Dealing with Insomnia | Hacker News Reader

Dealing with Insomnia

jacquesmattheij.com

206 pointsjacquesm166 comments

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 exhausted, but I'm not, at all.

On the rare occasions that I physically exhaust myself, be it home remodeling, yard work, or canoeing, I sleep like the dead. No insomnia, solid rest. I still have all the same things going on in my life; the same job, same bills, all the anxieties large and small that "keep me awake" other nights. Which is why I don't think any of it is psychological. My body just isn't worn out enough.

I'm not looking for advice. "You should exercise more! Have you tried X?" This is my observation. We aren't constructed for office work.

Completely agree. Being mentally drained and physically drained are completely different things. I personally think we need a balance of physical and mental pursuits in our lives to be truly healthy. Anecdotally, my insomnia has improved massively since I started running for an hour every day after work a few years ago. Even so, I wish my job didn't require me to be so sedentary.

Try going for a 5min jog after work even if you feel exhausted. Tell yourself just 5 mins. Then re-assess your fatigue after 5mins.

I was about to post that. It's definitely true in my experience. Only thing that's ever worked for when I get real bad insomnia is strenuous cardio/HIIT-type workouts.

But that's something people can't sell you so that's the last thing people try.

Even this advice that Jacques says about no napping during the day. IF I'm working out, I need that nap. I suggest he try cutting everything out except for the morning bike ride and see how far it takes you.

And yeah, people shit far too much on that book, "While We Sleep" maybe some of the findings need more data but they do ring true, especially the part about underestimating lack of sleep does to our mind and body.

Btw, didn't know you played synths.

Methinks our body just reacts very well to physical exhaustion, trigger molecule cascades that make us very content.

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.

I worked on a farm for a summer when I was younger. It was so physically demanding that I remember just dropping dead asleep at nights.

It doesn't take much time to exhaust yourself physically, at least to exhaust specific muscle groups. Systemic exhaustion (steady state exercise, like running) is another matter. It doesn't even cause sweating, as it is over too quickly. I have been experimenting lately with pushups to failure just before I turn out the lights and climb into bed. By failure, I mean MMF (momentary muscular failure), not being able to repeat the motion as hard as I try. An alternative is body weight squats by the bed, to failure. Pick the range of motion to be in the hard (low) part of the squat, move slowly (SuperSlow protocol is 10 seconds concentric, 10 seconds eccentric) to failure, and make it hard enough to fail in less than 90 seconds. Crawl into bed and fall asleep easily (after your heart stops pounding). Of course, you will also build muscle mass over time, which doesn't hurt.

[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...

> Humans are built for constant labor. We're the endurance-running champions of the animal kingdom.

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.

I wonder if the big difference is the amount of crap constantly taking up our attention. Apes don't have to worry about waking up at a precise time, picking up groceries, the softball game on Friday, etc. etc. Physical exhaustion seems to draw on the same pool of energy that we use to ruminate and stress about all of this crap, so maybe that's part of the reason it helps.

Apes spend over 50% of their day chewing food, and most of the rest sitting around digesting. Their diets are low-energy and they really can't do much else. We require over 25% more calories (adjusted for total body mass). There are some large physiological differences. This is what they're doing while socializing. We really are turbocharged engines by comparison. Our bodies are still adjusting, poorly, to the shift to agriculture and its higher caloric supply. Until recently agriculture was also hard work for everyone in a society. Apes can't wear themselves out in the same way because they lack the horsepower. They're maxed-out.

Have there been any studies on the differences in behavior of apes fed high-calorie diets? (Presumably non-interventionist studies, of e.g. apes that scavenge from urban areas encroaching into their habitats.)

For that matter, how about the "city" monkeys of Lopburi, who eat human food (either from human offerings, or by stealing it)? Anyone looked into their sleep cycles?

I'm approaching the limit of my simian expertise. Those are interesting questions. I know captive apes outside laboratory conditions (zoo animals, pets, entertainment) are prone to diabetes, heart disease, and other modern human medical plagues, but I don't know their sleep habits.

Are apes not in captivity not prone to those diseases? What do they die of?

> 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

I think you underestimate how much energy you use walking around even short distances for 6 hours a day compared to a typical office job. I had a step counter on my phone at one point, and found that if I spend a day outdoors, I can easily walk 10k-20k steps without feeling like I've done anything at all. Whereas my number for a typical office day where I didn't specifically exercise was much lower.

Since starting to wfh daily due to the pandemic, I've found I'm not nearly as mentally wiped out at the end of the workday, and as a result it's a lot easier to get a bit of physical exercise in the evening.

I knew I found my commute tiring, but I don't think I realized how much. After a workday + commuting home I was always wiped out mentally and physically, and now I'm only mentally tired, but not so much physically.

>...home remodeling, yard work, or canoeing...

Are you sure it's actually the physical exhaustion and not the hours of exposure to direct sunlight which calibrates your circadian rhythm?

