, so we basically stopped enforcing any bedtimes or wake up times for the kids (and ourselves).
Pre-pandemic we were all waking around 8am to get my daughter to pre-school. Within a week of foregoing bedtimes, we were all going to bed between 2am and 4am and waking up around 11am. So the kids still got their 9 hours and the adults got their 7, but it did stabilize.
There are so many variables involved, once you start listening, the schedule will never be a schedule again.
Sometimes I want to sleep a few extra hours. Sometimes I'm so excited for the day, I get up early and go to sleep late. Sometimes I need to stay up for a while, and next time I sleep it's for 20 hours straight. Sometimes it's just a nap here and there for a few days.
The most important thing I've learned is to listen to my tiredness level, and not get too carried away with productivity.
My waking times definitely skew, but for me I think it happens because my bed time pushes it later and later until my night owl habits and my guilt over sleeping late reach an equilibrium.
When I was in college I'd pretty quickly drift to a 4:00AM to noon sleep schedule on holidays. Even today (in my mid 20's) I find I'm happiest sleeping from roughly 2:00AM to 10:00AM.
A lot of us get a taste of this on weekends or days off, but what have you personally noticed the difference to be? Maybe in terms of productivity, fatigue, mood, health, etc.
I went from waking up at 6AM every day for 6 years (US mil) to not setting an alarm in the last 6 (remote employee). The main thing I notice in the rare event where I have to set an alarm these days is this 15-30 minutes of heavy brain fog after waking up. In my experience it feels very similar to the sensation in your head shortly after you've taken a dose of melatonin, which I guess makes sense. It's hard to put into words but obviously we've all experienced it. I don't ever experience this sensation waking up naturally.
The end result is early morning grumpiness, in my case. I'm just in a foul mood for the first hour or two after being ripped from sleep via an alarm. I otherwise don't feel more productive or healthy.
I'm curious why this is; I assume it has to do with the natural sleep cycle. Do those chemicals metabolize in some way shortly before you wake up naturally vs waking up by an alarm where they're still present?
I find it to be almost universally positive. I'm a freelancer and I work practically "full time" but I don't start work until I naturally wake up unless I happen to have a meeting scheduled.
One of first things I noticed is hunger. When I wake up to an alarm I generally feel sluggish and immediately hungry. If I wake up to my alarm at 8 then I need to eat almost immediately. If I naturally wake up at 9 I might potter about and eat breakfast at 10 without thinking much about it. Alarms seem to induce stress and stress induces hunger.
I generally find that only having weekends alarm free provides just enough respite and replenishment for taking on the work week but not enough to reduce mental stress across the board. Being able to have a lay in on any given day that requires it makes a world of difference to mid week slumps.