Dealing with Insomnia

So I focus more on coping with daytime fatigue rather than controlling sleep. I find it’s helped my insomnia to focus less on sleep ”performance”

- Instead of rating my sleep, I mentally rate my fatigue during the following day from 1-5. 1, I can’t function at all. 5 I’m full on galaxy brain...

- I’m often surprised how many “bad night sleeps” get me to a pretty good 4/5 the next day.

- I observe my days are usually at least a 3, which helps with the anxiety that creates insomnia

- I use exercise, sunlight, engaging work, rest to cope with the fatigue and get an energy boost

- with this data, I don’t stay in bed if I can’t sleep. I find other things to do, knowing it’s likely I’ll still have a 3 or 4 day...

All in all it helps me a ton to defang the anxiety. I remind myself some of my best days are jet lagged on first day of some fun trip in a new place!

Came here to say this but expecting downvotes, surprised to see this on the top.

I used to have terrible insomnia for around 15 yrs. I had just forgotten how to fall alseep, every night i would go into the same terrible racing thoughts loop. Going to bed was a dreaded chore. I tried everything from counting sheep to ambien. Only marijuana helped me forget my bad thinking loops and taught me to fall asleep.

Now i don't smoke anymore but i don't have insomnia either. I am just careful about not getting into that frenzy thinking habit.

i) Strategy wise, for a small startup, it is always better to place yourself in the 'wellness' product space.

For a startup business selling directly to costumers it is _always_ better to frame your product as wellness/lifestyle or 'life-improvement' wearable.

As soon as you make any claims of clinical benefit it becomes classed as a Medical Device, at which point you have to go through the very long and expensive process of getting it approved for each major market (FDA, CE, etc.).

You should only aim for a 'medical device' if:

1) You're able to secure VC level funding to carry you through expensive clinical trials and more expensive hiring with medical staff that can sell your product and convince other doctors and key opinion leaders.

2) You are able to build enough patents around the product that give it uniqueness as a competitor in this space. Realistically the only exit strategy in the medical device industry is to get acquired by a major Medical Device company. The key thing for these companies is usually competitive advantage through IP more so than talent acquisition or acqui-hire.

ii) When selling directly to costumers anything that can happen will happen.

Having a product that works as intended is great but it is simply not enough once you release it out in the open for a wide enough cohort. People will find every possible way of misusing/abusing your product or misinterpreting instructions etc. There are a multitude of failure modes that will occur in the 'real-world' that you likely didn't plan for.

iii) (Related to the previous point) User 'compliance' exponentially drops as soon as they have to physically 'wear' something in their sleep.

Looking at the competitors you mentioned, they are trying to get some form of EEG info, at which point they _need_ a headband with electrodes to be worn.

Immediately things start going south, people in warmer climates will probably report that it makes them sweat, users with hard pillows will refer discomfort if the headbands wedge on there skull, some users will report that they repeatedly remove the headband in their sleep and can't get a full night of data, some users will not tighten the band enough resulting in poor electrode contact, resulting in bad data, etc, etc.

All of these will likely cause users to stop wearing your device after a few trials and likely reviewing it poorly both online and as word-of-mouth.

So your ideal product would be:

-Something that address a user problem without making a 'medical claim'

-Something that requires minimal user setup and user input

-Ideally a wearable that is not worn (very zen), a 'wearable' that is on your mattress, or inside a pillow case or near the bed but not directly worn by the user during their sleep

Edit:formatting

From birth until I was about 12 I lived on 1-3 hours sleep a day, but I slept every day.

When I hit puberty I started having days and days of no sleep, my record is 11 days without sleeping I was 15. From 14 until my mid 50's my routine was get 2-3 hours of sleep, then be awake for a 3-8 days, then get 2-3 hours of sleep, then be awake for 3-8 days, wash rinse repeat, over and over again.

I once was working a trade show setup in my late 40's, round the clock prep, my company had 3 shifts of people doing all the prep work, I was there for all 5 days every shift. That's when my co-workers realized that I was actually awake, most people think that I was sleeping and didn't know it, or get cat naps, lied etc. Because nobody can even consider being awake that long but the thing is that when I get sleepy I actually fall asleep, it just rarely happens and when it does happen, it doesn't last very long. Usually I'm just awake.

Yes I went in for sleep studies but I needed to be wired up at all times, and it's a real drag being wired up and then trying to sit in a room for 6 days until I get sleepy. I did it twice, once for 5 days another time it was 4 days and both times I didn't fall asleep what they learned is that the normal cycles that people go through to fall asleep didn't happen for me. When I die they can try examining my body to see if they can figure it out.

When I was in my mid fifties I found a iphone app called BrainWave is a Binaural beats program that will actually allow me to sleep on nearly a daily basis. It's been a godsend, because being awake all the time really can wear you out intellectually, emotionally, and spiritually.