What You Win by Not Sleeping in on Weekends

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Abstract

more common culprit is that they’ve incurred a sleep debt during the week. Since most of us who are not chronic insomniacs have a sleep set point that our bodies will force us to hit over the long haul (mine is 7.4 hours/night), a sleep debt tends to result in crashing.Hence one of the toughest parts of early parenthood: you can’t easily make up that debt. When I realized that in the baby years, I decided to get better about going to bed on time. Since little kids don’t really get the concept of weekends, I would aim to be in bed at roughly the same time every night — generally around 10:30 p.m.Things have gotten a little better these days; everyone in my household is sleeping through the night. However, since I need to set my alarm for 6:30 a.m. on weekday mornings to get everyone off to school, in order to hit my 7.4 hours, I need to be in bed with the lights out around 11.If I do that every night, then sure enough, when I go to bed at 11 p.m. on weekends, I pop up at 6:30 a.m. anyway, since I have no sleep debt to be paid off. Sometimes it’s exactly 6:24 a.m. (that 7.4 hour set point is uncanny). I’m not naturally a morning person, that’s just how the math works.Anyway, being up — and feeling well-rested — at an early hour on weekends opens up all sorts of possibilities. For instance, this Saturday I’ll meet a friend to do an early morning long run. Both of us tend to spend our Saturdays shuttling kids around to activities and playdates, but we’ve run 10 miles between 7–9 a.m., and still been able to go about our days.<

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p id="dc77">Maybe you, too, have personal projects you’d like to devote more time to. Weekdays are already packed full. Weekends tend to be family time. Perhaps it seems like things just can’t fit.But if you can arrange your life so that you don’t need to sleep in on weekend mornings, then you can make use of this time. If the rest of your household isn’t stirring, or doesn’t need to be anywhere until 9 a.m., you could take a 7–8 a.m. yoga class somewhere, or go on a 6:30–8:30 a.m. group bike ride. In two-parent families with very young children, it’s a common practice to trade off; each parent gets one weekend morning to sleep in while the other deals with the kids. But if you don’t want to sleep in, that’s a morning of personal time that’s yours for the taking. You could work on your novel from 6:30–9 a.m., or meet an early rising friend for breakfast.Again, this doesn’t work if you have a sleep debt to pay off. But even if you just lie in bed scrolling on weekend mornings, there’s an upside to sticking to something close to the weekday schedule. Sleeping 3 hours past your weekday wake-up time on Saturday and Sunday mornings means that on Monday morning you’re basically dealing with the jet lag equivalent of flying from California to New York. That’s going to make life far more painful than necessary.So why not get up for a sunrise cup of coffee, a run, or an early morning worship service? You’ll have something fun or meaningful in your day and your body will appreciate the regularity. That’s a result worth waking up for.</article></body>

What You Win by Not Sleeping in on Weekends

Shortly after my husband and I became parents almost 15 years ago, we met some more veteran parents for a weekend lunch. In our pre-kid world, that would have been the first activity of the day. But as we bounced our baby around, we rued that we had already been up for hours. Didn’t we once get to sleep in on Saturdays? The other couple laughed. My memory is that one of them said, “Yep, that will never happen again.”

Fifteen years later, I’m seeing that’s not quite true. My teen and pre-teen children don’t want to get out of bed early, and even if they’re up, they’re often watching videos. This provides a glimmer of hope that once my littlest kid is a bit older, a new world will be possible.

That said, in the intervening years, I’ve seen that there are benefits to not sleeping in on weekends, even if there isn’t a little voice calling “Mama!” from a crib. Indeed, for many busy people, keeping about the same sleep schedule on weekends as weekdays opens up all sorts of opportunities that just don’t exist if you drowse the morning away.

I’ll start this post by clarifying that I don’t want anyone to be sleep deprived. People sleep in on weekend mornings for two reasons. One is that they’ve stayed up late on Friday or Saturday night. That’s great if it’s for a party, and maybe not so great if it’s just Netflix. But the more common culprit is that they’ve incurred a sleep debt during the week. Since most of us who are not chronic insomniacs have a sleep set point that our bodies will force us to hit over the long haul (mine is 7.4 hours/night), a sleep debt tends to result in crashing.

Hence one of the toughest parts of early parenthood: you can’t easily make up that debt. When I realized that in the baby years, I decided to get better about going to bed on time. Since little kids don’t really get the concept of weekends, I would aim to be in bed at roughly the same time every night — generally around 10:30 p.m.

Things have gotten a little better these days; everyone in my household is sleeping through the night. However, since I need to set my alarm for 6:30 a.m. on weekday mornings to get everyone off to school, in order to hit my 7.4 hours, I need to be in bed with the lights out around 11.

If I do that every night, then sure enough, when I go to bed at 11 p.m. on weekends, I pop up at 6:30 a.m. anyway, since I have no sleep debt to be paid off. Sometimes it’s exactly 6:24 a.m. (that 7.4 hour set point is uncanny). I’m not naturally a morning person, that’s just how the math works.

Anyway, being up — and feeling well-rested — at an early hour on weekends opens up all sorts of possibilities. For instance, this Saturday I’ll meet a friend to do an early morning long run. Both of us tend to spend our Saturdays shuttling kids around to activities and playdates, but we’ve run 10 miles between 7–9 a.m., and still been able to go about our days.

Maybe you, too, have personal projects you’d like to devote more time to. Weekdays are already packed full. Weekends tend to be family time. Perhaps it seems like things just can’t fit.

But if you can arrange your life so that you don’t need to sleep in on weekend mornings, then you can make use of this time. If the rest of your household isn’t stirring, or doesn’t need to be anywhere until 9 a.m., you could take a 7–8 a.m. yoga class somewhere, or go on a 6:30–8:30 a.m. group bike ride. In two-parent families with very young children, it’s a common practice to trade off; each parent gets one weekend morning to sleep in while the other deals with the kids. But if you don’t want to sleep in, that’s a morning of personal time that’s yours for the taking. You could work on your novel from 6:30–9 a.m., or meet an early rising friend for breakfast.

Again, this doesn’t work if you have a sleep debt to pay off. But even if you just lie in bed scrolling on weekend mornings, there’s an upside to sticking to something close to the weekday schedule. Sleeping 3 hours past your weekday wake-up time on Saturday and Sunday mornings means that on Monday morning you’re basically dealing with the jet lag equivalent of flying from California to New York. That’s going to make life far more painful than necessary.

So why not get up for a sunrise cup of coffee, a run, or an early morning worship service? You’ll have something fun or meaningful in your day and your body will appreciate the regularity. That’s a result worth waking up for.