NTs and Sleep Patterns

[mlittrell]

Hey just wanted to ask you NTs about your "sleep patterns" if thats what you want to call them. Basically, about what time (average) do you go to bed and about what time (average) do you wake up? I'm specifically interested in XNTPs but XNTJs are equally welcome.

[Jack Flak]

I wouldn't say I have much of an average right now, but to pick a bedtime I'll say 1AM. These days I tend to get about 6.5 hours sleep.

[substitute]

Uh... pattern? :blink:
That's like a routine, right? :unsure:

[Metamorphosis]

I normally go to sleep at around 3am. When I don't have to do anything until 2, I wake up around 12. Some days I have class at 9:30 so I wake up earlier, and then sleep for a couple of hours later in the day.

[substitute]

srsly tho...

most nights I go to sleep sometime between 2 and 3am, and unless I have some reason to be up, I just sleep in until I wake naturally or get woken by something (a kid jumping on me, a noisy lawnmower beneath my window, the telephone, etc), which is usually around 10 or 11am. The main snag with this being that I usually do have a reason to be up, so I average around 5 or 6 hours' sleep most nights.

Not having the opportunity to nap in the daytime (and not being able to really anyway), I just soldier through and don't really notice how tired I am until things quieten down at about 7pm. But then, I feel like I need to have an evening, y'know, some time to myself? Or someone will call round (happens a lot), and by the time 11pm comes round I'm bright eyed and bushy-tailed, no matter how exhausted I felt before.

I have tried many times to get my body clock round to more sociable hours, but it can only work for as long as something's forcing me - literally, like a monastery timetable, curfew and bell for example - and even then, the longer it goes on, the more I start sitting up and reading in bed 'til 2am, even though I'm up at 6.

I remember seeing this show on TV where they documented the development of a bunch of kids all born on the same day. It showed how the 'owl' and 'lark' sleeping patterns were biologically programmed into these babies, how they each had widely varying preferred sleep patterns totally naturally, and explained it by saying how, in primitive conditions, y'know, it's logical that some people are meant to stay awake through the night to keep watch and other stuff. Really interesting.

My mom corroborates that I've always been a hardcore night owl since my infancy.

edit - HOWEVER it's only because I force myself to get to bed that I go as early as I do, cos I know I've got to be up the next morning and stuff and I don't want to fall too far behind on my sleep cos I know I never get the opportunity to catch up. On weeks when the kids have been at grandma's and stuff like that, I've happily pushed bedtime back to 5am and later and gone completely nocturnal, waking up in the early afternoon, mooching around until early evening, then coming to life around 7pm, to burn brighter and faster the later it gets. It's always hard to adjust back to the early pre-3am bedtimes...

[Sinister Scribe]

I'm an INTJ and I usually go to bed around 1AM and fall asleep around an hour later. I tend to wake up a little before 6AM, so usually about 4-5 hours of sleep a night during the week. Sometimes during the weekned I get a couple more hours, but it's pretty rare.

[mlittrell]

Uh... pattern? :blink:
That's like a routine, right? :unsure:

ya sure

the reason im asking is because a good majority of my NT friends have the worst sleep schedules of any other friends (type wise). this is of course a generalization but i find it very interesting. the best, from what ive seen, are SJs as far as sleep schedules

[Sinister Scribe]

SJs also rely on routine in other areas of their lives. Some need this routine to function (both of my parents are SJs - ISTJ and ISFJ).

[Kora]

I don't have a schedule. I like staying up late and getting up even later... during holidays I go to sleep at about 4 AM, but I also can stay until 7 AM, and waking up at 1 or 2 PM.
During school I go to sleep at about 12 or 1 AM and get up at 7:30 AM.

[ZiL]

During school, I usually go to bed around 1:00-1:30am. Depending on the day, I wake up between 6:30-8:45am. I like to have 6 to 7 hours of sleep if possible, though if I don't get that much, I'm usually able to keep myself perked up throughout the day as long as I don't have a boring class to sit through. During non-school times of the year I go to bed around 3am and wake up between 9 and 12.

Definitely no solid schedule, just tendencies. And I've always been a night owl.

