Posted by bilsbie 10 hours ago
If you want to make sure, get a sleep study done.
Why do you think you are avoiding the bed as if you were afraid of dying in there. Exactly! You literally are.
- two pieces of fruit per day
- two portions of vegetables per day
- half an hour of outside sunshine per day
- twice per week exercise until you sweat
- no sleep during the day
- get out of bed every morning around the same time
- no processed food!
What I did :
- LSD (microdosing + a semi dose one year ago) did absolute wonders on my anxiety (which was what kept me energetic). I would then describe myself as having a general anxiety disorder and I now describe myself as chill af. It's amazing. I'm still stressed out by things but that's normal and not my default mode anymore.
- Prolonged-release melatonin keeps me asleep for the whole night
- Took the habit of reading in the bed. I'm so tired that most evenings, I have a really hard time to read 5-10 pages, I must fight to keep my eyes open.
Going for a walk can also rewire your brain, but doing so on LSD will probably rewire it more quickly. Whether that's good or bad depends on whether you do a good job with the rewiring. It comes down to how well you trust yourself.
Think of it like jet lag. If you travel to the other side of the world, you rapidly shift schedule in accordance with your habits (the timing of your meals, light exposure, activity, socializing etc), whether that be night or day. These inputs more than ever influence morning-ness or evening-ness qua chronotype, with the advent of limitless evening light and entertainment.
But i suspect if you hop over the second part there will be more funding in telling poor people to sleep there way to longevity.
Do you think our ancestors slept exactly 8 hours a night from 10pm to 6am? No they slept when they wanted.
Yeah I pretty much do expect that (but more like 6 or 7). They were awake a few hours after sunset by fire light, then get up fairly early. I certainly don't imagine them napping during the day, when they could be working together to get food, unless it's a climate where it's too hot to do anything in the middle of the day.
Studies of modern hunter gatherers seem to back this up e.g. [1]
It's widely known that Victorians would have two sleeps over night, with a productive period in the middle, but this seems to be a misconception based on a passing remark in one court case. Even if true, this is a post-industrial society with unhealthily long working hours and I don't think we should be copying their sleep patterns.
[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S096098221...
But to answer your question-- for me, washing my face helps a lot. I don't know why. Not that I nap all that often.
I follow the same schedule as you do, and also work remotely, and usually take a single 1-2h nap somewhere between 12pm - 3pm. It makes me have two moments of “morning productivity”, which works very well for me.
In the end, listen to your body.
Like, John Carmack said that he NEVER burned out, never went into a dark corner (verbatim from his interview), and everyone agrees that he works like a machine. And I don't think he actually spent a lot of mental training to achieve that stability, because, he has been like that from a young age. This is THE best thing you can have in the world, if you want to achieve something, anything. If you don't have the mental toughness, you won't be able to make through that 10,000 hours (cliche, I know). I guess that's also why many self-help book talk about being consistent -- to be consistent, is to have mental stability. And I think there is a whole difference, between someone who trains his mental to stay stable for 6 months, then collapse, from someone who actually doesn't need to train and just be stable somehow.
This also leads me to realize that good sleep is one of the fundamentals of a stable mind. As a parent, I actually don't remember when was the last time I had a good sleep, and my definition of a night of good sleep is perhaps just trivial for someone else. At the same time, I consider myself lucky, because at least I don't suffer from serious mental issues. I still have a job and a house, and that's better than many out there.
This then leads me to despise the human body. It is a machine so delicate that you have to be very lucky to be super productive, whatever your definition of being productive is. It seems to ignore the input in short term (e.g. you can eat garbage food for a month and nothing really happens, or, you can sleep 4-6 hours every day for the last 6 years and still function normally), but once the long term shows up it is very hard to reverse. And there are so many theories focused on it that we have no idea which one is best for the individual. You might as well spend years doing A/B test on yourself and still have no idea what the hell is going on. Or you need to be super rich to have some medical team monitor you 7/24 to figure out what the hell is going on.
Believable is important because you have to internally 100% without a doubt believe that what you're doing is the right thing to be doing now.
As soon as the "what ifs" starts to creep in for the big picture items or goals, that can destroy everything. I'm not talking about running into technical implementation problems along the way (those can be fun), it's more like "did I pick the right language for this?" level of questions that sit in the back of your mind.
Personally when I find something to work on that I like and will have what I think is a favorable outcome, it's easy to put in 8-10 real 100% laser focused hours into a task every day, even if it spans weeks or months. I'd like to think most people can do this too, the hard part (for me at least) is having these things to work on.
I try to turn what-ifs into actions. Instead of a what if rumination it is a small task, or a small trial of something, or a move in general forward rather than not. Not even remotely close to doing this well all the time, but I notice an overall boost in mood and productivity when I reorient my mint to progress rather searching in the uncertainty space.
> https://x.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/2069799283369345247
That's because he was the one burning people out while he was there living out his hobbies.
https://engineering.stackexchange.com/questions/42284/vibrat...
https://www.bolonhome.com/news/bed-frame-vibration-control-d...
I remember a Youtube video about a story of a skyscrapper that added something to damp vibrations so that it would be more comfortable due to high winds or something like that. If it's feasible to damp vibrations on a whole building, you can do it on a smaller scale as well
I think this kind of behavior by the groups causing this impact on you is irresponsible and harmful, even if it's not known. If they know I think they are being unethical - I think its fair if they suffer harm and damage as a result such as in court or you similarly start to coordinate a group of people that can make their jobs harder as well through legal means of course.
Maybe ya'll stand outside their work and speak with megaphones for as long as possible, or just stream a speaker blasting audio towards them as they work.
