Not Quite a Blog

I tend to sleep pretty well.  Though I used to not sleep pretty well.  The following tips I learned by browsing the internet and reflecting anecdotally on what seems to work for me and other people I talk to.  Now I sleep better.  Coincidence?  Maybe.

Disclaimer: I’m only weakly confident in all these tips.  This is not intended to be a fully scientific approach, and many of these tips might just be confusing correlation with causation, combined with bad memory of past events.  Even if they work well for me (which I can’t even prove), they might not work well for you, because people are different.  Some of these tips are probably as stupid as not swimming right after you eat.  Use skepticism.

Tips:

• Hours of sleeping doesn’t matter as much as sleep quality.  Though, you still do need to make sure you get enough sleep.  An average of 8 hours a day seems to work well for most people.  Some people need more, some people need less.  Know how much sleep you need to function.  (Yes, polyphasic sleep exists, but it doesn’t seem to work for >95% of people who have tried it – even people with lots of “willpower”.)

• If you can, try to figure out how much you “need” to sleep by going to bed and waking up without an alarm.  (If you’re worried about being late for work, try going to bed earlier.)  Get data for about a week.  You can also try setting alarms for different amount of sleep times (on different days) and note subjectively how you feel.  For example, I found that I do well on 8.5hrs, 8hrs, 6.5hrs, and 4.5hrs, but feel utterly crappy if I get any other amount of sleep.  I’d sooner sleep 6.5hrs than 7hrs.

• Note the above doesn’t mean I can sleep 4.5hrs each night.  Sleep deficit seems to add up over time.  Long-term, things work best when I get 8hrs of sleep 5+ out of every 7 nights, and avoiding <8hrs of sleep two nights in a row.  There’s no real substitute for this.  Also, the amount of time you save in not making stupid, sleepy mistakes should make up for the time you “save” by cutting sleep.

• Aim to be in complete darkness for a good amount of time (>1hr) before bed.  Installing flux on your computer is a possible cheat, but not ideal.  Darkroom mode on flux is better.  Another possible cheat is taking <5mg of melatonin (note that melatonin apparently sucks in higher doses) about 30min before bed.

• Make the room as dark as possible.  Wear a sleep mask or use blackout tape on your windows.

• Caffeine should be a substance you regulate carefully.  I try to rarely consume caffeine, so it remains very potent to me.  This means that if I sleep <8hrs and feel groggy, one cup of coffee is enough to make me completely alert.  This is a superpower I’d like to keep.  The only way to keep this, though, is to consume caffeine no more than twice a week, and no more than 100mg in any day.

• Don’t have caffeine up to eight hours before going to sleep, if you plan on falling asleep well.  You can maybe get away with six hours, but that’s pushing it.

• Exercise regularly.  This is important even if you don’t want to improve your sleep.  Consider it another benefit.

• Get enough nutrition.  Also important regardless.  Vitamin D and E seem particularly important for some reason.  It seems worth supplementing extra Vitamin D (up to 5000 IU) if you’re not regularly getting lots of sunlight, which basically includes everyone who works primarily indoors in a cloudy city.

• Make sure you have a comfortable place to sleep.  This should be obvious.

• Eat right when you wake up.  Something about biorhythms.

• Don’t eat two hours before bed, as digestion lowers sleep quality somewhat.  Though this rule is not nearly as important as the others, and there have been many nights I’ve slept well despite eating right before.