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How to Sleep

theatlantic.com

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Re: How to Sleep

#161

Post by swah »

Hydraulix989 wrote: post #37
0xcde4c3db wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes people are speaking from direct experience with well-validated medical conditions fucking up their lives for multiple decades until someone eventually bothered to actually order the relevant diagnostic test.

Like sleep apnea: A lot of doctors mistakenly think that only overweight people can have sleep apnea. I am 6' 150 lbs and was tired my whole life until I INSISTED I get a sleep study. Turns out I had severe sleep apnea.

And the solution is to sleep with a CPAP? Could I just rent one and check if I wake up more rested? Does snoring correlate with sleep apnea?

Re: How to Sleep

#162

Post by chippy »

My "One Simple Trick" to help limit active thinking when in bed, and thus make it easier to sleep is to write the thoughts down, pen on paper.

By thinking I mean things like being excited about an event, going over a conversation, thinking about some code, an idea, things to do tomorrow, errands etc. All things that can be literally dumped onto paper and stored. In my experience I have found that pen and paper work better than typing into a device.

Now, I still seem to wake up multiple times during the night, but it's not because my brain is excited anymore.

Re: How to Sleep

#163

Post by chippy »

ziglef wrote: post #158

I consider myself one of those short-sleepers. Ever since I was a kid I averaged 5-6h of sleep a day. While the differences perceived (which can always be misleading) from sleeping 6 or 8 hours weren't noticeable, if I slept 4-5 for a week my short term memory would suffer, reflexes and split second decision making (think fast passed multiplayer shooters) would also suffer. But what I noticed was that although the sp…

Interesting 2c about observations - because according the article, people who have less sleep may perform worse objectively, but to themselves they report no noticeable difference.

Re: How to Sleep

#164

Post by lozf »

closeparen wrote: post #41
aarohmankad wrote: post #2

What are your recommendations for dealing with noisy roommates/hallmates? There have been nights where I had to put on my ANC headphones to get some peace and quiet. (I've heard a good pair of earplugs may work?)

A fan. I sleep like a baby with an extremely loud fan roaring in my face, as long as the noise is consistent. Sort of like being in an airplane. Would you fall asleep with someone whispering in your ear? Earplugs can only reduce the intensity of sounds, but the distracting part is the detail/variation/information in them. Even in a quiet room, putting in earplugs guarantees I will stay awake listening to my own heart…

If you have sox (free, cross platform, open source) installed, you can run e.g.:

     play -n synth 08:00:00 pinknoise
for 8 hours of noise -- you might prefer either whitenoise or brownnoise, and maybe play around with the eq or other effect options to modulate the output if you want a little variation. If you skip the duration it'll play til you ^C.

Re: How to Sleep

#165

Post by jedisct1 »

I don't have a computer at home any more.

Granted, the office is at walking distance, and I can go there 24/7, but not having a computer at home recently made a huge difference.

Once I go back home, I don't have the temptation of hacking something really quick, which will eventually last longer that expected, and I'll then keep thinking about it all night long.

Verdict? Better sleep. And I can get up earlier. Overall I feel better and more productive, if only because there is a better separation between work (including on OSS projects) and personal life.

Re: How to Sleep

#166

Post by _flbt »

I could write an essay about my battle with sleep. I'm in my 30's and I finally think it's solved.

Sleeping meds, sleep studies, CBT-I, you name it - I've done it.

My ultimate solution ended up being:

- Earplugs

- Exercise

- Waking up the same time every single day, no matter how late I stay up. CBT-I had me wake up at 6:30 am every morning, and go to bed at 1 am. After a week of exhaustion, I started falling asleep like a rock. Then my therapist gradually had me go to sleep earlier and earlier until my time-to-sleep was still short and I had few awakenings during the night, but felt refreshed the next day. Turned out to be just around 6.5 hours a night

- No coffee after 3 pm

There are still nights where I have an active mind and have trouble sleeping, but I'll just let it happen without constantly worrying "oh no, I'm not gonna get ___ hours of sleep tonight". Because the minute you try to force yourself to sleep, it's over.

Re: How to Sleep

#167

Post by lozf »

moultano wrote: post #14
aarohmankad wrote: post #2

What are your recommendations for dealing with noisy roommates/hallmates? There have been nights where I had to put on my ANC headphones to get some peace and quiet. (I've heard a good pair of earplugs may work?)

Get a white noise machine.

Install sox and you might not need one. See my reply up-thread for details.

Re: How to Sleep

#168

Post by trajektorijus »

hawski wrote: post #154
sleepeejoe wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Save the game! I had the same issue because I was terrified of forgetting things...so I've started taking notes and reminders for the following day(s) in order to resume the mental processes. Even a to-do list using todoist would free you some CPU cycles and will make you sleep better.

But the game plays further in my head even after I shutdown the computer or write down the last note. I often find myself above a piece of paper that I wanted to scribble on, but my mind jumped and run around much faster than I could even start to write anything.

I just count my breaths to 10 to stop the endless thoughts from coming up. 1 while breathing-in, 1 while breathing out, 2 - in, 2 - out, 3, 3, 4, 4, and so on until I reach 10, then I start over from 1 again. If you do this for long enough, at some point your brain will learn to do this automatically. If that's the case. Increase the difficulty. Count to to 10 then back to 1 then back to 10, etc... Or count in multiple languages. This helps me to put myself to sleep (to stop endless train of thoughts) all the time. Of course, sometimes, you need to think things through. You need to learn to recognise when this need is present and give yourself into the reflection. What's so good about this technique, is that even when I reflect on stuff, I know that whenever I notice that the reflection is no longer meaningful, I can just switch the thinking off anytime by using the technique... Hope this helps.

Re: How to Sleep

#169

Post by anothercomment »

pizza wrote: post #153
esseti wrote: post #132

"Or, sometimes preferable, read something on paper.". Now, to read on paper we need light, so the problem is not solved (altought the ligth is not directly from the device into the eyes). But the real question is, if I use the kindle with its light that lights up the screen, will it be the same as using a phone? or what?

The color temperature of a phone backlight and ordinary household lighting are fairly different

Ordinary household lighting is more and more being replaced by LEDs, though.
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