Have you guys experienced this? How did you address it?
I have experienced the same symptoms, although not quite as badly (waking up very early), for the last two years. Take this with a huge grain of salt, because most of what I tried didn't work all that well, but I'll let you know what I tried with at least modest success.
And, if you ever figure out how to get your sleep back on track, I'd be grateful if you'd message me and let me know what worked!
-- Weighted blankets: I got one, and this seemed to help a little bit.
-- Cool bedroom: it's recommended to set the temperature to 68 or below.
-- Consistent sleeping times. Go to bed at the same time every night (if you can).
-- Limit activities in your bed. No TV, internet, smartphones. And no lying in bed wishing you could sleep. If you don't feel sleepy, then get out of bed, go do something else for a little while and then maybe try again.
-- You might check out CBT-I -- cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia. (Some of what I suggested above is part of this.) In general the most widely recommended therapy.
-- Keep up exercise and your social life, even if you're tempted to cut back (as I was).
Good luck! (Contact info in profile.)
I listened to a (Swedish) podcast some time ago where they interviewed a professor[0] about sleep and health effects of good and bad sleeping patterns etc. One question that came up was something along the lines of "what should I do if I'm lying in bed, just twisting and turning and unable to sleep?" The response was very much in line with your suggestion: don't remain in bed trying to force yourself to sleep.
Get up, do something. Read a book, walk around, do the dishes – pretty much anything really. It's apparently much more effective than trying to force yourself to sleep. He also said that you should avoid activities that shines a bright light in your face, like watching a TV or fiddling with your phone or tablet.
I'm going to try your other tips to see if that helps any with my own sleep issues – thanks for sharing!
On top of that, if you actually have times when you feel like you get 0 hours of sleep (i recently started a new job and could barely sleep for a week) if you don’t remain in bed nevertheless - you will not rest even for a slight bit; while simply laying in bed will give you at least some rest.
Especially if you feel "tired" but not "sleepy" -- although these can be hard to distinguish.
This is recommended (by expert researchers, on the basis of experiment) as part of a cure for chronic long-term insomnia. Like many cures, it can be a bit arduous at first. I haven't seen it recommended for short-term insomnia, especially when there is some causal factor like starting a new job.
Also I can second doing physical excercise.
The effects are twofold with physical activity: It's a great reducer of stress and anxiety, and can be meditative in itself. It will also tire you out nicely toward the end of the day, or energize you in the morning (and by the time your set bed time arrives, you'll be ready for it, and need it in order to get up so early as to workout again)
It doesn't even matter what it is so much, as long as you enjoy it and are consistent: running, weights, cycling, ice skating, skateboarding, surfing, mountain biking, HIIT, or tabata-like classes, soccer, whatever else/all of the above.
I was in the same boat - solo founder, working 14 hour days, incredibly stressed. Exercise and avoiding alcohol, drugs, and shitty food is the key.
There is a certain level of stress that I think can't be dealt with. When you reach that limit, you have either step back and curtail what you're trying to do, or just push forward and get through it.
Currently I take figure skating classes, inline skate, swim, freedive, kayak, and do yoga(yin and pranayama). I might have overshot a little, as my startup (more of a side project atm) is suffering a bit ;)
Also sometimes I still wake up early with thoughts of stuff I have to do. The trick for me to get back to sleep is to have somewhere for my mind to go. Concentrating on imaging lying on a beach somewhere can divert my mind and get it back to a sleepy place.
But I agree with your point generally.
After trying half a dozen or so of the $10-20 Amazon eye masks, I sleep with the Manta Sleep eye mask and am quite happy with it. I see a bunch of other masks in the $30 range that also look like solid options.
I struggled a lot with sleep issues in the past - both falling and staying asleep - but I surprisingly found it really difficult to not fall asleep early and stay asleep for at least 8 hours after some very long runs during training. It takes time to build up endurance, but once I was able to run ~5 days a week with a few 6-8 mile runs without excessive effort, I found it easy to maintain a schedule that keeps me tired enough at night to sleep quite well. I also found that marathon training improved my time management skills a lot.
If you don't run at all, couch to 5k is a good place to start. Measure weekly distance and increase mileage at most 10% of week after that. Reddit's /r/running is a good place to find more learning resources.
First, I learned "self-hypnosis" (really, just serious and intentional relaxation techniques). That didn't always get me to sleep (although it usually did), but I would get some rest anyway even if not fully sleeping.
Second, I stopped trying to regulate when I went to bed, but rather when I woke up. For me, the sweet spot was to always get up at 5:30, whether or not there was a reason to get up that early. The predictable routine is the important part here, not the precise time. At first, that would mean I'd be tired for the day -- but after a while, my body adjusted and I started naturally wanting to go to bed earlier.
