How to Fix Your Sleep Schedule When It's Messed Up (7-Day Plan)

Why your sleep schedule is messed up

A cluster of cells in your brain acts as a master clock. It decides when you feel alert or sleepy, and it takes its cue mostly from light hitting your eyes. Scientists call light the main "zeitgeber," German for time-giver.

About 2 to 3 hours before your usual bedtime, the clock tells your brain to release melatonin. That rise is the start of your biological night. If it comes at 1 a.m., you will not feel sleepy at 10 p.m. no matter how early you get into bed.

Light in the evening and early night pushes the clock later. Light in the morning pulls it earlier. Modern life gives us the worst mix: dim rooms by day and bright screens at night.

A University of Colorado team measured people's clocks after a normal week of electric lighting, then after a week of camping with only natural light. After camping, internal clocks moved earlier and lined up with sunset and sunrise. Night owls shifted the most.

Why you sleep so late

• Late light. Phones, TVs, and bright overhead lights delay melatonin.
• Too little morning light. Nothing pulls the clock earlier.
• Weekend sleep-ins. Two late mornings push the clock back.
• Late caffeine or long naps. Both lower sleep pressure at bedtime.
• Biology. Some people are natural night owls, and most teens run late.

The 7-day sleep schedule reset

This example moves a 2:00 a.m. to 10:00 a.m. sleeper to 11:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. Adjust the times to fit your own start and goal. The step is 30 minutes a day. If that feels hard, use 15-minute steps and take two weeks.

Four rules make the plan work:

1. Get up at the wake time even after a bad night. Being a little short on sleep makes the next bedtime easier.
2. Go outside within an hour of waking. This is the step that moves the clock.
3. Skip naps, or keep them under 20 minutes and before 3 p.m.
4. Do not go to bed before you are sleepy. Stay up in dim light a little longer, but never move the wake time.

Hold the Day 7 times for at least two more weeks, weekends included. For help picking a wake time, see sleep calculator.

Why not shift faster?

Researchers at Rush University tested it. One group moved their sleep 1 hour earlier per day and another 2 hours per day, both with bright light every morning for three days. The 1-hour group's clocks moved about 1.5 hours in total and they slept fine. The 2-hour group's clocks could not keep up, and they had trouble falling asleep. That was with lab-grade light. At home, 15 to 30 minutes a day is realistic.

Morning light: how much and when

• Dose: aim for 30 minutes outdoors. On a dark, cloudy morning, stay out longer.
• Timing: within an hour of your planned wake time.
• How: walk, or eat breakfast on the porch. Never stare at the sun.
• Before sunrise: a light therapy box can stand in. Check with your doctor first if you have an eye condition or bipolar disorder.

One caution for strong night owls. A Harvard study mapped how light shifts the clock at each hour. Light that lands before your body temperature low point, a couple of hours before your natural wake time, pushes the clock later. So do not jump from a 10 a.m. wake-up to bright light at 5:30 a.m. Step earlier a little each day.

Low-dose melatonin for a late body clock

Most people take melatonin the wrong way for this problem: a big dose at bedtime. For shifting the clock, melatonin is a timing signal, not a sedative.

• In a controlled study of 34 adults, 0.5 mg of melatonin moved the clock earlier the most when taken 2 to 4 hours before the body's own melatonin rise. That is roughly 5 to 7 hours before the time you now fall asleep.
• Given at the right time, 0.5 mg shifted the clock about as much as 3 mg.
• The American Academy of Sleep Medicine's 2015 guideline suggests strategically timed melatonin for delayed sleep-wake phase disorder. It rates the evidence as limited.

If you fall asleep around 2 a.m., that means 0.5 mg between 7 and 9 p.m., moved earlier as your schedule shifts. It can cause drowsiness, so do not drive after taking it. Talk to your doctor or pharmacist first, especially if you are pregnant or take other medicines. Melatonin is optional. Light and wake time do most of the work.

Weekends and social jet lag

Researchers in Munich named this in 2006: social jet lag. It is the gap between the sleep times work or school demands and the times your body picks on free days. If you sleep midnight to 7 a.m. on workdays and 3 a.m. to 10 a.m. on weekends, your body flies west across three time zones every Friday and back every Monday. In their survey of 501 people, night owls had the largest gap and the most workday sleep debt.

The fix: keep your weekend wake time within one hour of your weekday time. If you stayed out late, still get up on time and take a 20-minute nap after lunch.

Should you pull an all-nighter to reset?

No. The idea is to stay up 24 hours, crash at 9 p.m., and wake up fixed. It fails for three reasons.

1. Tiredness does not move your clock. Light does. Within a few nights you are back where you started.
2. You stay up through the worst light. Light in the early night pushes your clock even later.
3. It is unsafe. A full day awake slows your reactions about as much as being drunk. See our guide to 3 hours of sleep a night.

Shift workers

Night work asks you to sleep when your clock says wake. Guidance from NIOSH, the CDC's workplace safety institute, includes:

• Put on dark or blue-light-blocking sunglasses before you leave work and keep them on until you are in your dark bedroom.
• Make the bedroom very dark.
• If you are too sleepy to drive, do not. Get a ride, or have caffeine and a short nap before you leave.

Teens

Teens who cannot fall asleep before midnight are usually not being lazy. Sleep timing shifts later during the teen years for biological reasons. The same plan works, with a few changes:

• The AASM guideline suggests morning light therapy with behavior changes for children and teens with a delayed clock.
• Limit weekend sleep-ins to one hour past the school-day wake time.
• Phones charge outside the bedroom.
• Melatonin for anyone under 18 should go through a pediatrician.

Teens need more sleep than adults. See our guide on how much sleep do you need by age.

When to get help

See a doctor or sleep specialist if you have followed a steady plan for three to four weeks and still cannot fall asleep until hours past your target. Delayed sleep-wake phase disorder is a real, treatable condition. If the problem is a racing mind at any hour, read how to fall asleep.

Frequently asked questions