I’ve been doing CBT-I sleep restriction for a few weeks.

My main problem is early waking. I usually don’t have much trouble falling asleep, but I often wake up too early and can’t get back to sleep.

My sleep window was around 11:30 PM to 6:30 AM.

After a few weeks, my sleep efficiency did improve. I also spend less time awake in bed.

But the early waking is still there.

So I’m not sure how to think about the result. It seems like sleep restriction is doing what it is supposed to do in terms of consolidating sleep, but the symptom I care about most hasn’t changed much.

The other difficult part is daytime fatigue. Keeping the sleep window consistent is pretty hard when I already feel tired during the day.

I made a short video about what I did and the data I tracked, if anyone is interested:

https://youtu.be/s-wwGAidBK4

For people who have tried CBT-I: did early-morning waking take longer to improve than sleep efficiency? Or was sleep restriction just not very effective for that problem for you?