Home remodelling is an indoor activity though.

I'm fairly convinced that my body wants a 27-hour day, when external forces are removed. Being in the sun all day is certainly more tiring than indoor activity. The physical exertion seems to work well enough without the sun. I used to live in Cayman and got tons of sun daily, and still slept better after exertion.

That's why I started dancing (ballroom, etc), after a day job of coding.

You need to work your mind, and your body, if you want to sleep. I could come home feeling exhausted, but that was all mental. I could get up and dance for hours, and feel great.

But if I tried to go to sleep without exercise, it was hard. My body wanted to do something.

Any type exercise would probably work, I used to do weights before bed, that worked very well. I slept like a log.

It's an individual journey for everyone. For me it's:

  * Regular exercise

  * Earplugs (at night)

  * Light control - dim lights and no computer use before bed.

  * Schedule

Night is definitely better than day in all aspects, but the price of staying awake is too high. I can't stand noise-canceling headphones, but lucky enough regular over-the-ear headphones with Pink Floyd work well enough for me.

Modern offices suck big time (penny-wise pound-foolish), but it looks like in many cases office workers are going to be put out to work "from home". In OP's case specifically he works from home, so if worse comes to worse, at the end of the day he can move to quieter, more rural part of Netherlands.

> Humans are built for constant labor. We're the endurance-running champions of the animal kingdom

That is a contentious assertion. Yes, perhaps we can go for longer distances than other primates, but it doesn't mean that this has anything to do with our ideal exhaustion, nor that it was something we did regularly, nor that it is free of negative side effects, nor that other primates couldn't do it if we could design some (very unethical) experiments.

Experiments on the health effects of high intensity short duration exercise are very compelling.

I agree with you that we are not generally adapted to modern lifestyles, but there are a whole host of other factors to insomnia in that grab bag (terrible diets eaten year round, artificial light, social isolation).

I'm not looking for advice.

This is not advice, just an observation from years of dealing with health issues that had my sleep extremely deranged for years:

The lymphatic system is run by muscle action. This is how it works:

Lymph is blood, minus certain blood products, like red blood cells. It leaves the blood and seeps into the tissues, where it gets labeled by humans as interstitial fluid. Then it somehow has to make its way back to the blood system.

The problem is that the blood system is run by the action of the heart. How do you pump fluid once it is beyond the reach of the heart to make it flow back into the circulatory system? The answer is: The rest of the muscles.

When you are physically active, lymph flows back into the blood system at multiple times the rate at which it normally seeps slowly back into the blood system. One source I saw suggested it flows back at 6 to 8 times its normal speed when you are active.

Lymph is how the body takes out the trash. It's how your body cleans up garbage in the system.

Walking regularly has proven to be critical to my ability to manage my genetic disorder. My genetic disorder boils down to being a bottleneck in the system and taking out the garbage regularly in a sustainable fashion that doesn't overwhelm my frail system has proven critical to my health and has helped me reverse a lot of issues that the world tells me cannot be reversed.

The brain has a separate lymphatic system with a separate name. I think they call it the glymphatic system.

The brain only takes out the trash when you are a sleep. Flushing fluid from the brain is a primary reason we sleep.

In my experience -- my long healing journey -- naps follow physical activity because taking out the trash in the rest of the body triggers improved capacity to take out the trash from the brain.

Brain/nerve tissues are the slowest to heal of the entire body. Cartilage gets no direct blood supply. It gets all nutrients and all garbage removal via osmosis. All surrounding tissues have to be cleaned up and improved in status before cartilage starts to heal.

Brain tissue is also "last served" and seems to follow a similar model that all other tissue has to be improved before the brain gets served. The fact that the brain's lymphatic system is a separate system and there is a blood-brain barrier regulating the flow of various things into and out of the brain are likely factors in why exercise promotes sleep.

> Finally, the world is asleep and even a person who has trouble focusing in the face of distraction has a chance of getting something done.

"The world is asleep" is basically my definition of serene and peaceful.

---

A while back, there was a national holiday, so I had the day off. I didn't actually have anything I wanted to do with that day, so I used it to plan out my next work project. It was a very productive day where I went from being very unsure of how to do the project to having a blueprint that directed what I did for months to come. The project would be in a much worse place if it weren't for the thinking I was able to do on that one day.

It wasn't a productive day in the sense that I got a lot of things done (my usual definition of productivity), but it was productive in the sense that I got some important, deep thinking done. It's rare to get a chance to do such deep thinking.

This kind of productivity is hard to achieve in the face of distractions. But I think it is actually worse than that: It is hard to achieve when there is even a _risk_ of distractions. When my brain knows that someone could demand my attention at any time, it seems to limit the amount of working memory, focus, and time I can spent thinking about something.

But if I know that I don't have to pay attention to interruptions, the problem I'm thinking about can take over and I can spend time swimming in the problem instead of just splashing my toes in.