(I know some SJ's with some horrible sleep schedules, but I wonder if they won't reform themselves a bit after college.)

[substitute]

My step dad, when I was a teenager, used to come into my room and force me out of bed, declaring me to be a lazy ne'er do well, on account of it being 11am and I was still asleep. I thought this grossly unfair, especially considering that I worked a graveyard shift at a gas station and often wasn't even in until 7am. But even when I wasn't working late, I rarely went to bed before 5am. He'd just declare all the stuff he'd done whilst I was sleeping and tell me what a crime it was to waste so much of the day 'lazing'.

I got so annoyed about it that one day, at about 3am, I went into HIS room, crashed in, switched on the lights, banged a pot next to his head (as he did to me) and told him to get the fuck up, the lazy bastard. He'd protest angrily that it was 3am just as I protested, but I was unsympathetic and said "So? I've just cooked my dinner, ironed my shirts for the week and cleaned the whole kitchen. I've got a shift at the gas station to work yet!"

I had to run to avoid the violence... haha... but I think I made my point. He still grouched occasionally about me being 'lazy', but he never woke me up again.

[Didums]

School days (monday-friday) = 1am to 6:30am. When I get home from school I take naps occasionally.
Weekends = 12 hours (or more) of sleep nomatter when I fall asleep.

[Eryndil]

Given the choice, I'm entirely nocturnal and sleep for a long time. Last night (this morning) it was some time after 2am when I got to bed (probably a lot after 2am!) and I woke up shortly after midday. On work days, I have about 6 hours sleep and I make up for it on other days. Sometimes, it's more like 5am when I get to sleep.

[01011010]

I have an erratic sleep pattern. I exercise and try to remember to eat regularly and that helps a bit. Though, I still suffer bouts of insomnia from time to time.

[Aimahn]

I think I will always be an Insomniac. I think my brain is ultra alert as the night is winding down, part of that has to do with the quiet at night. I just feel like I can be extremely hyper focused and relaxed past midnight and extremely lethargic in the morning so I never look forward to going to bed early.

[kelric]

I think some of this depends on your age, too. I find that as I've gotten older, I just plain *can't* sleep in like I used to, even on weekends. So I've pretty much forced myself to try to get to bed by 11 every night so that I don't miss any more sleep than I have to. I sleep pretty poorly anyway (fall asleep easily but it's not unusual for me to wake up 10-15 times a night), and I have to get up at around 6:30 for work, so staying up late's something I only do on special occasions.

All in all, I sleep (using the term loosely - I'm awake probably 20% of this time anyway) from 11pm to around 6-6:30am during the week, and from 11 until 8ish on weekends. Having said that, I'm most definitely a night person, and not a morning person by nature.

[Uytuun]

These days it's rare for me to go to bed before 2 AM, sometimes it's 2, sometime it's 5, it depends. I generally get up somewhere around noon, then merge breakfast and lunch etc. I'm a difficult sleeper, even as a child I would often wake my parents saying I couldn't sleep. My INTJ father would tell me I resisted sleep. He is a morning person (but for the same reason I like nighttime it seems - quiet etc.), but also a very bad (and light) sleeper.

I've always been a night owl, now it's the computer, back in the day it was books.

[FDG]

I have a very regular sleep pattern, because if I sleep well my day is 123423423 times better and I can do more things (i can work more quickly and thus have more free time, for example). So I usually go around 11:00-11:30 and wake up around 7:30. Often I train (cycling) during the day, so I have no problem falling asleep at all, in fact past 10:30 I start to get quite tired...

Even as a kid, I could never sleep past 9. I'm an early riser by nature.

[Eldanen]

Why does it seem that there are more late risers than early risers? >_>

P.S. I don't have a schedule at the moment.

[Tallulah]

Lately, I've been going to bed at 6am, but that is excessive even for me, and I really need to train myself out of that pattern. I'm a night owl for sure, and I stay up until at least 3 or 4am. I have to have 8 hours of sleep, regardless.

[Eldanen]

One summer I went to bed at around 7-9AM and got up at 5 PM, like clockwork, every day. I played Neverwinter Nights all night long baby ;).