Another thing to keep in mind is that as an entrepreneur, going to bed when you're tired is overtly in your job description. You need to care for yourself to care for your business. It can sometimes feel that you're losing productivity by doing this, but you aren't -- work you're doing when you're exhausted will be lower quality work, produced more slowly. The best use of that time is to rest, not work.
A less popular angle is to cut out alcohol. There are huge gains to be made in focus and rest without it.
a good reference for this is The Productivity Project available in audio ( I listened to it myself )
I resolved it by regularly going out of my home, leaving my phone behind and "doing nothing" at a place where I can sit for a long period of time without being disturbed. Over time a lot of stress builds up in your body that if not unwinded will add up and create a self-feeding cycle of stress-nosleep-stress-even less sleep. Until you are in a burntout situation.
I find that sleeping of its own will not unwind your stress. It is not hte reset on all stress and full rest. You have to take time to let the mind wander. This activity took almost 5-6 hours of doing nothing for it to become complete and for me to come back to normal.
When I say doing nothing. I don't mean not doing something productive. I mean not fiddling with the phone. Not talking to someone. Not taking your kids or partner for a walk. Not taking your dog. Nothing. You literally have to do nothing and resolve to let your entire body and mind rest. Only then will the mind and body allow itself to rest. Ohterwise you will be stuck in this unending barrage of activity which your body is starting to burntout from.
What helps me:
-- A very clear clock on my room so I can look at the time in the middle of the night. If I don't know what time it is, I'll sometimes just get up, only to realize it's way too early. Once I'm up out of bed, it's harder to get back to sleep
-- I found that watching and listening to something really stupid when trying to get to sleep (old reruns of Family Guy and American Dad) help me to stop thinking about a million things before sleep. Also, if I wake up and can't get back to sleep, I watch/listen to it till I fall asleep.
-- Have a consistent bedtime, as someone else posted.
-- While light therapy is recommended in the morning to prevent normal insomnia, there are some studies that show that light therapy in the morning can cause you to wake up earlier. Try doing some light therapy in the afternoon or evening.
The bad news is that you’ll never be at peak powers in this way. You’ll be ok enough to go through the day, but with diminished focus and willpower. The few days I make sure to sleep more, I clearly get extra energy and focus. (I then typically pull a 32-hr day because I don’t feel tired, which is also bad).
I compensate with afternoon naps when I can, which I think is the best “natural” remedy. My grandfather comes from a culture where you’d traditionally wake up very early, work the fields, then rest in the early afternoon because it’s hot outside, before doing another shift into the cool evening. My dad was lucky enough to invent a job for himself that allowed a similar routine, with 1hr or 2hr naps on most days. Unfortunately, the modern workday was “invented” in Northern Europe and follows different rhythms, so less people get that option than ever before.
Other ways I’ve found to increase the sleep-hours count:
— allocate a couple of hours during the night for actual work, then go to bed earlier. E.g. 21-3 sleep, then 1 or 2h awake, then another 3h sleep to wake up at 8. (I sleep better in cycles of 3h). This is actually more relaxing to me than doing 9h straight. Unfortunately it’s risky - if you get in the zone, the temptation to skip the second sleep-block is very high.
— when you wake up, 30mins physical exercise followed by shower, then back to bed. Surprisingly effective but not always an option (partner or kids in the house will not appreciate the noise).
— reducing caffeine. I don’t drink caffeine after 2pm, ever.
— losing weight. My amount of fat tends to be inversely proportional to the hours I sleep.
I'd then "cash in" my deprived sleep state on the weekends where I'd just catch up on the sleep I missed in one or two days. So I'd go to bed at like 11, and wake up at like 9. I'd do that on Friday and Saturday. I've never had problems with sleep in my life so I probably am a minority here.
Stuff that can help (may have been suggested in other comments):
- exercise will definitely help; there are way too many benefits to list, apart from helping with sleep
- coffee - try to limit intake after 2PM or so because caffeine has a long half-life; the earlier you stop, the better
- meditation
- breaks, walks in the evening, anything that disconnects you from your load
- reading in bead, just before going to sleep
- limit phone, laptop etc. in bed, before you go to sleep
- try not to eat/drink too much before bed, especially not an extra large pizza at 10PM
- take a hot shower before bed and have your room cooled down
- avoid various substances that may sedate you, but won't help you actually sleep better
If all that fails, there are sleep doctors. There are many conditions that can affect sleep, but it's most likely plain old stress.
Some people don't tolerate magnesium well in terms of their stomach. I don't have any problems with it though. A lighter dose might work for those with a negative stomach response.
It's a skill. Babies go through this phase where they're too tired to sleep, and can't sleep because they're tired. You often have to force them to sleep early.
But as the adult, nobody's there to force you to sleep, and you can hit this point where you're tired but don't want to sleep.
One trick is just to wake up extra early. It will feel terrible for one day. You can make do with a midday nap, even 10 minutes works. Your 2 AM bedtime will move back to 11 PM automatically. Every now and then instead of waking at 5, you can 'oversleep' to 7 AM, giving you a good night's rest, and more control over your sleeping time.
