The symptoms of “Position 2” are very similar to sleep inertia. With that in mind, I scoured the web for ways to treat sleep inertia. Several different articles recommended the following: morning caffeine, short afternoon naps, waking up between sleep cycles.
I’ve already discovered most of these remedies on my own, but these professional recs encouraged me to make adjustments. It’s true that I discounted the effectiveness of caffeine in my 5/16/22 post, but I’m going to start drinking regularly again. I’ll probably aim for about ~60mg alongside breakfast (aka a 12oz can of Mountain Dew or a cup of Oi Ocha green tea.)
Naps will stay mostly unchanged. The main difference will be that I’ll try to limit them to 30min max.
As for sleep cycles, I started using the Sleep Cycle app. This iPhone app uses the microphone to try and determine whether you are in REM or light sleep. You set a time window (i.e. 7:00am to 7:30am) and it will play an alarm when you are in between cycles. The app is somewhat of a bother since it requires the phone to be plugged in and running the entire night, but I’m willing to pull out the big guns.
