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Lie still in bed

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Re: Lie still in bed

#171

Post by silisili »

flurdy wrote: post #137

I wrote [1] about my tip for falling sleep: Daydream. I now coach my own kids to do the same and it works. Essentially do not think about things that has happened; It just gets you annoyed with regrets that can not be changed. Do not think about the future; You will get excited, anxious, annoyed and too worked up to sleep. Also covers sports, politics, relationship, technology etc. Think about things that do not affe…

This is what I found as well, too late in life, but definitely works.

The only problem was that sometimes the daydreams would come on their own, and sometimes memories would come instead.

I read somewhere, maybe here, about inventing situations...one in particular was being dropped onto an island with nothing...and going from there. What do you see? What do you do first? Are there other people? Animals? I use that one quite often!

Re: Lie still in bed

#172

Post by anonyfox »

JohnBooty wrote: post #169

Just like you can practice going to sleep at a reasonable hour, so can you practice keeping your bed made, liking a particular food, or doing collage. This is so true and so powerful. People in general really underestimate how "hackable" their brains and habits are. It's probably the single biggest fixable difference I see between people who are successful and happy and those who aren't. I think the general HN demogr…

ADHD chiming in. That approach just doesn’t work when you have to actively spend nontrivial brain energy to even brush your teeth, every day. There is no such thing as a hackable routine, atomic/keystone habits, or „too lazy to stay on track“.

Re: Lie still in bed

#173

Post by PlunderBunny »

Androider wrote: post #76

The most negative influence on my sleep by far is from using my phone in bed, as I suspect it is for many others. Not only when falling asleep, but also when waking up reaching for the phone is too easy and robs me of any chance of falling asleep again. The only trick I've found that works quite consistently for me, is removing the phone from the room entirely. This makes my laziness work for me for once, as getting…

I read something to the effect that for most people, the required willpower to not do something (e.g. not have a snack) is not achieved by gritting your teeth and forcing yourself not to give into the temptation that’s right in front of you, but to remove it all together. For example, I live in a city and ate dinner every night at a healthy vegetarian cafe on the way home from work, and ate a breakfast of cereals at work. This allowed me to turn off my fridge at home and keep no snacks or food at all in the house. I still had the urge to snack, but the amount of work it would have required (going out to buy some snacks first) made it impractical enough that I didn’t give in.

Re: Lie still in bed

#174

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

> it didn’t work the first night. But it did in a couple of weeks.

> Eventually, I was able to take that to an extreme and became a morning person.

Worked for me as well. I believe that humans can adapt to any routine. I was not a morning person and now I am.

Re: Lie still in bed

#175

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

anonyfox wrote: post #172
JohnBooty wrote: post #169

Just like you can practice going to sleep at a reasonable hour, so can you practice keeping your bed made, liking a particular food, or doing collage. This is so true and so powerful. People in general really underestimate how "hackable" their brains and habits are. It's probably the single biggest fixable difference I see between people who are successful and happy and those who aren't. I think the general HN demogr…

ADHD chiming in. That approach just doesn’t work when you have to actively spend nontrivial brain energy to even brush your teeth, every day. There is no such thing as a hackable routine, atomic/keystone habits, or „too lazy to stay on track“.

I have ADHD and I choose not to make excuses.

Re: Lie still in bed

#176

Post by tonyarkles »

anonyfox wrote: post #172
JohnBooty wrote: post #169

Just like you can practice going to sleep at a reasonable hour, so can you practice keeping your bed made, liking a particular food, or doing collage. This is so true and so powerful. People in general really underestimate how "hackable" their brains and habits are. It's probably the single biggest fixable difference I see between people who are successful and happy and those who aren't. I think the general HN demogr…

ADHD chiming in. That approach just doesn’t work when you have to actively spend nontrivial brain energy to even brush your teeth, every day. There is no such thing as a hackable routine, atomic/keystone habits, or „too lazy to stay on track“.

Also ADHD here, with a thought that might be useful for you. I am not even a little bit refuting the "non-trivial brain energy to even brush your teeth" bit. That 100% takes brain energy for me.