After a while of waking up too early, it got to the point of waking up at 4am and thinking "that's close enough" and I would get out of bed. (Attempting) to go back to sleep regardless of the time seems to have helped that a bit.
PS: BTW, I do 6h sleep most nights and some times I need an additional 20 or 30m nap during the day and is totally sustainable (I train 5d/w).
Try a nap once or twice during the day, even just 20minute naps, maybe you can be on this schedule forever.
Try really meditating (or praying or some other ritualized mental and emotional health behavior) every day before bed, so you can set you worries aside, and then again every morning. Perhaps you can flush the ongoing anxiety out of your system so you can sleep with more abandon.
If not, be open and patient. Try things out and see what works for you. My sleep is most usually great, which I attribute to the following:
- Consistent wake-up time (for me more important than bedtime) - Consistent, moderate exercise - Ways to let your thoughts run their course: journal, vent to friends/family, whatever
- Amount of caffeine. Caffeine has a 12 hour half life. 12 hours after your last caffeinated drink, you will have 50% of the caffeine in your system. Healthy adults should not exceed 400mg/day regardless.
- Amount of D3 and B vitamins your gut bacteria are deficient in. Your gut bacteria need energy to break down the foods you eat for the symbiotic relationship that break down fiber and other things required for your health. If they do not have enough D3 and B (all B vitamins), they will give off proteins that will induce stress / cortisol. This becomes a cyclical problem if not addressed.
- Environmental stress. If your mind has too many unresolved issues, your cortisol levels will be too high. Delegate as many issues to other people as you can. This is probably going to be a hard one if you are a founder. It's hard to let go, especially if you are passionate about your ideas and goals.
- Not enough sleep. But wait, that is the problem, right? Lacking sleep raises toxicity levels in your body, including your brain. This creates a cyclical problem that will worsen with time. Your brain keeps track of how much sleep it lost and at some point you will experience hallucinations or waking dreams when this catches up with you. Deep sleep (all four stages) are required to allow your brain to purge toxic material. Do not use sedatives / drugs to sleep. That isn't real sleep. D3, L-Theanine (amino acid), 5-HTP (amino acid) can help with hormones that can make you sleepy.
- Light. A few hours before you intend to sleep, mute the light. Use soft lights. Avoid screens. Power off the smart phone and put it in a drawer. Wear a sleep mask (intended for day sleepers, but helps cut out tiny bits of light from LED's on devices)
There are MANY more factors, but I have to go to a meeting and don't have time to put all the nih.gov references here. Maybe I will add some later today.
from a former sleep researcher
The basics for treating insomnia:
- exercise regularly
- eat healthily
- get enough sunlight at the right time of day. If you're waking up too early then you want more sunlight in the afternoon and evening.
- practice good sleep hygiene. This means you only use your bedroom for two activities: sleep and sex. If you lie in bed for more than fifteen minutes without falling to sleep or wake up early and can't get back to sleep, get up and go somewhere else until you are sleepy again. Don't lie in bed trying to sleep. The brain becomes acclimatized to being awake in bed, and that's bad.
Now, the medication-based approaches:
- consult with a neurologist if the above approaches don't help.
- Personally I found a low-dose anti-anxiety medication to be extremely helpful. Many of these cause dependence and can be hard to get off of, but on the other hand chronic lack of sleep has significant medical risks of its own, so I felt the tradeoff was a good one.
- prescription sleep medications can also be helpful, although somewhat less so for someone who wakes up too early as opposed to someone who has difficulty falling asleep. If you go this route, you probably want to try Sonata, which has a short half life versus, say, Ambient and therefore leaves you feeling less drugged after three or four hours.
- I also found Rozerem to be very helpful. Unlike all other sleep medications, Rozerem is a melatonin receptor agonist. It does not sedate you; it reinforces your circadian rhythms. It does not leave me feeling drugged and does not affect my sleep architecture.
Now, the Cognitive Behavioral Therapy approach:
- you can train your brain to associate "bed" with "sleep". It ain't easy, but for many people it works and doesn't require medication.
- figure out how long you're sleeping on average.
- for a week, do not go to bed at all until one full hour less than your average sleep duration. In other words, if you sleep six hours a night and wake up at 7, don't go to bed until 2 AM. Keep this up for a week. The idea is to intentionally build up a sleep deficit, so your body will go to sleep quickly and stay asleep. Continue to religiously wake up and get out of bed at 7.
- the next week give yourself an extra fifteen minutes of sleep. Go to bed at 1:45 AM, or get up at 7:15.
- keep this up until you are getting the amount of sleep you need.
- If at any time you find yourself not going to sleep immediately or waking up too early, back up fifteen minutes.
- By the end of the process you hopefully have retrained your brain to associate being in bed with being asleep.
I personally found consulting with a neurologist and figuring an approach that worked for me to be very helpful.