Here’s an explanation for why you are waking up at 3:00 a.m. all the time — from Sheryl Kraft’s article, “It’s 3:00 a.m. Why are You Waking Up?” published in Covey Club’s Newsletter.

“Relax, say some historians: You don’t have a sleep disorder; you’re just following the example of your pre-industrial ancestors. “Segmented, or biphasic, sleep was the natural pattern of human slumber in the Western world and perhaps elsewhere from time immemorial to the modern age,” explains historian and sleep expert Roger Ekirch, Ph.D., award-winning author, and professor of history at Virginia Tech. Before the Industrial Revolution, people in Europe and North America didn’t necessarily sleep fewer hours than we do, he says, but they broke their snooze time into two segments, called first sleep and second sleep.”