The decision

Here's the rule, in one line.

The rule. I get up within an hour of my weekday wake time on Saturday and Sunday, I'm outside in daylight within an hour of getting up, and the extra sleep I need goes at the start of the night, not the end of the morning.

That's the whole thing. Three parts, and the first two are the ones that matter most, and the third is what makes the first two bearable.

Some when-then plans, because a rule without them gets decided fresh every Saturday and freshly lost.

When the alarm goes at the end of the window and I want to turn it off and roll over, then I put my feet on the floor and open the curtains before I decide anything, because the decision made lying in the dark will be the wrong one and the decision made standing in the light won't.

When it's Friday night and I'm exhausted and the thought of Saturday morning fills me with dread, then I go to bed an hour early tonight rather than planning to sleep late tomorrow, and I remind myself that the sleep is the same and the drift isn't.

When it's Saturday evening and I'm not tired at eleven, then I go up anyway with the lights low and something to read, because I'm not tired at eleven only if my clock has already started to slide, and going up holds it.

When I'm outside on Sunday morning at half past seven with a coffee feeling faintly ridiculous, then I remember that this ten minutes is the whole lever, and that it's replacing the Sunday-night wait and half of Monday.

What to expect, and this is my expectation and not a finding, since nobody's tested the three parts as a package. The first weekend is tired. The Sunday night is better than usual, noticeably, and Monday is better than usual, and you'll be tempted to read that as coincidence. The second weekend is less tired. By the fourth, Saturday morning feels like an ordinary morning and Monday feels like a Wednesday, and the identity in chapter 14, the person who's no good until midweek, has quietly gone. What you'll miss is the Sunday high, and you'll find you don't, because you're not low enough on Friday to need it.

A note on what you've decided. You haven't decided to sleep less. You've decided to sleep at the same time. If the total over the week turns out lower, the short week is the reason, and the earlier book on weeknight bedtimes is where to look. Most people find the total goes up, because the Sunday-night wait and the Monday-night early collapse stop wasting hours.