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How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

artofmanliness.com

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Re: How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

#141

Post by knuththetruth »

ams6110 wrote: post #114
yacse wrote: post #87

Any steady stream of thoughts can stop me from falling asleep, even for hours. I have noticed that long hours of programming or programming late in the day causes this state of constant hard thinking that keeps me awake. It can be really exhausting and even end in nightmares. I think that the article is right that you need to stop this cycle before falling asleep. Meditation practice helps to stop your thought cycle…

What works for me is to just put on a documentary and something about the monotone narration voice just shuts my brain down. I don't even pay attention to the words. I'm generally asleep within minutes. I assume audio books might have the same effect. I guess it might be related to my young childhood as I had parents who would almost always read to my brother and me at bedtime. So possibly there's a part of my brain…

BBC's In Our Time podcast is an instant sedative. Roundtable of British academics dryly discussing historical topics. 5 mins and I'm out like a light.

Re: How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

#142

Post by birksherty »

ams6110 wrote: post #114
yacse wrote: post #87

Any steady stream of thoughts can stop me from falling asleep, even for hours. I have noticed that long hours of programming or programming late in the day causes this state of constant hard thinking that keeps me awake. It can be really exhausting and even end in nightmares. I think that the article is right that you need to stop this cycle before falling asleep. Meditation practice helps to stop your thought cycle…

What works for me is to just put on a documentary and something about the monotone narration voice just shuts my brain down. I don't even pay attention to the words. I'm generally asleep within minutes. I assume audio books might have the same effect. I guess it might be related to my young childhood as I had parents who would almost always read to my brother and me at bedtime. So possibly there's a part of my brain…

I use Sleep With Me podcast and like you said it shuts my thinking and then I sleep within few minutes. I highly recommend it.

https://www.sleepwithmepodcast.com/

Re: How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

#143

Post by cortesoft »

gilbetron wrote: post #89
sdrothrock wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can vouch for this too, but the down side for me is that because I've done this for so long, it's nearly impossible for me to fall asleep quickly if the room is remotely warm already...

Oh definitely - if I'm in a room that is still and is 68+ degrees, I know I'm not really going to actually sleep that night :/

So do you live somewhere that doesn't get very hot, or do you just have your AC cranked up all night?

Many places I have lived would be very expensive to keep under 68 all night.

Re: How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

#144

Post by bergerjac »

weavie wrote: post #102
gilbetron wrote: post #71

I have had weird sleeping issues all my life, and the key for me to falling asleep was when I found out that our body gets tired not when it is warm, but when it warms up. So next time you can't fall asleep, take off the blankets, make sure your room is cold, and then get really, uncomfortably cold, and stay that way for at least 15 minutes. Then, and this is key, cover your whole body only with your sheet, and then…

A quicker way to get cold is a really cold shower just before bed. It works really well for me, and I believe there are many other benefits to cold showers beyond just getting to sleep.

This makes sense... because muscles contract

The cold water grabs the brain's attention. So the brain doesn't let the mind latch onto thoughts... energy contracts rather than scatters

Re: How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

#145

Post by downrightmike »

lojack wrote: post #122
robterrell wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm on month 3 of CPAP use and I didn't get the "firing on 8 cylinders instead of 3" effect -- I can't say I've noticed any change (aside from "my spouse is willing to share a room with me" which isn't unsubstantial). How long did it take before this feeling kicked in?

I’ve been using a CPAP for a couple years, and remember everyone making it seem like there would be an instant change that supercharges everything. This never noticeably happened, but thinking back, things without a doubt improved over time. I mostly notice when I don’t have my CPAP for a night, and I wake up feeling like I didn’t get enough sleep with a sore throat. The main things I notice now... I used to be able…

Before I started CPAP therapy, I was in a lot of pain. Car accident didn't help. I just dragged on wearing down little by little. My apnea got worse to the point that my partner was worried I wouldn't start breathing after stopping. The first day after I felt a lot less pain. I was still very groggy, but I hadn't felt that good in a long time. It took a while to get up to full speed and feeling normal. Months of barely sleeping took months to recoup from. I still like 9.5 hours of sleep. When I start to decline in performance or hit a wall, that's usually what I try to get back to first, because that's just hard to get squeezed in so I get less usually. Then checking if I'm getting enough exercise and calorie intake.