[Firelie]

If I have no reason to wake up at a certain time the next morning, I usually stay up till about 2 am and wake up around 10.

I've had to start going to bed at 10-11 and wake up at 6:30/7:00 am for school, though.

[Googly_Eyes]

Without work/school/anything else (which I don't have right now) I just stay up until I'm too tired to go on. Not just because I'm a perceiver, but because I've given up on trying to force myself to stop thinking so I can go to sleep already.

It's currently 5:29am here and I've yet to go to bed.

[substitute]

I have a very regular sleep pattern, because if I sleep well my day is 123423423 times better and I can do more things (i can work more quickly and thus have more free time, for example). So I usually go around 11:00-11:30 and wake up around 7:30. Often I train (cycling) during the day, so I have no problem falling asleep at all, in fact past 10:30 I start to get quite tired...

Even as a kid, I could never sleep past 9. I'm an early riser by nature.

this is interesting... it confirms what I've previously thought of as an accidental conspiracy against night owl types.

If you go to bed early, you sleep well and have more energy the next day. So 9 to 5 works for you.

If I go to bed early, I lie awake, bored, frustrated, driving myself crazy and unable to sleep, through the small hours of the morning. I spend the day exhausted, somewhat spaced out, and looking forward to crashing out as soon as possible. But it never happens.

Then the same thing happens the following night, until after a week or so, eventually I'm so exhausted that I do crash out the minute the kids are quiet and watching TV, and sleep until they're pestering me to cook dinner. Then, naturally, I totally perk up at 11pm again and the cycle begins again.

I've sometimes thought that perhaps there's a link between night-owl sleeping patterns and N-ness... I sometimes wonder if the fact that the world's pretty unsympathetic to night owls, causing me to spend most of my waking daylight hours feeling tired, a little confused and not quite with it, so that my senses aren't really functioning properly, is what's forced me since childhood to rely more on intuition...??

I also notice how much better I function when I've had enough sleep. But the way our society is geared gives me precious little opportunity to actually enjoy that state. During times when I'm on vacation without the kids, I do find that if I can spend a couple of weeks in what seems my biologically natural sleeping pattern, semi-nocturnal, I do have more energy and am more alert; I feel like I'm on cocaine or something, like someone who's gradually gone near-sighted over a long period and then suddenly gets given some glasses - "Woah! You mean trees have individual leaves???" :laugh:

[FDG]

this is interesting... it confirms what I've previously thought of as an accidental conspiracy against night owl types.

If you go to bed early, you sleep well and have more energy the next day. So 9 to 5 works for you.

Yeah, it's true that it generally works better for me than most of my friends that are night owls. Some of them have been able to circumvent this problem by working at jobs with a more afternoon-to-evening oriented schedule (for example, with shifts or by working at a restaurant in the evening).


If I go to bed early, I lie awake, bored, frustrated, driving myself crazy and unable to sleep, through the small hours of the morning. I spend the day exhausted, somewhat spaced out, and looking forward to crashing out as soon as possible. But it never happens.

Then the same thing happens the following night, until after a week or so, eventually I'm so exhausted that I do crash out the minute the kids are quiet and watching TV, and sleep until they're pestering me to cook dinner. Then, naturally, I totally perk up at 11pm again and the cycle begins again.

I've sometimes thought that perhaps there's a link between night-owl sleeping patterns and N-ness... I sometimes wonder if the fact that the world's pretty unsympathetic to night owls, causing me to spend most of my waking daylight hours feeling tired, a little confused and not quite with it, so that my senses aren't really functioning properly, is what's forced me since childhood to rely more on intuition...??

Ahah, I understand the problem; I actually think that perceiving types are more likely to be night owls than judging types, as an overall pattern (this, imo, is also due to the fact that perceivers tend to become more effective as the deadline approaches; so if we use as deadline-measure the end of the day for doing whatever the person wanted to do (even pleasurable activities), It'd make sense that perceivers are more likely to be active during the night).


