Sleep cycle

I have been trying to break my old sleeping cycle as of late.  I have always been under the impression that getting eight hours of sleep each night was more of a guideline than a recommendation, despite what you hear or read.  I would shoot to get somewhere between six and seven hours and call it good, but lately I have found myself sleeping in later and having to hurry around the house a little bit before going to work.   In an attempt to get to a point where I'm getting between seven and eight hours of sleep each night, I'm trying a few things. 

I'm not taking a nap after work.  I love naps.  Half an hour or forty five minutes zonked out on the couch completely oblivious to the world around.  You wake up afterwards and feel refreshed.  However, last week these little naps went from being half an hour to an hour long.  So what's the big deal?  Well, if you fall asleep for your nap around four thirty and wake up an hour later, you feel like you can stay up an hour later that night (at least I did).  Before you know it, you're going to bed at eleven o'clock and the alarms goes off at five.  Six hours.  Not good.  Foregoing the nap makes me more tired earlier in the evening and I go to bed earlier and end up crashing hard at nine thirty at night.  So, the alarm goes off at five and I'm looking at seven and a half to eight hours of sleep.  Boom, problem solved, right? 

What about the weekends?  Who wants to go to bed at nine thirty on a weekend where you don't have to get up for anything the next day?  I certainly don't.  So trying to find that right time to go to bed on the weekends has been a little strange.  I think some time between ten and eleven works out because it isn't too far from where I am trying to go to bed during the week.  Plus, I sleep in so I'm still getting enough sleep where I don't over sleep and can't fall asleep Sunday night before the work week starts. 

I feel a bit old manish writing about trying to get more sleep and going to bed earlier in the evening, but at the same time, doesn't more sleep keep you healthy by not getting you run down?  I will risk being called an old man and going to bed before ten at night if it means I stay healthy during the winter months.  No one likes being sick, and getting enough sleep each night can help out with that, apparently.  I never understood why, I have always just gone with it.