All this is a long-winded way of saying that knowing you _might_ be interrupted can be almost as bad as actually being interrupted.

This shouldn't come across as flippant but how can you be productive if you never think deeply?

I think I get what you mean.

To me, it's a matter of degree. Reading slack, reading emails, 1:1s, project sync meetings, merging PRs, etc all require nearly no depth of thinking. Creating a design for a small problem or understanding unfamiliar code requires a bit more, debugging more still.

The possibility (and actuality) of interruptions is also a matter of degree. A day with one meeting after lunch and nothing on fire allows for deeper focus than a day with nothing but 30 minute gaps between meetings and 15 people on Slack all wanting something.

The deepest thinking - the kind that is best suited to having an entire day of space - helps the most with the hardest problems: planning a complex project, understanding a new bit of type theory, etc.

(And it is not necessarily true that these problems are impossible to solve in the face of distractions, but a day of focus might match the output of a distracted week - and sometimes it's hard to budget a whole week just to think about something!)

edit: s/is only strictly necessary for the hardest problems/helps the most with the hardest problems/

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. As this happens the sphere shrinks so the pyramid takes up the space of the sphere. Then repeat, but with a cube. So the cube encompasses the pyramid, with the bottom planes the same and the 4 upper edges intersecting with the 4 upper corners of the cube. Then shrink that and put it in a sphere, starting the process over.

I've found that when I'm really tired I have no trouble conjuring this imagery and sometimes within just a few cycles, vivid explosions of color will flood in and I go to sleep. Other times, I struggle to picture a sphere and start off with the 2d equivalents - circle, square, triangle. The whole thing is a bit like counting sheep, but that never worked for me.

I haven't tried this, but I could absolutely see this working for me as well. I've noticed that my visual imagination gets much more vivid just as I'm drifting off to sleep, so I have in the past tried to gently nudge that along by jumping between visual thoughts. It did work fairly well, but I also never had enough trouble sleeping to hone the technique or quantify its effectiveness.

Sometimes I have hypnagogic hallucinations of people talking, sometimes I can't understand the words, but it's nice because then I know that I'm falling asleep.

I get the same thing, but I've found that I can understand the words if I focus on them and try to understand them, though the problem is that as soon as I do I become more awake and it takes time to get back in to the hypnagogic state again after that, so I usually don't bother.

I have a similar technique that I really need to document I think about random ideas in succession very quickly. For example:

if I hammer an icecube I’ll get to the meeting on monday. But then that’s apple day. Better running away. There are dogs falling from the sky so I’ll take my fork. Etc.

It works every single time. Takes around 10-15min of doing this

I've recently been trying a podcast called sleep with me, it basically takes this approach, about an hour of deliberately not very coherent narration

I've noticed words are the problem too. Thinking in words seems to engage something in my brain that just won't let me rest. Images are better. I'll have to try this trick.

For whatever reason though, I sometimes notice myself falling asleep which jerks me wide awake (different to restless legs which I sometimes also get). I would love to drop that habit.

I have a similar approach too. Not shapes or colors, simply I imagine a cat that is sleeping and try to see things from a cats perspective. It's weird but gets me to sleep almost instantly. Obviously it can be anything but I picked cats because they are the best sleepers I know of :P

I'm 30 and just went through the most serious bout of insomnia in my life. It was nothing like the insomnia I read about or saw in media.

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)

What in tarnation, that sounds like a product idea. Maybe that works because the vibrations draw your attention in a multi-sensory way, forcing your racing thoughts to a halt. Maybe there’s also a Pavlovian response. Vibration = sleep

You should try it and see what you think. I thought of other fancier designs like using "bass kickers" or transducers as a more permanent solution. Honestly though I'm just happy that I found something to help me sleep. If you're willing to put in the time/effort to turn it into a product go for it.

The idea came to me as a coincidence. During my insomnia I came across this product [0] in a hacker news comment. I was so tired and delusional that I figured I'm basically just a cranky baby +150 lbs.

[0] https://www.happiestbaby.com/

Come on, we need pictures!

Is it noisy, could it be used in an apartment with someone living on the floor below?

Can you expand on this? Which massager? how is it attached? seems like noise could be an issue depending on how it's attached?

Try magnesium. Stress depletes magnesium. The cells in our body need magnesium and calcium for their operation. When you're low on magnesium your cells can't go into off state. When that happens your muscles become stiffer and you can't sleep. Magnesium supplementation is the solution.

"Supplementation of 500 mg of Mg has been associated with significant improvement in the insomnia severity index, sleep time, sleep efficiency, sleep onset latency, serum cortisol concentration, serum renin, and melatonin." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5637834/

"As compared to the placebo group, in the experimental group, dietary magnesium supplementation brought about statistically significant increases in sleep time..." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3703169/

"When Mg2+ was reintroduced in food and water, sleep organization and ECoG recordings were restored to their original patterns." https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8232845

I've been reading good things about KAL magnesium glycinate in various contexts. There seems to be at least 10 different types of magnesium (oxide/glycinate/citrate/etc). Can you recommend any of these in particular?

