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Lie still in bed

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Re: Lie still in bed

#181

Post by javajosh »

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 is definitely anti-advice for me. Obsession with a problem is a stimulant, and a mind that doesn't want to put something down will be in pain soon. I noticed this with my kids learning to crawl. They were so intoxicated by the new activity and mobility it represented, they wanted to do it all the time, and so they did it to exhaustion. For a few days, it made them alternate between excited and miserable. Then it became just another thing they knew how to do, ending the oscillation. But I can't help but think there was a good lesson there.

Re: Lie still in bed

#182

Post by JohnBooty »

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“.

    ADHD chiming in. That approach just doesn’t work [when you have ADHD]
Professionally diagnosed ADHD here as well. Extremely aware of the hurtful and unfair "lazy" stigma.

Positive thinking, an improvement mindset, and life hacks are not cure for ADHD. There's no cure! I'm not one of those people who's trying to tell you that the cure to your ADHD is "just try harder" or some bullshit. I know we have all heard that too many times in our lives.

But our brains are still hackable. Our habits are still improvable. I'm in middle age and I'm still finding improvements and workarounds.

Re: Lie still in bed

#183

Post by skygazer »

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. My intended habits are very fragile, and if a single visual cue goes missing, I'll skip a step -- if my wife removes my antiperspirant from the counter, then I just unwittingly skip that step that day. I rely on rube Goldberg machinations.

I have one trick that works, but I hate it. I build checklists with routine tasks, like morning and evening routines, or packing for a trip, etc, and automate sending them to the relentlessly annoying iOS Due.app, which can send reminder notifications about a timed task every minute once due and syncs with watch, so I can dismiss them once complete -- I have them scheduled spaced out enough to generally allow completion of one task before the next one comes due. I turn on Announce Notifications for the Due.app so the phone speaks the tasks aloud, and just wear airpods so I alone hear the announcements.

I used this successfully for 6 months to emulate being a conventional person, and it was successful, but it didn't end up building any very strong habits that could stand alone outside this system. It felt like an oppressive dystopian crutch that I was embarrassed to need. However, one situation where I do love it is "before I leave the house to go to X" checklists, if I schedule backward from the time to leave, I end up not forgetting anything and leaving on time, which is not normally easy for me, otherwise. That reduces a common stress.

Oh, and outside of habits, I do really like dictating a stream of consciousness list of things I have to do to my phone, and have a shortcut run it by GPT3.5 to extract task names, estimate on task durations, and order tasks in a reasonable way, which it is surprisingly able to do with a good prompt, and then automatically feed the results into Due.app. I haven't figured out the psychology of when I do and don't like nagging reminders.

Re: Lie still in bed

#184

Post by Terr_ »

skygazer wrote: post #183
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. My intended habits are very fragile, and if a single visual cue goes missing, I'll skip a step -- if my wife removes my antiperspirant from the counter, then I just unwittingly skip that step that day. I rely on rube Goldberg machinations. I have one trick that works, but I hate it. I build checklists with routine tasks, like morning and evening routines, or packing for a trip, etc, and automate sending…

> However, one situation where I do love it is "before I leave the house to go to X" checklists

Not diagnosed with anything, but I put things in my shoes, such as the occasional paper envelope that needs sending.

The computer chair is another "an item is physically obstructing me I must deal with it before I continue" destination. (Example: Some dirty laundry, indicating I need to start the washing-machine I loaded earlier.)

Re: Lie still in bed

#186

Post by fallinditch »

dloss wrote: post #136
Pooge wrote: post #88

I used to be really bad at falling asleep. I'm not talking 30 minutes or 45 minutes, but sometimes 3 whole hours without being able to get 1 second of sleep. I didn't even touch my phone once while in bed. I also had a lot of trouble finding the right position in which to sleep to feel comfortable (not even talking about finding the right mattress/pillow combination). Somehow, I trained myself at sleeping on my back…

For people sleeping alone, this counting technique might be a nerdy alternative: http://www.dirk-loss.de/calmyourmind/ Moreover, I find Shinzen Young's reframing helpful: "Amazingly, it’s possible to get a good night’s rest without necessarily sleeping much or at all. Two things are required: (1) that the body get rest by lying very still and corpse-like. (2) that the consciousness get rest by engaging in a systemati…

I find that a good systematic focusing technique is to 'look' at the patterns inside your closed eyes when lying on your back. When I do this I see very little at first, maybe some fuzzy indistict patterns ... but then the patterns become progressively more detailed until I am in an interesting dreamlike state with fascinating visual effects and characters. Sometimes I find i can influence these dreams - I guess this is akin to lucid dreaming. A most entertaining way to fall asleep!

Re: Lie still in bed

#188

Post by djsavvy »

Pooge wrote: post #88

I used to be really bad at falling asleep. I'm not talking 30 minutes or 45 minutes, but sometimes 3 whole hours without being able to get 1 second of sleep. I didn't even touch my phone once while in bed. I also had a lot of trouble finding the right position in which to sleep to feel comfortable (not even talking about finding the right mattress/pillow combination). Somehow, I trained myself at sleeping on my back…

How did you train yourself to start sleeping on your back? I've been trying to stop side sleeping for a while due to some pains and postural concerns.

Re: Lie still in bed

#189

Post by zaat »

2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote: post #174

> 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.

Research shows that there's genetic disposition to being a morning person or night owls. Sure, humans can adapt to any routine, or at least to many routines that are going against their nature, but at least with regards to some areas there's a cost associated with going against one's nature.

Reference for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/3106/

Re: Lie still in bed

#190

Post by zaat »

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“.

Not only it is not working, believing it does work with regards to other people, especially one's children or pupils (with or without ADHD) can be toxic and harmful. I have been too lazy to stay on track on many things, yet on others I wasn't to lazy to fight day after day til I won. I surely am happy I didn't keep putting effort in the hopeless efforts to improve my penmanship skills.
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