I also notice how much better I function when I've had enough sleep. But the way our society is geared gives me precious little opportunity to actually enjoy that state. During times when I'm on vacation without the kids, I do find that if I can spend a couple of weeks in what seems my biologically natural sleeping pattern, semi-nocturnal, I do have more energy and am more alert; I feel like I'm on cocaine or something, like someone who's gradually gone near-sighted over a long period and then suddenly gets given some glasses - "Woah! You mean trees have individual leaves???" :laugh:

I think the only way to manage would be to have a job/general schedule that allows for a more nocturnal lifestyle. But it's not so easy, given that many services are only available during the day.

[whatever]

I go to sleep somewhere around 3 or 4 am and wake up around 11 usually (earlier today because I have plans). I work second shift, so I really see no point in going to bed before midnight- that's around the time I get home and start making dinner :doh:

When I had early classes in school, I would stay awake until 3 or 4 still and wake up at 7:30 and then take a 4 hour nap before heading into work in the afternoon :)

I laughed at the notion of a sleep "pattern" too, bc I certainly don't have any set rules about my sleeping!

(and I can sympathize with the whole being woken up early thing- my dad wakes my sis and I up at 8 am when we're home, stating that it was nearly noon and time to get our lazy selves out of bed... at least he's cheerful about it I suppose :dry:)

[heart]

I'm not NT, but no matter when or how much I actually sleep, I was feel better and more alert the deeper into the night hours it gets.

[whatever]

^ explaining why you're usually here when I'm here ;)

[substitute]

Ahah, I understand the problem; I actually think that perceiving types are more likely to be night owls than judging types, as an overall pattern (this, imo, is also due to the fact that perceivers tend to become more effective as the deadline approaches; so if we use as deadline-measure the end of the day for doing whatever the person wanted to do (even pleasurable activities), It'd make sense that perceivers are more likely to be active during the night).

Woah yeah, hadn't thought of that... but I think you might have a point!
You're coming at it from a 'symptom' angle though whilst I was thinking more 'cause'. Like, perhaps P-ness causes night-owliness, and night-owliness causes N-ness! So... NP's are night owls par exellence? :laugh:

I think the only way to manage would be to have a job/general schedule that allows for a more nocturnal lifestyle. But it's not so easy, given that many services are only available during the day.

yeah... and virtually impossible to get anything that pays well outside of office hours...

[FDG]

Woah yeah, hadn't thought of that... but I think you might have a point!
You're coming at it from a 'symptom' angle though whilst I was thinking more 'cause'. Like, perhaps P-ness causes night-owliness, and night-owliness causes N-ness! So... NP's are night owls par exellence? :laugh:

Yeah well they're intertwined; I wouldn't be able to separate the cause from the effect, even if maybe one is really the cause of the other. So yes it does seem that NPs would be the most likely to be night owls.

[SonnyCheeba]

I have not had a regular work schedule or sleep schedule in years.... Currently at the for hospital and work sat-sun-mon 7a-7p from home or at the office. There really is no need for me to sleep regularly at all except certain mondays. I only stay up late usually pursuing some personal interest on an obscure topic, or attempting to complete a task, and wake up early if there is a specific task I wish to work on. What generally leads me to stay up random hours is it is quiet, I can think and work on or enjoy things in peace that others may interrupt.

[Orangey]

I have had the most terrible sleep patterns for as long as I can tell. Going to bed at anywhere from 3-6am, then waking up in the mid afternoon. I also regularly go without sleep at all for a day (usually once a week), and then crash the day after that. I don't know what my problem is, but it's been near impossible to adjust myself, even when I have obligations.

[ajblaise]

I have had the most terrible sleep patterns for as long as I can tell. Going to bed at anywhere from 3-6am, then waking up in the mid afternoon. I also regularly go without sleep at all for a day (usually once a week), and then crash the day after that. I don't know what my problem is, but it's been near impossible to adjust myself, even when I have obligations.

This is exactly what I did for a while...but trust me it gets even worse, now I have no acknowledgment at all of the 24-hour day, by staying up for 24-26 or so hours and then sleeping for 10. At least this way I'm awake in the morning a lot of the time.

[Synarch]

Sleep pattern: I go until I am exhausted then I crash. I will try to crash earlier than 2am if at all possible as this cascades into an enormous sleep debt that is worse than the struggle of making myself go to bed.