Magnesium Glycinate Lysinate seems to work well for me. Also, magnesium l-threonate seems to work well for insomnia.

Thanks for providing the links on the benefits of sleep linked to magnesium, but can you provide a link for this:

> Stress depletes magnesium.

I've found a study that suggests that Mg deficiency actually produces stress: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5112180/

I don't have any peer-reviewed research publications on this, but here's a magazine article:

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/evolutionary-psychia...

Quote: "stress causes us to waste our magnesium like crazy"

Just found this:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK507250/

"extended periods of stress result in progressive Mg deficit"

Trying magnesium after reading about it on HN comments last year changed my life. Definitely try it. I just use magnesium citrate from Walgreens.

Magnesium had zero noticeable effect for me until I tried Magnesium Glycinate. I later tried pure Glycine without magnesium and realized that it was the Glycine that helped my insomnia, not the magnesium component. There are several studies showing positive effects of Glycine on sleep induction.

Magnesium is harmless to try at low doses, but be warned that there is a substantial amount of low quality information about Magnesium on the Internet lately. Despite what you might read, it is possible to consume too much magnesium. Magnesium accumulates in the body with a very long elimination time (days or weeks) which means overdose can occur after months of supplementing at the same level. Anecdotally, Gwern recorded a subtle downward trend of cognitive test scores over time during both of his Magnesium trials.

If you choose to supplement with magnesium, keep the doses low. Don’t escalate dosing in an attempt to capture greater effects. The high doses used in studies are for proving a point on a short duration study, so long-term dosing is likely lower than clinical study dosing. Also be careful to note the difference between magnesium salt content and pure elemental magnesium content of the supplements you’re taking, because the two measurements shouldn’t be confused with each other.

> Despite what you might read, it is possible to consume too much magnesium. Magnesium accumulates in the body with a very long elimination time (days or weeks) which means overdose can occur after months of supplementing at the same level.

You have not supported this with links to credible sources.

Too much magnesium from food does not pose a health risk in healthy individuals because the kidneys eliminate excess amounts in the urine.

Source: https://ods.od.nih.gov/factsheets/%20magnesium-HealthProfess...

> Too much magnesium from food

The conversation was about magnesium supplements, not food.

It’s well-known that overdose from magnesium supplements is possible. The condition is called “Hypermagnesemia” and one of the primary causes is magnesium supplements.

> You have not supported this with links to credible sources.

If you'd like to know more about the dynamics of magnesium, scientific articles are easy to find: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4455825/

As for supplement overdose: You should always assume that overdose is possible when taking concentrated supplements. Don't assume that you can apply the same logic to food (as in the link you provided) and isolated supplements consumed in bulk (as with the high magnesium doses discussed in this thread).

It is safe to take magnesium supplements unless you have kidney disease. If you consume excess magnesium it is simply not absorbed by the body.

Here are some excerpts from the article you linked:

"It is noteworthy that intestinal absorption is not directly proportional to magnesium intake but is dependent mainly on magnesium status. The lower the magnesium level, the more of this element is absorbed in the gut, thus relative magnesium absorption is high when intake is low and vice versa."

"As the kidneys play a crucial role in magnesium homeostasis, in advanced chronic kidney disease, the compensatory mechanisms start to become inadequate and hypermagnesaemia may develop."

"Acute and chronic oral magnesium supplementation has been described as well tolerated with a good safety profile."

I have found that 500mg Magnesium helps me stay asleep as much as anything and maybe helps get to sleep a bit earlier, however it also leaves me much more tired than usual the next day. I get a fair amount of magnesium in my diet so I think it might be too much for me, however less doesn't seem to help me sleep. OTOH, I have unusually sever sleep issues so it may be more helpful for many people.

I've struggled with brutal insomnia (getting to sleep and staying asleep) my entire life (45 years old now). Over the years, I've gotten pretty good at forcing myself to get to work early and just made due with 4-6 hours on most nights and trying to make it up on the weekends.

Early this year I discovered medical marijuana. It's completely game changing. A few puffs from a vaporizer (with flower, not the terrible oil pens) and I've had some of the best sleep of my entire life. I don't remember a time when I've ever actually felt good waking up until now.

The other key (for me) was the book, "The Obstacle is the Way" by Ryan Holiday. This helped me dramatically reduce the nonsense and worries that would crowd my mind as I tried to fall asleep.

Obviously YMMV, but these two things together have helped far more and far longer (6 months now) than anything else I've ever tried.

I keep temazepam and Xanax at had because knowing they're there helps immensely, and maybe use one or the other a couple times a month.

Other things that help me are diet, but also very much so exercise both cardio and heavy lifting.

