Don't make this mistake in sleep: It's called "Social Jet Lag." Social jet lag is when our sleep schedule on workdays differs from our sleep schedule on our days off. Is this you? Read (or listen) to find out.

One reason that people are chronically tired, or think that they have trouble with sleep, is because they change their sleep schedules around to "make up" for the sleep deficits that occur on the work week days. 

Making up sleep is not a good strategy for feeling rested. There are just many reasons and details about this that we discuss in our more in-depth courses, but a quick example of one way that Social Jet Lag shows up is this: 

For example, if you sleep in on Saturday and Sunday morning, and then you are cursing your Monday's morning workday alarm because you are soooo tired and foggy...even though you get a full night of sleep and went to sleep on-time. 

Or, if on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, you go to sleep at 2am, and then you try to go to sleep at 11pm on Sunday night (the night before work) to try to get back on sleep, you are likely to have trouble falling asleep on Sunday night. 

Action point: If these scenarios describe you, this is a place where you can already make some change...make your bedtime, and actually, especially your awake times, more consistent. Varying them greatly is what starts to undermine good quality sleep that we need in order to feel good. 

It's pretty common to stay up late when you have trouble sleeping or just to get some extra work or chores completed before bed (or maybe just to scroll on social media). And, doing so every now and then isn't so bad, but regularly or on most days of the week will really have an impact.

Now, you can also have something more extreme than social jet lag, such as:

1) You are strongly a night owl or strongly a morning person, and you WANT to change this pattern right now. Or,

2) You are a shift worker whose shift changes from day to day or week to week. Or,

3) You sleep without any type of schedule, whether it is morning, afternoon, or night

If this is you, then, we recommend that you consider meeting with someone on a one-on-one basis, as you'll really want to have someone to point you to a schedule of how to proceed -- exactly to your needs. Although we can't formally diagnose you, the term "circadian rhythm disorder" may help you start in the right direction/right ballpark.

Action point and options: Be sure to make notes on your checklist if social jet lag pertains to you. This is one you can address all on your own and is a common reason people feel so tired, and we do some work with this in our courses, delving further into some of the details. And, if you want one-on-one help for more significant circadian rhythm complexities, one-on-one help can be found through a national listing of providers and the link is in the text noes for this lesson:  https://www.pennsleep.directory/index.php/search-for-a-provider