Practical Experience of 10 PM to 6 AM Sleep Schedule

Inertia and Cost

One night this year at 10 PM, I suddenly realized I couldn't continue living upside down with a chaotic sleep schedule, so I forced myself to lie in bed and try to sleep.

But honestly, due to the long period of reversed routine, I didn't sleep at all the whole night. My mind was flooded with thoughts, pulling me in all directions like being torn apart.

At 6 AM, I mechanically got up and managed to stay awake through the morning. Between 12 and 2 PM I ate lunch and took a nap, then persisted until 7 PM, when I went out for a one‑hour walk. To be honest, this was one of the rare times in months that I saw the daylight scenery. From 8 to 10 PM I can't clearly remember what I did, but at 10 PM I again forced myself to lie down and try to sleep.

In this way, by forcing myself to sleep more at night and less during the day, I don't know how long it took, but I finally adjusted my routine to 10 PM – 6 AM.

How did I persist through this phase?

First, I had experienced the reversed routine. Believe me, friends, it doesn't feel good. Living at night and sleeping by day made me feel farther and farther away from people. My initial reason for going to bed early was to escape that feeling, but as time passed, that feeling could be forgotten — Humans are truly damned.

Later, I found a new reason: the power of accumulation. Because of the previous efforts, they piled up layer by layer. To overturn them later, I would have to push all of them away at once. This is the essence of persistence: it begins with awakening and endures through accumulated layers.

The wind rises at the edge of duckweed, and waves form amid ripples.

One night this year at 10 PM, I lay down as usual to sleep, but this day was different.

It was early July, just after the Lesser Heat solar term, and the temperature suddenly spiked. How to describe this feeling? Walking outdoors was like wading through a swamp of hot air, which clung to you everywhere. The heat didn't recede at bedtime, so I had to turn on the air conditioning. I don't like air conditioning; every time I use it, I feel uncomfortable, and trading a moment of coolness for a whole day of grogginess is not worth it.

Because the air conditioner was on, I felt drafts wrapping around me from all directions. I had to shift my bed and adjust my sleeping position, breaking my usual inertia.

More troublesome was that I had given in to my appetite during the afternoon walk and ate a fried pancake and a bowl of spicy soup, which left me feeling heavy and indigested. As the saying goes, food and sex are human nature — indeed.

The biggest variable came from a math topic I studied that day: the basic inequality. Lying in bed with nothing to do, my mind unconsciously grabbed onto what I had learned: the arithmetic mean is always greater than or equal to the geometric mean. My miserable experience began there. It was only 11 PM, and my mind was filled with “why?” The geometric mean — this strange concept had been thrown at me like a rootless tree when I encountered the inequality, making me feel baffled. Why is it called that? Why is its algorithm the nth root of the product of the elements? Why?

Once this thought arose, my curiosity couldn't be suppressed. It felt like a burst dam; if I didn't let it out, I would suffocate. But I truly didn't know why. Unconsciously, I picked up my phone and asked an AI. The arithmetic mean is easy to understand: you have 2 pears, I have 3, and on average each of us has 2.5 pears. Life experience tells us that's how it should be calculated. But what about the geometric mean?

The AI's answer first circled around: from the ancient Greek Delian problem of doubling the altar — mean proportional — geometric mean. I thought I had found its origin, but upon reflection, the Delian problem is equivalent to two mean proportionals, whereas the geometric mean I was learning is just a single mean proportional.

Then it mentioned Pythagoras's musical discovery. Take a string fixed at both ends, press at different positions with a finger, and the vibrating length changes — shorter length produces higher pitch. Pythagoras found that pressing at certain proportional positions (like 1/2, 1/3, 1/4) produces harmonious sounds. But how that relates to the mean proportional remained unclear. Finally, I found the ultimate answers:

1. Finding the side length of a square with area equal to that of a rectangle: ( ab = g^2 ).
2. The ancient Greeks solved problems by drawing figures, lacking algebraic concepts. So they proposed drawing segments (a) and (b), using (a+b) as the diameter to draw a semicircle, then drawing a perpendicular at the intersection point of the segments to meet the circle — that segment is the side length of the square, and they called it the mean proportional. This is the origin of the “geometric” in geometric mean.
3. Later, when studying the average growth rate over two years, the constant growth rate (g) satisfies (g \times g = a \times b) (actual growth rates), which matches the mean proportional formula. This is the origin of the “mean” in geometric mean.

A concept with such a complex pedigree is glossed over in class with a single sentence: “the nth root of the product of the elements is its algorithm.” People instinctively resist what they don't understand, and forced memorisation only accelerates forgetting. But after this exploration, I won't forget this concept tomorrow, the day after, or even ten years later. This is the right way to learn mathematics: driven by curiosity, digging to the root. My early‑to‑bed habit was broken by it — I couldn't sleep until I understood. The statement that forced memorisation is a tree without roots is so incisive: without nourishment, it dies. At this point, I finally grasped the concept, but it was already 3 AM. Yet this pleasure of escaping constraints was addictive, and my mind began to wander again, recalling my past exploration of calligraphy.

When learning brush calligraphy, one often encounters all kinds of impressionistic descriptions that sound foggy and misleading, which I despise. Now, let me use my engineering mindset to make the perceptual concrete and quantify the rational.

People often say to learn seal script, clerical script, regular script, running script, and cursive script in that order, but no one explains why. In fact, seal and clerical scripts are for practising brush control; regular script for learning structure; running and cursive scripts for grasping artistic conception.

• The key to brush control lies in the “edge” (锋), but no one explains what it is. In my view, the edge is the surface generated by the movement of a line formed by aligned brush hairs — that is, a line moving forms a surface. By varying direction, pressure, and speed, you can control different lines and produce different edges.
• The key to structure lies in beauty. Through brush control, you can produce strokes of varying length, thickness, size, density, and shade, but how to combine them to create beauty? No one mentions what beauty really is. In my view, beauty is a style: symmetry and order is a kind of beauty; roundness and ease is a kind; sharpness and decisiveness is another. Different people have different understandings and perceptions of beauty. Once you find a beauty that resonates with you, you have grasped the essence of structure.
• The key to artistic conception lies in thought. Through brush control and structure, you can write characters with a certain style, but that is still imitating others. How to dig deep into your own heart and express your understanding of the world is difficult. Artistic conception allows the viewer, through the static traces of ink, to feel the temporal rhythm, emotional fluctuations, and life state at the moment of writing — preserving a slice of “time‑space” forever.

By this point, it was 4:30 AM. Looking at the sky faintly whitening outside the window, I felt a mixture of regret and critical reflection. I should use this unexpected episode to re‑examine my sleep‑adjustment practice. When multiple factors converge, choosing to stay up late is inevitable. The reason I felt no sleepiness at night was simply that I hadn't reached the fatigue threshold during the day. In the past, I was unwilling to give up the accumulated advantages of layering, but I ignored the ripples that start from the smallest details. Increasing physical activity during the day, curbing appetite, coping with sudden heat, adjusting usual sleeping posture — these small choices come together to form the final choice. The wind rises at the edge of duckweed, and waves form amid ripples. This, too, is the essence of persistence.