Another thing I occasionally do is write down my loopy thoughts in a sort of shorthand / appreciated English that isn't immediately readable by others in the house, sit with the writing for a few minutes reading it over then testing it in to small pieces and scattering the pieces in the compost where they might do some good.

Getting the looping worries out of the mind in to the physical realm where they are tangible as physical objects to be manipulated help me greatly.

This is the best answer IMO. It's not for nothing that people say things like "one glass a day keep the doctor away". We have plants that we've discovered a long time ago that help us sleep, and we make all sorts of tea with it, why not use this?

If it's illegal where you live, then sure, but if it's legal then what's the big deal?

I've been using Marijuana for sleep too until a few years ago. I had to stop when I wasn't able anymore to come up with a source for it (it's illegal here).

After a terrible phase of sweat and insomnia, I started to sleep normally again and I realized: I started dreaming again and I needed less sleep now than with M. I also felt really relaxed and refreshed so I didn't need that much time to be ready to go (stopped drinking coffee because of it too).

You should try some phases without it from time to time.

> "Early this year I discovered medical marijuana. It's completely game changing."

Not to be a wet blanket or anything but, like any other form of medication, watch out for buildup of tolerance. You may wind up having to "dry out" for several months or so if tolerance gets too high.

yep. usually have to toleate couple of nights of nightmares/stressmares per week.

> It's completely game changing.

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 have followed a similar path. My problem is that I usually wake up at 3am after only 4-5 hours of sleep, and can't get back to sleep. After 2 nights of that I'll feel tired throughout the day.

I discovered that one good puff of marijuana when I wake up too early, helps me to drift off to sleep again. After that I wake up feeling great the next day!

My Oura ring tells me that the marijuana significantly lowers my resting HR, and increases my HRV (Heart Rate Variability). From what I understand both of those effects are beneficial.

I was born not to sleep. Newborns typically sleep 22-23 hours a day. I was sleeping for 1-2 hours. I almost destroyed my family. If you have children imagine your child only sleeping 1-2 hours day.

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.

Wow, that's insane.

There's a program called SuperMemo which has a feature called sleepchart. In sleepchart, you plot sleep episodes which gives you some neat data that can help figure out things like subjective night [1].

But since SuperMemo is a spaced repetition system, sleepchart can also do some very unique analysis. The main graph it can make with repetition data + sleep data is alertness over time: how grades change the longer you've been awake. I would be very curious if you were to try it to see how your alertness/grades reported for repetitions change the longer you're awake.

[1] https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Subjective_night

What settings do you use for binaural beats? I have trouble sleeping sometimes and have tried binaural beats but they are maybe 20% effective. Seems to have worked a lot better for you, and I wonder if it's a frequency thing.

There is way too much pressure on people to get enough sleep. We are told it's scientifically and medically important, but it doesn't help people feel more relaxed thinking that their brains are turning into a disheveled walnut from not getting the perfect 8 hours of sleep each night.

Why We sleep provides some good insights and tips but it can also make one feel quite scared of not getting enough sleep. We should stop feeling so pressured and ashamed if we don't get the prefect 8 hours.

Thinking of it objectively, what was sleeping really like hundreds or thousands of years ago? Did we ever have a time where the perfect sleep was attainable, purely free of stresses, in 100% darkness with no interference, or is that just an idea we have?

Personally what makes sleeping harder for me, is all the anxiety around getting great sleep and the negative feelings I have towards that experience the next day. Usually by lunchtime I forgot I had a bad sleep and all the negative feelings associated with it and just get on with life, and I feel ok.

If you suffer particularly bad insomnia, I encourage you to do a sleep study. It was life-changing for me.

I was able to discover that I suffer from narcolepsy, a rare but nonetheless real condition. It's not at all like most people think: you don't randomly fall asleep during the day. But your sleep schedule isn't really a schedule so much as a stochastic random walk.

Even if you don't have a rare disorder, there's a good chance a sleep study will benefit you. For example, a coworker said that a CPAP machine was similarly lifechanging.

I just had a sleep study, but because of snorting, not insomnia. I was playing around with one of the many snoring apps available now and was mortified at how I sound all night! They gave me a take-home apparatus to wear one night an then I had a call with a doctor who interpreted the results to me. He said I wasn't a horrible case but recommended I try a CPAP for a few months, which I'm now in the process of getting.

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 least.

But now, during quarantine, we set no alarms. No one in the family has to be anywhere at any particular time. And so we've all shifted, even the kids. All of wake around noon, and the kids go down around 2am (and the adults between 4am and 6am).

Late nights just seem to be our natural schedule, but all it takes is an alarm and an early morning responsibility to shift the family schedule.

I am having this same issue. I'm trying to get back 20 mins each night to bring it back to a 12pm bedtime.

I'm still working from 9am so the mornings are pretty rough at the moment, But something about the lockdown is trouble.

