Getting enough sleep is crucial to health, but there is no one-size-fits-all amount of sleep that everybody needs. So, what time should you go to bed if you want to wake up at half past five?

I once read about the idea that sleep comes in cycles, usually lasting around 90 minutes, and that waking up at the end of a cycle might make you feel more refreshed. But there is a problem. Sleep cycles don’t work like a fixed clock, and nobody really knows exactly when each cycle starts.

For some lucky ones who can fall asleep as soon as their heads touch the pillow, you could simply count backwards from 5:30 a.m. and aim for around 7.5 or 9 hours of sleep. But most modern people have serious sleeping issues. They can’t possibly fall asleep immediately once they are in bed, and I used to be one of them.

Maybe the Problem Starts in the Morning

But here is what I found from my own experience: instead of trying to solve your sleeping problem at night, maybe you should start solving it in the morning.

It’s only too natural when you want to solve one problem to focus on the problem itself. If we have a problem falling asleep at night, there are all kinds of tips: medicine, meditation, breathing exercises, and so on. But seldom would people think about why they can’t fall asleep in the first place. Maybe by simply getting up early, you could start changing the whole rhythm of your day, and eventually your sleep might start fixing itself.

The thing is, our bodies are much smarter than we give them credit for. Those having sleeping issues are usually familiar with those crappy, low-energy mornings. Trust me, I used to be like that. I thought modern people just don’t have mornings. Their days usually start in the afternoon, stretching late into midnight.

And I’m not saying that staying up late is a problem for everybody. But if you’re someone who wants more peaceful mornings instead of those late nights when your mind gets blurry, your thoughts become messy, and your emotions somehow get louder than they should, you should try to get up early. Then choose to trust your body. It will naturally need you to sleep when the time comes at night.

When My Body Needed 8 P.M.

Of course, there will be a period of getting into that pattern. When I first started getting up at half past five in the morning last year, I went to bed at around 8 p.m. Did I usually need that many hours of sleep? No. But did I need that much sleep at that moment, while my body was changing into a morning-person rhythm? Yes, definitely.

I think I’ve probably needed around eight hours of sleep for most of my life. But going to sleep at 8 p.m. would have been too much even for myself before I started this experiment. The period of crashing at 8 p.m. kind of felt like you had just finished a long trip and were finally home. Your body had been running for too long, and now it finally had a chance to rest.

Staying up late was like that long, exhausting trip for my body. My body never really felt fully at home. So all those sleep problems dragged me into despair for a long while. But after the initial month or two, I gradually felt that I didn’t need to sleep at 8 p.m. anymore to function and still get up at half past five.

From 8 P.M. to 10 P.M.

Now I’ve been keeping this routine, around 10 p.m. to 5:30 a.m., for more than a year. I feel refreshed most mornings, waking up with the moon still hanging there in the eastern sky.

So, let’s get back to the question: When should you go to sleep if you wake up at 5:30 a.m.? Trust me, your body already has the best answer nobody could possibly give you.

I think we sometimes ask this question because we want a scientific answer that we can simply follow. We want someone to tell us, “Go to bed at 10 p.m., sleep for 7.5 hours, and you’ll be fine.” But sadly, there is no one proven bedtime that works for everyone.

And sometimes, we try to solve the problem before we’ve even started the experiment. We think, “Oh, 10 p.m.? I can’t really do that. I could never fall asleep that early.” And I completely understand that. I had a whole lifetime of experience that seemed to prove I couldn’t do it either.

But when I started getting up at half past five, my body naturally adjusted to that rhythm, and I found myself ready for bed around 10 p.m.

Let Your Body Find Its Rhythm

That’s probably the part we don’t think about enough. We want to know the answer before we begin, but sometimes you only find the answer by doing it.

If you seriously just want to experiment with your life with an early-morning routine, you don’t need to know in advance whether you’ll sleep at 8, 9, or 10. You are uniquely you, and your body may need some time to find its own rhythm. But it will find it!

Of course, getting up early doesn’t mean sleeping less. You still need enough sleep, and most adults need at least seven hours. The point is not to cut your sleep short. It’s to gradually move your whole rhythm earlier and see what happens.

And gradually, you may gain more control over things like your sleeping pattern, your waking time, and even the way you spend your day. So don’t overthink it before you start. Pay attention to your body, give it some time, and let it tell you what works.

So, when should you go to bed if you wake up at half past five? I don’t think you need to know the answer before you start. I used to think I needed to figure everything out first: how many hours I should sleep, when I should go to bed, and whether I could actually become a morning person. But my body figured it out before I did. I started getting up early, and slowly, my body found its own rhythm. It told me when it was tired, when it was ready to sleep, and eventually, it brought me from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. without me having to force it.

Maybe that’s what I’ve learned from this little experiment: sometimes, you don’t find the right rhythm by thinking about it. You find it by living it. So if you’ve been thinking about getting up at half past five, don’t worry too much about whether you’ll be able to sleep at 8, 9, or 10. Start with the morning, give your body some time to adjust, and let it find its way. You may be surprised by the answer it gives you.