51–60 of 169 posts
I'm sure noise cancelling headphones would prevent me from hearing my alarm!
Years ago, I started sleeping with earplugs. I can't sleep without them now. I get the best and deepest sleep this way. I feel like it turns off my subconscious, because my brain is no longer processing external input.
I think my biggest problem is that I don't exhaust myself physically. Humans are built for constant labor. We're the endurance-running champions of the animal kingdom. As recently as last century, almost all jobs were physically exhausting. Mind work is exhausting as well, but in a different way. At the end of a strenuous day of coding, and endless meetings, I'm drained. Completely wiped out. I feel physically exhaus…
Physical exercise pushed too far is as nasty as mental efforts in a bad context (too difficult, too quick, etc).
That said I've been aiming for simple physical jobs as a free therapy kind of way.
Another point is that being physically fit has a very positive effect on your mind, it's like one big concern removed and you get more motivation for other ventures.
Lastly, who thinks having physical breaks during the day is good for pacing your mental flow ? even better with group sports ..
ps: many people feel like swimming is a particularly good form of exhaustion. I had a similar experience doing soft kungfu/taichi. But I wonder what else causes deep drain and fatigue that just resets all your system.
After decades of trouble falling asleep, I've found a simple technique that works for me. The goal of this technique is to replace words/monologue with images in your stream of consciousness. I do this by picturing three shapes, each engulfing the previous one. Start with a sphere. Just imagine a sphere and nothing else. Then picture a 5 sided pyramid that perfectly engulfs the sphere so that the sides are tangential…
I think my biggest problem is that I don't exhaust myself physically. Humans are built for constant labor. We're the endurance-running champions of the animal kingdom. As recently as last century, almost all jobs were physically exhausting. Mind work is exhausting as well, but in a different way. At the end of a strenuous day of coding, and endless meetings, I'm drained. Completely wiped out. I feel physically exhaus…
I think my biggest problem is that I don't exhaust myself physically. Humans are built for constant labor. We're the endurance-running champions of the animal kingdom. As recently as last century, almost all jobs were physically exhausting. Mind work is exhausting as well, but in a different way. At the end of a strenuous day of coding, and endless meetings, I'm drained. Completely wiped out. I feel physically exhaus…
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PdJFbjWHEU
[1] "Body by Science: A Research Based Program to Get the Results You Want in 12 Minutes a Week" https://www.amazon.com/Body-Science-Research-Strength-Traini...
I’ve struggled with insomnia my whole adult life and I can tell you the three factors that have helped the most are, in order: - removing caffeine completely - getting enough direct sunlight (hours per day) - losing weight Everything else (melatonin, blue light, exercise, sleepy tea, other drugs, etc) never helped or made my quality of life worse.
I'm using NC headphones for years. Highly recommend Sony MX3 or even MX2. The issue for me is that I'm now worried of the constant Bluetooth waves that go into my brain since I wear these headsets pretty much the entire time I spend at the computer (quite a lot). I actually gave up wearing them due to this concern. I tried finding a headphone that does noise canceling and produces audio without bluetooth. There's not…
Your body is constantly bombarded by radio sources both natural and artificial, honestly I wouldn't worry about it.
I think my biggest problem is that I don't exhaust myself physically. Humans are built for constant labor. We're the endurance-running champions of the animal kingdom. As recently as last century, almost all jobs were physically exhausting. Mind work is exhausting as well, but in a different way. At the end of a strenuous day of coding, and endless meetings, I'm drained. Completely wiped out. I feel physically exhaus…
I mean, sure, we can do that. But most of our ape relatives lay about all day socializing and taking advantage of their social cohesiveness to hunt-and-gather very quickly (and then get back to lazing around.) They have many capabilities, but rarely use them, because social organization is just so OP compared to the defenses of most of the animal kingdom.
The big strong apes (e.g. gorillas) don't use their strength for anything day-to-day; they just use it in occasional tribal territorial disputes and social-hierarchy disputes, which don't take up all that much of their time, all-said. Certainly not enough to wear them out by the end of the day, every day.
I don't see any reason that our sleeping habits would have gone through a big evolutionary shift relative to all the other apes; so if they can—and do—sleep just fine without exhausting themselves, we very likely can as well. If we can't, it's very likely not "lack of exhaustion" that's the cause.
IMHO, exhaustion seems to just be a hack, overriding the concerns of some other part of us that thinks it important for us to stay awake; rather than the proper resolution of that mechanism's concerns.
The crux of my insomnia was anxiety. I was dead tired and sleep deprived but as soon as I laid down my mind and heart would race. I couldn't convince myself to relax with any of the mind tricks in this thread. I would get so mad and frustrated that I would try to will myself to sleep, tossing and turning for hours. The thought of browsing my phone in bed or reading or anything else just made me more angry because I knew I was tired, why wouldn't my body sleep! The crazier part is that right now I'm furloughed, I have no real work or life obligations. I have no reason to be worried about going to sleep or waking up a certain time.
The solution ended up being kind of dumb and novel. I turned my bed into an adult rocking/shaking bassinet. I'll spare you the details but I basically attached one of those vibrating body massagers to the frame of my bed with a sleep timer. For some reason this relaxed me enough to consistently fall asleep in about 10 minutes every night.
(Also just a note: I tried all the other standard stuff. No alcohol, no caffeine, intense exercise, sleep hygiene etc etc)
Ironically I'm reading this as the clock reads 5:23am and I'm just winding down for the night. Out my office window I can see the sun rising. I've broken this habit in the past. When my wife was working as a teacher and I dropped her off at work every morning, I was up and out every weekday at 7:30am, and at work by 7:50. I got a ton of stuff done in the morning because no one else started showing up until 9am at lea…
I'm still working from 9am so the mornings are pretty rough at the moment, But something about the lockdown is trouble.