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How to Sleep

theatlantic.com

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191–200 of 274 posts

Re: How to Sleep

#191

Post by TremendousJudge »

Bakary wrote: post #29
nemasu wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm, can people reasonably do 1-3 in places where the sun sets at like 6PM?

There are tools that reduce the amount of blue light emitted from the screen. They essentially turn your screen orange. The difference it makes is large enough that you wonder how you managed before it. The most well known is f.lux, but it's also natively supported in some phone OSes.

I use f.lux, it's fantastic: https://justgetflux.com/

Much better than the native solutions that come with operating systems nowadays

Re: How to Sleep

#192

Post by falcolas »

laughfactory wrote: post #131
teolandon wrote: post #59

My biggest struggle with sleep is that I'm always excited to do stuff, and always feel like I'm not done with my day. Exceptions are when something happens and I end up feeling very depressed during the day, and simply want to shut down and do nothing. Usually, I get so infatuated with a script I'm writing, a new program I discovered, a bug that I need to resolve, a book that I'm reading, some concept that I'm thinki…

This is me, too. My wife complains that it's like I'm trying to have two or three lives instead of just the one. But I know I need the sleep I'm not getting, but I have a really hard time, once the kids are finally asleep, just going to bed myself. When everyone but me is asleep it's so peaceful and quiet, and I can read, slay work dragons, learn stuff, or just veg. Unfortunately this usually results in maybe six low…

The question I used to ask myself, that helped me make a conscious decision: Are two extra hours a day worth operating poorly for the other 16? Even if you're at 90% of your normal operating capacity (understanding that the mind is not quite that easy to quantify), that means that you lose over three hours of productivity just to gain those extra two.

Thinking of it along those lines - valuing quality over quantity - helped encourage me to create a fixed sleeping schedule.

One other thing that helps - do things in stretches. 4 hours of slaying dragons once a week is a lot more fun than half an hour 7 times a week.

Re: How to Sleep

#193

Post by reledi »

soperj wrote: post #76
imesh wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What makes you ordinary?

I'm not an offender of any kind, let alone a violent offender.

Playing devil's advocate. A lack of a criminal record doesn't make you completely ordinary.

The people you spend most of your time with and your therapist might have a different opinion of you than yourself.

Re: How to Sleep

#194

Post by rrggrr »

blunte wrote: post #69
Teichopsia wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3- unless one is a woman. From my limited understanding, men get sleepy and women get 'activated' (lack for a better word).

My "observations" from a "few" samples with a lot of data points is that females get very sleepy after quality #3.

You need a larger sample size. Get to work.

Re: How to Sleep

#195

Post by tie_ »

kutkloon7 wrote: post #111

Great article. I especially like the interpretation of the statistics by the author, which is, well, hardly any interpretation at all: "One 2014 study of more than 3,000 people in Finland found that the amount of sleep that correlated with the fewest sick days was 7.63 hours a night for women and 7.76 hours for men. So either that is the amount of sleep that keeps people well, or that’s the amount that makes them lea…

Same here. Really impressed how the author restrained themselves from jumping into the most intuitive conclusion, and instead quoted a few other plausible alternatives. We need more of that!

Re: How to Sleep

#196

Post by driverdan »

jaggederest wrote: post #142
teolandon wrote: post #59

My biggest struggle with sleep is that I'm always excited to do stuff, and always feel like I'm not done with my day. Exceptions are when something happens and I end up feeling very depressed during the day, and simply want to shut down and do nothing. Usually, I get so infatuated with a script I'm writing, a new program I discovered, a bug that I need to resolve, a book that I'm reading, some concept that I'm thinki…

> I feel like I might need to seek some professional help on this, but I'll still take it as far as possible before that. Please don't wait. It took me years to get help, and sleep is very easy to fix with such a tiny amount of medical care. The doctor literally gave me a look like "You've tried to live with this for a decade instead of spending $40 and a couple hours to fix it at any point during that time?", gave m…

Except that's not solving the problem, that's temporarily addressing the symptom. Hypnotics should not be taken lightly or for extended periods of time. Drugs may help at first but they're not the solution for sleep issues. You need to address the underlying problem.

Re: How to Sleep

#197

Post by chippy »

chatmasta wrote: post #172
chippy wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Short term memory variation is very obvious to me when coding. And as the GP mentioned, reflex variation can be obvious when playing FPS games.

I wonder what tasks the subjects were given in the studies.

slightly related - I seem to remember a study on the performance of hungover people. Hungover people self-reported that they performed worse, but objectively there was no negative change! (edits...or thinking about it some more, maybe the thing was that they had Common Colds)

Re: How to Sleep

#198

Post by voidz »

_flbt wrote: post #166

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…

Earplugs are my #1 life changer when it comes to sleep. I found these really soft ones that don't really get in the way when you're lying on one ear, they filter pretty much all of the sound and when I take them out the next day, my ears don't hurt. As it turns out my wife's breathing kept me kind of awake, and traffic sounds too. And now that I got used to it, thanks to the associativity of the brain, these days I fall asleep within 10 minutes of putting them in. Most of the time, anyway. Sometimes I do need sleep meds to just tip me over into actual sleep. But if there's one thing I can recommend to other people is to spend some time to really find your own suitable ear plugs. I'm just lucky my wife is ok with it, she doesn't have these sleeping problems and is on stanby for if our boy might wake up in the night... Which almost never happens.

Re: How to Sleep

#199

Post by rubber_duck »

laughfactory wrote: post #131
teolandon wrote: post #59

My biggest struggle with sleep is that I'm always excited to do stuff, and always feel like I'm not done with my day. Exceptions are when something happens and I end up feeling very depressed during the day, and simply want to shut down and do nothing. Usually, I get so infatuated with a script I'm writing, a new program I discovered, a bug that I need to resolve, a book that I'm reading, some concept that I'm thinki…

This is me, too. My wife complains that it's like I'm trying to have two or three lives instead of just the one. But I know I need the sleep I'm not getting, but I have a really hard time, once the kids are finally asleep, just going to bed myself. When everyone but me is asleep it's so peaceful and quiet, and I can read, slay work dragons, learn stuff, or just veg. Unfortunately this usually results in maybe six low…

Is ~6 hours low ? After I started working out before work I started getting up ~6-6:30 but I can't go to sleep much earlier than 12 (I just end up rolling around in bed) - but I've been doing this for so long now I can't really tell the difference. I sleep over on the weekends but I don't notice extra productivity or being rested.

I'll try to go to sleep at 22:30 this week to see if I feel different.

Re: How to Sleep

#200

Post by cknight »

_flbt wrote: post #166

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…

This seems very similar to my current trajectory, though my "therapy" consisted of flying around the world to visit family back home once a year (EU->AU). I found that while the jet lag would wear off after a few days, my sleep regimen would reset itself quite wonderfully and my usual 2-3 hours of laying in bed waiting to sleep would be reduced to 30 mins or less.

I am similarly sensitive to caffeine and also bought some rather pricey but comfy earplugs to silence my other half's incessant and irritating need to breathe.

While my current life circumstances don't allow for it, I am looking forward to the near future when I can sleep in my own room again, in a house quiet enough to not need ear plugs, and with a regular enough working schedule to make the routine easier (plus wearing me out a bit more each day).

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