When I had flu before Christmas, I found it really difficult to sleep and breathe. Wound up going to bed later and later until I wrapped around.

Similar to https://xkcd.com/320/ but not deliberately.

> Late nights just seem to be our natural schedule, but all it takes is an alarm and an early morning responsibility to shift the family schedule.

That's an interesting take. My dogs are hyper-active at night and sleepy in the day. Dogs have been with human for a longtime, so either they have the same sleep schedule or the reverse (as they should guard when the human is asleep?).

But if humans are hunters, then it might make sense that they are more active at night.

When I was a teenager, during the summers (no school) I would generally go to sleep at 4am or 5am and wake up around 1-2pm.

I found that time of night (12am - 4am) really conducive to creativity. If I could go back to that schedule, I would. I don't like waking up any time before 9, and neither does my body.

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.

This is pretty much me. But less focus on sunlight and more focus on sleeping at the same time.

Also exercise helps.

Your list is a perfect subset of mine. Transitioning into no caffeine has revolutionized my sleep and productivity. One additional point that has really helped me a lot is realizing that I should never eat anything within 2 hours of bed time. It took me a while to connect the dots on my waking up at 12-1am back to having had eaten half a pizza at 9pm. Anything with a delayed action like that is very tricky to keep an eye on. This is the principal reason I dropped the caffeine. The effects/side-effects just became too unpredictable.

Caffeine is too useful for me to give up entirely. I had similar success with a rule: no caffeine after 12 PM (not even caffeinated soft drinks). Caffeine has a long half-life, which is especially problematic for people who, for genetic reasons, respond more to a given amount of caffeine. What I usually do is I have 2 cups of coffee back to back before 11 A.M. I feel the benefits for most of the day. It may be tempting to violate the rule and have an afternoon coffee “just this once” at the beginning but you get used to it. Furthermore, if you feel the need for more coffee in the afternoon, that’s a sign that your work habits and distractions need to change, not your physical energy level.

> if you feel the need for more coffee in the afternoon, that’s a sign that your work habits and distractions need to change, not your physical energy level.

Out of curiosity, why does this apply to the afternoon coffee and not the morning coffee? Maybe finding coffee useful at all is a sign?

Because cafeine breaks down over time so your evening/afternoon coffee has a much bigger effect on your later sleeping attempts than morning coffee. I don't drink coffee at all so that does not apply to me but I can see the confusion in the GP and your response to it.

Correct, that's what I was referring to with the long half-life. The later you consume caffeine, the more likely it is to disrupt your sleep. A logical extension of that is the following: if you know that caffeine has a worse reward-to-harm ratio in the afternoon, and you consume it even though it might disrupt your sleep (assuming it does), you might be grasping for productivity straws. Alternatively, caffeine pretty much only has upside when it is consumed in the morning. It increases wakefulness and several academic studies found that coffee specifically improves your health (not sure how much of that is due to the plant material vs. the caffeine).

For those who cannot or would not give up caffeine, consider that the reason you wake up prematurely is because you're going through withdrawals. When I started having my last cup in the late afternoon I started waking up too early less often.

Give 4-7-8 breathing a go

https://www.drweil.com/videos-features/videos/the-4-7-8-brea...

Thank you for this.

I am dealing with sleep issues right now. My 2 game changing habits are:

- melatonin

- doing my best to wake up at 06:00.

In reality, I wake up at 07:00 or even 09:00 but it is guaranteed to save me a few hours of sleep deprivation. In general with these 2 “tricks” I have 2 hours less sleep deprivation than normal. They also have a lot of synergies.

One other thing I am now thinking about is to have a color coded night light with red (you have to sleep), orange (you can wake up if you’re wide awake and truly can’t sleep) and green (you’re in the wake up zone) as color codes. By doing this, I wouldn’t feel the need to check my time at night. Or maybe I should program an app that has some Siri integration (if that’s possible, probably isn’t). By having this, I wouldn’t feel inclined to check the time.

Oh, and this would be alongside an alarm.

For some people, improving (reducing) CO2 levels in the bedroom might be low hanging fruit. Ever since moving to a new place with a controlled ventilation system, I had no dream recall, and often suffered from incredible fatigue and tiredness. I suspect that I was low on REM phases, but never got a sleep study done. Finally, I started opening the sleeping room window ever so slightly, by turning the window handle a bit to the open position. We also started changing the air filter of the ventilation system more often, as air flow becomes noticeably weaker after ~3-4 weeks. As a result, I often dream now, and wake well rested most of the time. For me, air flow has proven more important than blue light reduction, or weight loss.

If you’re curious about CO2, there are a number of home CO2 monitors available these days. It was really enlightening to me to see the levels rise well above optimal within just a few hours of sleeping with the room sealed.

Thanks for the hint! CO2 is so often overlooked as the problem. There’s even CO2 toxicity, and it happens faster than one would believe.