1. The Sleep With Me podcast, especially if you struggle with racing thoughts (if you have a partner who can't stand hearing this, the Ozlo Sleepbuds are a good if imperfect solution)
2. Stellar Sleep, an app that delivers CBT-I, evidence-backed cognitive therapy for insomnia; this reset my sleep clock in about two months, which is now maintained by the other items on this list
3. Eight Sleep mattress pad to keep temperature low during sleep, especially on warmer nights
4. Manta Sleep Mask to get full light blackout
Also I've definitely just doxxed myself. But worth it to help some fellow insomniacs!
[0]: https://ios.gadgethacks.com/how-to/keep-your-night-vision-sh...
It is only natural that it takes months to years to fix a problem if you had the problem for years.
The common levers I know and that worked at least a bit for me:
- start by having a fixed waking time, and get sunlight or bright light quickly after waking up. Normally relatively fixed sleep time is supposed to follow. For me waking up is the easy part, transforming that into getting up and going outside is harder. Another option here is a strong (like, really strong) lamp on a timer, or letting the morning light in your bedroom (this one is usually not recommended I think, most people seem to be blackout curtains style, but for me it gave me a nice 6am waking time with good sleep last summer).
- melatonin. Two main ways: using it as a kind of hypnotic, so ~30 minutes before sleep, experimenting with 0.3mg to ~2mg doses ; then using it as a circadian regulator, this is a good resource https://lorienpsych.com/2020/12/20/melatonin/, search for "TO TREAT" in the page.
- app timers, for me it was mostly no twitter and no youtube, or a very low time for each.
- light, ie reduc light before sleeping. Not just blue light and not just screens, if I'm on my phone in bed I'll reduce the luminosity a lot, same with computer, same with e-reader. I also try to avoid using too much the lights in my room. More light tend to make me feel more "wired" and less ready to sleep.
- "meditation" to cut rumination, by which I mean "lay down in my bed, gently try to find sensations in the body and to stay focused on them, by gently I mean it's a very low stakes game where the goal is to find sensations in the body and give them attention, but losing focus for a while is not a big deal".
- shower in the evening, as I don't like feeling dirty when I am in my bed, but also not just before bed as sometimes I don't really want to go take a shower and this delays my bedtime
- clean bedsheets, bedroom, stuff in/on your bed
- AC in the summer, I wouldn't be able to sleep properly without it
- sleeping mask. It helps going to sleep, but it falls of my head every night so it doesn't prevent waking up with light too.
- making getting good sleep the priority of the evening. This is easy/possible for me due to my circumstances (ie low responsibilities in the evening). The way I do it is that unless something is actually important, what I'm trying to accomplish in the evening is prepare myself for sleep and get good sleep. This can look like not starting a movie at 11pm, not booting up games, not eating a super heavy meal, not drinking too much water after 6pm to avoid waking up to pee, if I have things I want to do try to do them early so they're done earlier, move some stuff I want to do every day like spaced repetition in the morning.
Part of what I wanted to say is, there is conventional wisdom, then there is how you actually put that wisdom in practice in a way you stick with. I've struggled a lot with the implementation, but sometimes by throwing lots of stuff at the wall I find something that brings me halfway there. It's not the "golden way" but it leaves me in a better place than before, with a bit better sleep, a bit more self knowledge, and a small victory.
If you dont have enough time get to the point when you can do HIIT safely, its literally 15-20 min max. If you have time, add long walks on rest days for example, or whatever is available to you nearby (ie swimming/surf if usable water body nearby).
Had she died at 65, I wouldn’t have even known her. Instead she was around for my entire childhood and well into adulthood.
To me burning the midnight oil is my way of life.
In a past life, two decades plus ago, I used to write books: I'd write at night, when all is quiet. I'd go buy two or three warm "croissant" at 6:30am when the shop would open, then I'd go to bed.
And I love the hours later at night that then becomes early in the morning to get work done.
Because I'm such a night owl (not to party nor drink at all), I've got a different view on, for example, city life. Or rural area life. Things are different in the middle of the night.
Last night I had something that needed solving: went to bed at 8am.
My wife shall never ever take an appointment for me in the morning.
If it's of any comfort to you, I'm still fit and made it to 53 y/o so far and my doctor laughs at me when I go see him, saying I'm totally fine.
Anyhow seeing the old wreck my fater is at 78 y/o, I kinda came to peace with the notion that it's okay'ish if I don't make it that far.
Those with fucked up sleep schedules: you're not alone.
P.S: if I wasn't such a night owl, I'd never have met my wife... Long story but the butterfly effect: 25 years ago, coming back from my editor (who was also a night own) at something like 3am I decided to stop at a club knew but to which I'd never been, for there was some forms of life still awake too. There I met a girl, which became my girlfriend for a while. I kept in touch with her and through her I met a friend: a crazy dude. And through that crazy dude I met my wife. So had I not decided to stop at 3am at that club, I'd never have met my wife. So there's that.
Basically my doctor's biggest concern right now is making sure I don't die in my sleep because of something the device records that I and my wife never even know happened. Its a point of debate right now how much to disrupt my life with side-effects to do that.
He said that as long as people are mostly regular in their sleep hours, the actual timings don't matter much. However, extended periods of irregular sleep schedules are actually (his words) "classified as a type of carcinogen."
I briefly looked into the evidence at the time but did not find it very concerning. TFA does make a more compelling case by linking it to all-cause mortality.
[1] I believe it was The Sleep Solution by M. Chris Winter, though I may be wrong. I can only remember it had a blue cover, but turns out pretty much ALL books about sleep have a blue cover. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This has been game changing and keeps me on a regular sleep routine.