Re: How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

#146

Post by amitp »

empath75 wrote: post #10

I have podcast subscriptions to like 10 different history podcasts and they put me to sleep within 5 minutes most of the time. The key is that it has to be interesting enough to engage me, but not so interesting that it keeps me awake. The History of English podcast is my favorite for that. It’s the entire history of English from Indo-European onwards. It’s 100+ hours of readings from old English poetry or medieval m…

This is my favorite podcast of all time. It's completely fascinating and yet, as with other history podcasts, it puts me to sleep in 5 minutes. I listen to them over and over to catch bits in those 5 minutes.

You get to learn thing like the connections between father/pater/vader and brother/frater/bruder (f/p, th/t/d, b/f), the reason many plurals with 'f' become 'v' (elf/elves, wolf/wolves, half/halves), why 'x' at the beginning of the word sounds like 'z' but in the middle of a word like 'ks'. Or how some languages have more than singular/plural [1]

Unexpected word connection: 'c' in Latin/Spanish to 'h' in English: century/hundred, cornu/horn, casa/house, caliente/hot

Unexpected word connection: 'w' in German-to-English words and 'g' in French-to-English words: warranty/guarantee, warden/guardian (also seen in English/French: William/Guillome, war/guerre)

[1] https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Mozilla/Localizatio...

Re: How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

#147

Post by bergerjac »

balabaster wrote: post #99

As someone who falls asleep in roughly 15 seconds of putting my head on the pillow, it's fascinating that people have to adopt strategies to fall asleep. I wonder what's different about me than other people. I know of insomnia of course, and know plenty of people with it, but it still seems utterly alien to me to not be able to sleep as soon as my head hits the pillow. I don't particularly have any bedtime rituals, b…

Same here.

I'm 31. My mom said... even when I was a baby, she would lay me down at 10:00pm, I'd fall asleep almost immediately and wake up at 6:00am like clockwork.

On the ultra-rare occasions I don't fall asleep...

Instead of trying to relaaax... first I tense the muscles, then relax.

The contrast is key. Tension, release.

It's almost like sticking your hand in bucket of room temp water.

If you would've stuck your hand in an ice bucket for 5 seconds, THEN put your hand in the room temp... different feeling.

Re: How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

#149

Post by bergerjac »

allenbrunson wrote: post #81
zwischenzug wrote: post #22

I have two 'tricks' to falling asleep (but this article looks better). The first is to play the 'unrelated words' game, where you think of a word as completely unrelated to the last word as possible. The second is to count up and work out whether the current number is prime. Both occupy the mind while minimizing stress, allowing the body to relax into sleep. I'm definitely going to try the techniques in the article t…

i had trouble falling asleep for about the first 35 years of my life. then i hit on a technique i call “scenarios.” i have various made-up fantasy settings, like an island nation surrounded by a sea of mud, and i make up stories about its inhabitants, building on whatever stories i made up last time. this seems to short-circuit the problem i had earlier, where i could not get my brain to stop racing, worrying about v…

What a gift!

... to be able to imagine wild scenarios.

I'm guessing you're a fantasy writer...

If not, I've never seen a more obvious sign..

Re: How to Fall Asleep in Two Minutes or Less

#150

Post by TheKarateKid »

yacse wrote: post #87

Any steady stream of thoughts can stop me from falling asleep, even for hours. I have noticed that long hours of programming or programming late in the day causes this state of constant hard thinking that keeps me awake. It can be really exhausting and even end in nightmares. I think that the article is right that you need to stop this cycle before falling asleep. Meditation practice helps to stop your thought cycle…

I've noticed that too and I make it a point to stop programming or doing anything that requires stimulating brain activity for at least an hour before going to bed.

Try watching a good show that doesn't require too much attention an hour or two before your bedtime. Putting your brain into a passive mode helps a lot. (Do not watch Game of Thrones or any complex/stimulating show or it probably won't help!)

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