A woman spent the summer sleeping like a medieval person — waking up after four hours of sleep to write poetry and letters — and says it made her more “alert.”
Anna Fox, 26, a graduate student studying medieval literature from North Carolina, US, experimented with the historical sleeping pattern after becoming fascinated by the idea of “first sleep” and “second sleep.”
Rather than sleeping for one continuous stretch, Anna began waking around four-and-a-half hours after falling asleep and staying awake for several hours before returning to bed.
Anna attempted this for four weeks.
She admitted the experiment left her feeling more alert and she’d wake up with a “peaceful accomplishment.”
She said, “For the first two weeks, I would go to bed early and then wake up at about 1:30 a.m. to 3:30 a.m.
“One of the commenters told me to base it off whenever I actually went to sleep, so I would add four-and-a-half hours on to when I fell asleep.
“If I went to bed at 9:30 p.m., I would set my alarm for 2 a.m.”
Anna initially followed a strict routine, going to bed at around 9 p.m., waking in the early hours and then returning to sleep for four and a half hours until around 8 a.m.
She eventually experimented with going to bed around sunset, sometimes waking at 3 a.m. and occasionally finding herself naturally awake at 5 a.m.
Anna, who was on a university break and therefore able to devote time to the experiment, admits it was not always easy to drag herself out of bed.
She said, “There were definitely nights where it was a battle of the will and I really didn’t want to get up.
“I’m not a very self-controlled person, so I had to really force myself.”
But once she was awake, Anna found the hours surprisingly peaceful and productive, spending them reading books, writing letters, journaling and working creatively.
She said, “Once I could convince myself to stay up, those hours were lovely.
“When you wake up in the morning, you’ve already had this experience in the night of reading poetry, writing letters and books.
“You wake up with this sense of peaceful accomplishment, like you’ve already done something.”
Anna also found herself feeling less groggy despite sometimes getting less sleep than she normally would.
She said, “I was completely exhausted for the first months of the summer, but I became a lot more alert.
“I was getting a lot less sleep than before, but I didn’t feel as enslaved to the snooze button.”
The experiment also made Anna rethink how she spent her waking hours, after realizing how much time she had previously lost to instant gratification and her phone.
She said, “It made me realize there was so much instant gratification and wasting time instead of using time wisely.
“It gave me those hours to do creative things so much easier, and they were more productive.
“I was using my time much more intentionally.”
Anna believes modern habits, including looking at phones before bed, may make the medieval routine harder to replicate.
She said, “I think not having a lot of phone light before going to bed made it easier for medieval people because they were used to living that way their whole lives.
“If I put my phone away a couple of hours before bed and did more physical work before bed, I think those elements would make it feel more natural.”
She also started running again because she wanted to be more tired at night, which she says ultimately helped her sleep better.
While Anna does not plan to follow the routine every night, she says she has discovered a new way of creating space for herself.
She said, “I’m not going to carry on doing it every single night, but when I want to be creative or have some spiritual contemplation, I’ll probably wake up in the middle of the night.
“There’s something really magical about those hours.
“It’s a tool I now have in my arsenal whenever I want to harness them.”
Anna is even considering repeating the experiment for her entire summer break next year to see whether it could help her adjust to a full academic term.
She said, “I would absolutely do it again.
“I think there is something really beautiful about being awake while everyone else is asleep and having those hours completely to yourself.”