I never made the link with the sound levels before.

I just figured this out recently too. >6pm when people left the office and >8pm when the dull humming of the HVAC turned off gave this odd feeling of calm like it had been subconsciously aggravating me for hours.

Also stumbled on a wiki article on "Directed Attention Fatigue" [1] which implied that the brain's way of focusing is not like turning up the heat on a laser, but more like applying multiple blinders to a horse to create a tiny reticle of focus. That basically meant clear out as many visual-field and sound distractions as possible to minimize the energy required for attention (and increase stamina, too).

One thing I also try w/ the noise-cancelling headphones is only wear them during productive work, so that my brain subconsciously associates headphones on = work time.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed_attention_fatigue

I used to have bad anxiety and panic attacks when I was in my early 20s and in university and also dealt with insomnia a lot. Exercise and the other tips in the thread can help if people can't sleep due to bad sleep hygiene or just the problems of modern lifestyles, but when the reason are mental issues or stress and anxiety which seems to affect a lot of people during the pandemic it might not always help.

What helped me a lot was to pick up an advice I got on fear during panic attacks from a psychologist, which is to let go of control. If one tries to control panic and can't then it's easy to develop a 'fear of fear' when you fail, as it's ultimately simply not possible to control these things always.

Same helped with insomnia for me. It's very easy to be worried of going to sleep if all you think about is how long you're going to lie awake, how good your quality of sleep is and so on and you end up wired the moment you go to bed and it becomes its own mental thing. While it sounds dumb and trivial to simply stop worrying about it, it's actually a relatively hard thing to do.

It didn't solve sleep problems for me completely, which isn't the point, but it's made me sleep a lot better, and most importantly made me less judgemental about being tired a day. Mechanical solutions like forcing myself into a rythm with discipline never tended to work for me well.

Sleep problems are largely caused by anxiety, once treated it gives way to solid sleep.

Tweaking the schedule/environment/diet/etc to improve sleep is like using AC to overpower a thermostat-controlled furnace.

Most people who are told they have anxiety will fight tooth and nail against the notion.

> Sleep problems are largely caused by anxiety, once treated it gives way to solid sleep.

Surely you mean anxiety disorders, not anxiety itself. Anxiety is a part of healthy human psyche. In that, having anxiety in response to improper schedule/environment/diet is a sign of health and changing those would be the primary way to "treat" it.

By the same token, only taking pills or going to therapy while schedule/environment/diet stay bad is not treating it, even if the symptoms could go away for a while. It is just delaying the problem for a greater future crisis. Plus no doctor/therapist worth their salt would say "let's ignore the context of your unsustainably taxing life, instead take these stop-gap solutions to make you sleep for now".

You're arguing with a lot of thins I did not say.

You've equivocated anxiety with anxiety disorders and dismissed the suggestions on improving environmental factors. I posited even if a person presents with anxiety, fixing environmental factors should be the first thing to consider.

Sure I went ahead and criticized pill pushing as a first option which you didn't openly suggest, but you made a vague suggestion of "treating anxiety without changing environmental factors" which leaves pills and talk therapy as the only remaining solutions as far as I can tell anyway.

When I speak of "environment" I mean it in the most literal sense - temperature, fresh air, sound/noise background, light pollution, mattress firmness. Anxious people get obsessed over those things because they are easily reached, but this obsession only bring temporary relief. I understand you assign a different meaning to that word, so there is some misunderstanding stemming from that.

In light of this clarification, would you like to start over?

> After reading many reviews I kept on coming back to the same brand which I had sworn to never buy another item of due to their disrespect of users’ systems integrity, aka the ‘rootkit debacle’

Does Sony really have the best noise cancelling headphones? What brands/models have worked for people here? I've continuously struggled with distracting noises through my education.

Bose are very good. I've a pair of wireless over ear headphones and my girlfriend has the wireless in-ear ones. Noise cancellation is very good with both, especially for constant background noise.

All over ear headphones will tend to cause your ears to warm up, so the in ear ones are more comfortable. But the integrated microphone with the in-ear headphones is surprisingly poor for phone calls.

What is surprising to me is that it even works, that it is 'poor' is a remarkable achievement given the location of the mic.

How large are their OTA headphones? I've been wondering about OTA noise-cancelling headphones for a while for both music and cycling as I've bad ears and excess wind leads to repeated otitis on short order (making actual non-stationary cycling problematic). But I also have large ears, so most OTA would literally sit on the ear cartilage and pressing it against the ear, making wearing them for extended periods very uncomfortable. I remember AKG cans having large-enough pads that they'd fit properly.

OTA -> OTE, I can't imagine 'over the air' headphones :)

> OTA -> OTE

Yeeep.

> I can't imagine 'over the air' headphones :)

Well bluetooth are kinda OTA as opposed to wired 'phones.