But I would challenge the assertion that we don't have habits. They're just not necessarily the habits we want, but they do get made and broken and exist. As an example, if there's a project I want to work on (getting that motivation is a different problem), I will feel vaguely uncomfortable unless I grab my bag and laptop and drive to a particular coffee shop that's a non-trivial distance from my house. And once I get there, I am generally quite productive. After I eat a meal (remembering to eat is a struggle sometimes, of course), I don't feel "at ease" until I have a cigarette.

I've found it slightly useful to not think about habits in the way that the positive-thinking motivational speakers talk about habits, but rather at least spending a bit of time reflecting the things I do when I'm in "autopilot mode". I'm not very good at changing the things I see, but recognizing that they're there has been a bit helpful in tweaking them or at least figuring out why/how they work.

Re: Lie still in bed

#177

Post by tonyarkles »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #175
anonyfox wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ADHD chiming in. That approach just doesn’t work when you have to actively spend nontrivial brain energy to even brush your teeth, every day. There is no such thing as a hackable routine, atomic/keystone habits, or „too lazy to stay on track“.

I have ADHD and I choose not to make excuses.

I'm having a hard time not saying something really snarky here, but that's not particularly productive. Your comment isn't going to bring any good into the world, it just serves to shame someone who's struggling. We've got enough of that already.

Re: Lie still in bed

#178

Post by meheleventyone »

thomasahle wrote: post #147
flurdy wrote: post #137

I wrote [1] about my tip for falling sleep: Daydream. I now coach my own kids to do the same and it works. Essentially do not think about things that has happened; It just gets you annoyed with regrets that can not be changed. Do not think about the future; You will get excited, anxious, annoyed and too worked up to sleep. Also covers sports, politics, relationship, technology etc. Think about things that do not affe…

For years I fell asleep thinking about some math problem I was working on. Worked wonders, never had any issues falling asleep. Then I left academia, and were no longer thinking about math all day. An unforeseen consequence: I started having issues falling asleep. Now I need to regularly look up puzzles or maybe challenging programming problems, just to have something relaxing to fill my mind while falling asleep.

This has the exact opposite effect on me because I find it too mentally engaging and it also ends up tied up with anxiety. I can end up in weird spirals and have to stick on some noise to break my brain out of it. I do envy the ability to relax that way though.

Re: Lie still in bed

#179

Post by zaat »

JohnBooty wrote: post #169

Just like you can practice going to sleep at a reasonable hour, so can you practice keeping your bed made, liking a particular food, or doing collage. This is so true and so powerful. People in general really underestimate how "hackable" their brains and habits are. It's probably the single biggest fixable difference I see between people who are successful and happy and those who aren't. I think the general HN demogr…

I find it extremely naive, and I highly doubt there's lack of unsuccessful people who hold similar views. Maximal versions of the belief are actually quite fashionable from time to time, "The Secret" book for an example.

In reality, you can try liking a particular food containing Coriander, but your genetics can interfere, and try as you might, it will still taste like soap. You can lie in bad every night in total silence, counting from 300 to 0 again and again, and still fail to fall a sleep in less than 40 minutes. Moreover, after you practiced and practiced to go down from 2 hours to 40 minutes, all you need is to attend one wedding or going single time to pub with friends after few months, and you are back to square one.

One thing I'm in agreement with the author on - you have limited amount of willpower. Some have more, some have less, but regardless of how much you got, you will be much more successful in life if you invest it breaking barriers you can overcome and avoid fighting losing battles.

Re: Lie still in bed

#180

Post by parasti »

l72 wrote: post #142

I also struggle to sleep due to anxiety about what I could or should be doing. I started using a visualization meditation technique. I don’t watch a wide variety of tv, instead I tend to watch my favorites over and over again so I have a pretty good visual in my head. I have ripped the audio from my favorite shows and put them on random with a 30 minute sleep timer. I focus on visualizing the episode as I’m listening…

This comment reminded me that I did something similar as a kid in the 90s. I recorded TV shows as audio onto cassette tapes and listened to them before bed to make falling asleep less boring. In retrospect, the coolest thing about it was the intensity and persistence of visual recall.
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