Dubious Expert Advice

Middle of the Night Insomnia affects a lot of us.  Despite my best faith effort to standardize my sleep times with widely accepted Sleep Hygiene rules, my first awakening comes with the red numerals on the clock radio behind me displaying approximately 3AM, sometimes earlier, rarely much later.  To be sure, it's never anywhere close to my aspired wake up time.  The books, and the professor whose seminar I just took at a modest fee to support the sponsoring organization, advised arising if not back to sleep in twenty minutes or so.  I set my smartwatch timer for a half hour, extend it once or twice a little beyond that, affirm my intent to enjoy the warmth of my down comforter for that interval, and avoid thinking about the last day's events or next day's agenda.  Never back to sleep before the wrist buzz.  Eventually I do get back to sleep, and frequently find myself restored to some respectable stage of the sleep cycle, I don'ttts know which, when the buzz from the smartwatch awakes me with intent.  If not really asleep I get up.  If sleep cycle interrupted I wait a while longer for the morning radio to blare its 7:15AM Sousalarm March feature, then get up almost always without fail

But the professional advice is not to do that.  It is to get up and do something relatively mindless.  Laptop and cellphone screens off limits, big screen TV OK.  Reading OK.  Studying not OK.  My default is a documentary on the Big Screen in My Space while I lean back on the recliner.  Nature shows.  Geography or geology shows.  I've exhausted most of the history shows.  Podcasts sometimes, though they tend to keep my mind too engaged for what I am trying to achieve.  Eventually I get drowsy, probably a little sooner than I had if I had stayed in bed, but not that much sooner.

Having now done this for consecutive nights, my observation is that I feel less rested when the intended wake up time arrives.  I still arise from bed, head to the sink for morning dental hygiene irrespective of how I feel, go downstairs where I successfully brew coffee in the Keurig Express, which I then take upstairs to sip at my desk.  I have the function to do a few petty chores, whether watering the indoor plants or retrieving the newspaper for my wife, and doing a few dishes still sitting overnight in the tub in the kitchen sink.  But I mostly really need that coffee back at my desk.  It washes down the morning antihypertensives and PPI.  And by about half the coffee consumed, adenosine receptors adequately blocked, I am reasonably ready to do a few of the day's projects outlined the night before.

Do I feel better or worse in the mornings when I follow the expert advice?  My assessment is worse, at least to the completion of that coffee.  That may not be the goal, however.  The purpose may be a more sustained ability to function for the duration of nature's daylight hours with the morning ookies the price for being able to do that.  I'm not sure yet if that will play out.