Yes one other trick that has worked for me is you put alarm for sleep not waking up.
So i put three alarms in alexa everyday at 7:30pm, 8:00pm and 8:30pm where alexa says "time to sleep, I'm reminding you time to sleep for a great day tomorrow and last is final reminder, it's time to sleep." respectively.
I have seen that 3 reminders to sleep does it and we all go to bed always before the 3rd reminder. I have never slept before 4am otherwise. So weird a robot voice can have this effect, but its the only thing that was able to fix my sleep schedule.
The only con is when you have guests over and alexa starts speaking like this, it can make things very weird and people feel we are trying to make them leave :P
Not OP, but where I am in the tropics it's quite common for everybody to go to bed at 8 or 8:30 and get up at 5. It gets dark at 5:45pm every day and light at 5:30am, so by getting up at 5 you optimize your daylight hours. Also it's cooler before the sun is fully blazing at 9:30am, so the early morning hours are best for jogging, outdoor errands, etc.
What if you wake up in the middle of the night? I can go to bed consistently and easily - the problem is I'll wake up at 2am and not be able to go back to sleep. Sleep hygiene doesn't solve it for me.
It's hard to find out what causes not sleeping throughout the night. Personally I had to:
- Cut out food and drink 6 hours before bedtime (even limiting water). This minimized my body waking me up for many digestive/expulsion issues. Now 3 hours before bedtime is enough.
- Read novels with vocalization in your head that aren't too exciting one hour before bedtime. The reading slowed my thinking and minimized waking up with racing thoughts. I now need 15-30 minutes of reading to fall asleep.
- Took 2 months of applying this daily before I could sleep through the night.
Glad that this rule works for you! There are also other rules you might find helpful as part of stimulus control. For example:
1. Use the bed only for sleep and sex
2. Get out of bed if unable to fall asleep within 20 minutes
3. Have a plan-of-action for what to do if woken up in the middle of the night
That being said, behavioral therapy for insomnia is not just about stimulus control or sleep hygiene. This is because there is little evidence that sleep hygiene alone is sufficient to treat chronic insomnia. Instead, we use a multi-component therapy that includes cognitive restructuring, sleep restriction or consolidation, and relaxation techniques.
No, the point is that if you're not asleep within 20 minutes you should wind down more outside of bed and try again. it helps me to reinforce the "no phone/reading/whatever" in bed rules, and means I don't lie awake for hours in bed - I get up and read in the living room for an hour and try again.
So i put three alarms in alexa everyday at 7:30pm, 8:00pm and 8:30pm where alexa says "time to sleep, I'm reminding you time to sleep for a great day tomorrow and last is final reminder, it's time to sleep." respectively.
I have seen that 3 reminders to sleep does it and we all go to bed always before the 3rd reminder. I have never slept before 4am otherwise. So weird a robot voice can have this effect, but its the only thing that was able to fix my sleep schedule.
The only con is when you have guests over and alexa starts speaking like this, it can make things very weird and people feel we are trying to make them leave :P