{"id":825087,"date":"2026-07-26T14:50:22","date_gmt":"2026-07-26T14:50:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/825087\/"},"modified":"2026-07-26T14:50:22","modified_gmt":"2026-07-26T14:50:22","slug":"sleep-tips-regular-wake-and-bedtimes-are-often-recommended-for-better-sleep-but-one-of-them-could-be-making-things-worse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/825087\/","title":{"rendered":"Sleep tips: Regular wake and bedtimes are often recommended for better sleep, but one of them could be making things worse"},"content":{"rendered":"

Consistent wake and bedtimes<\/a> has been touted as the key to better sleep<\/a> and health, but it\u2019s not as simple as going to bed at 10pm<\/a> and getting up at 7am every single day.<\/p>\n

In fact, one of them makes more of a difference than the other, not just because of our body clock but because it is easier and less stressful to put into practice.<\/p>\n

\"Woman<\/p>\n

A consistent wake-up time is easier for us to control because sleepiness relies on our body clock.\u00a0iStockphoto<\/p>\n

Leon Lack, Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health, Flinders University, told nine.com.au that the advice for having a regular bedtime is \u201cproblematic\u201d because it\u2019s difficult to achieve.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf your body clock isn\u2019t ready to fall asleep, then you may go to bed at your desired bedtime, 10pm or 10:30pm, and not be able to fall asleep, so you\u2019re lying in bed getting worried about the fact that you\u2019re still awake,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Thinking] \u2018I just need to go to bed at the same time every night\u2019 … might get people into the dilemma that they\u2019re going to bed at their desired sleep time, but they\u2019re not falling asleep. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf this happens on a regular basis, it can develop some insomnia in the person, some conditioned alertness response as a result of feeling a bit worried every night when they\u2019re lying in bed because they\u2019ve gone to bed earlier than their body clock will allow them to fall asleep.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, he recommends going to bed when you start \u201cfeel noticeably sleepy\u201d and focusing on a consistent wake-up time. This is not only easier for us to control, it also has the benefit of allowing us to get exposure to morning light<\/a> to help regulate our body clock.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you get exposed to light from 7am onwards on a regular basis, that ensures that your body clock stays fairly stabilised in clock time and doesn\u2019t become delayed,\u201d Lack said.<\/p>\n

A consistent wake-up time doesn\u2019t just mean weekdays though, it needs to be on weekends too.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So if you\u2019ve been catching up on sleep by sleeping in<\/a> on your days off, you\u2019re actually getting into a cycle of pushing your sleep on Sunday night later, and you don\u2019t get as much sleep that night.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou then are short-changed on your sleep on those first few nights of the next week, you build up sleep pressure again, you pay off that sleep pressure on the weekend by sleeping in late, and that exacerbates your delayed body clock, and it just continues on like that,\u201d Lack said.<\/p>\n

\u201cTrying to maintain a relatively consistent wake-up time by not sleeping in very late on the weekend, but getting up and getting exposed to light on the weekend as well will help keep your body clock stabilised and prevent it from becoming delayed and becoming a problem trying to sleep at an appropriate time in the evening.\u201d<\/p>\n

That doesn\u2019t mean we need to rule out the weekend or occasional sleep in entirely, though.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you sleep in an extra half hour on the weekend or something like that, that\u2019s not going to have a big effect, as long as you get up and get outside in the sunshine on the weekend, even if it\u2019s half an hour later than normal, that would be fine. That\u2019s not going to allow the body clock to delay very much,\u201d Lack said.<\/p>\n

Now we know consistent wake times are helpful for good sleep, how do you actually get in the habit of it? Sure, we can set an alarm, but that doesn\u2019t automatically instil in us the discipline to get up when it goes off.<\/p>\n

To start with, Dr Kelly Gough, clinical psychologist and President of the Australian Psychological Society, encourages being kind to yourself.<\/p>\n

\"Hand<\/p>\n

An alarm clock can help wake you up at a consistent time, but to actually have the benefit of that consistent time you need to get out of bed and expose yourself to daylight.\u00a0Getty Images\/iStockphoto<\/p>\n

\u201cConsistency is good, but also we live in this life and so don\u2019t beat yourself up too much if you can\u2019t be consistent. Try and be as consistent as you can in the lifestyle that you\u2019ve got\u2026 if you\u2019re regularly getting up around the same time, and you have a day a week when you get up a bit earlier, that\u2019s not going to have any real problem,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Gough recommends small adjustments to your wake-up time to make it easier to achieve some consistency.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re currently getting up at 11am and you need to get it back to 9, don\u2019t just go from 11 until 9. Maybe go to 10:30 or 10 and then sort of just slowly incrementally change it. Give yourself a few days to get used to that and then maybe bring it down again, but little adjustments seem to help,\u201d Gough said.<\/p>\n

Ultimately, Gough said try not to worry about it as that makes it harder to get to sleep.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you have a bad night tonight, you\u2019ll probably have a better night tomorrow; you don\u2019t have to catastrophise, you can go to work and do your job, and you\u2019ll be tired, but it\u2019ll be fine \u2013 you\u2019ve been tired before. All that sort of stuff, I think, can make a big difference.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Consistent wake and bedtimes has been touted as the key to better sleep and health, but it\u2019s not…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":825088,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,134],"class_list":["post-825087","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=825087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/825087\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/825088"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=825087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=825087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=825087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}