Beware of eardrum suck when you buy noise cancelling headphones

https://www.soundstagesolo.com/index.php/features/178-eardru...

I use Sennheiser's PXC 550s and have recommended them before. The cost is reasonable compared to Bose/Sony, and the quality of the product is excellent.

anxiety about fatigue the next day begets insomnia, which begets anxiety...

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!

If you struggle with bad sleep I encourage you to get tested by a sleep doctor. I was diagnosed with delayed sleep phase disorder (DSPD) and honestly reading the Wikipedia page made me cry.

All my life I thought I was just a lazy person because I couldn’t achieve anything in the morning (even if working at night is perfectly fine for me).

Lockdown really changed my life for the better. I was lucky enough in my job to be able to set no alarm at all in the morning and I was able to follow my internal sleep schedule. I began to have dreams again, and I feel actually alive during the day. It’s wonderful but now I worry a lot about the time when I won’t be able to wfh.

I'm reading this book(Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker) right now. The number one piece of advice it provides is to set an alarm to go to bed and try to fall asleep at the same time every night, even on weekends. Other pieces of advice include lowering the temperature to 65°F at night(really), reduce or stop caffeine and alcohol intake, avoid screen time and light at night, and several other pieces of advice.

It's an okay book. Not the best I've read, but if you feel tired during the day, it's worth a read. My sleep quality has markedly increased since starting to read it.

I enjoyed the book. If you're interested, my comment history on HN contains a reference to i somewhere, where someone linked to serious criticism about many of the book's claims, and a reply to said criticism by Matthew Walker.

Regarding the alarms: I find that consistency is much more important for mee than total hours of sleep. I'm much better on a consistent 7h/day than on 8h/day where my sleep/wake time moves around.

The effect of noise on focus and productivity is super-interesting and one that I've only accidentally come to realise recently myself. I live in an averagely noisy part of the city and built myself a room-within-a-room sound-isolated studio as a fair chunk of my work is audio-related. I was quite surprised by how much my focus has increased since starting to work in the studio (even on completely unrelated work). Since then I've noticed how easily my focus switches at even the slightest noise (the fridge compressor kicking in, a car driving past etc)

I've been an insomniac my entire life (46 years) and in December started working on a wearable monitor my brain-waves and interact with them using sound in order to induce sleep and optimize sleep states.

There are two similar products on the market already (Dreem and SmartSleep) but I have a different approach.

I'd be keen to hear who in this community may be interested (I'll be posting our webpage with more info soon) and if anybody has experience with Dreem or SmartSleep, I'd be keen to hear of your experiences.

I wrote up my experience with dreem here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23432243

Thanks for linking to that. Sorry to hear you're going through the CBT-I thing. I can't tell you how disappointed I am that this is the current state of sleep therapy.

I hope it works for you, if not, we've got something on the way :)

I don't have direct experience with products in this space but I've done extensive contract work for companies in the sleep apnea wearable space, so here are some insights:

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

I completely agree with most of your comments. We're not a medical device, and we are developing some patent-able parts of the tech. As far as the "wearable part", in some ways, there is just no getting around an EEG that is worn, at the moment anyway. However, this is one of the challenges, how do you get something that a user wears, that is comfortable, effective, etc, etc.

We're trying to find insight into how Oura has done this. I know my ring does absolutely nothing for me, aside from telling me that I didn't sleep enough. Yet, I still wear it to bed, as do other people I know who have had a similar experience. There is a way to build and market the device so it becomes a desirable product, not something that you have to wear, and that is our target.

I'm on the same schedule you were (working till sunrize), but I dont have a family or other obligations yet. If you were in my position do you still think its worth it to try and change to a more regular cycle? I really enjoy my nights.

On the topic of noise, there is one thing I wish could be more recognized as a nuisance, and that is the damn leaf blowers. Especially now that everyone is forced to work from home, every day around here for a couple of hours you are subjected to that.

Not a sleep expert by any means. I think it all depends on the quality of sleep you get. I don't see a problem with that as long as you get the sleep you need and feel rested during your day.

I used to be a night owl too. But with kids and everything things changed over the years. These days it's hard for me to stay awake past 11pm. I also wake up early around 6am, which in the past was unheard-of for me. I actually enjoy my early mornings alone for the same reasons mentioned in the post about the quiet at night.

One thing I find important is not falling asleep before my usual bed time. It usually happens when I watch a movie or something. After I wake up, unless I'm dead tired, it can take me much longer to fall asleep when I actually go to bed.

> I really enjoy my nights.

Yes, it's very seductive. Until I had a family I didn't see anything wrong with it, that was just an out-of-phase life but it worked well enough for me. Having kids and a business makes it a lot harder to live like that, and working until you drop is an easy way to mask the fact that I had serious problems falling asleep, either at a normal time or even at all. Working until exhaustion seemed like a pretty efficient fix, I'd get a lot done and eventually did get my sleep though not nearly enough of it.

The damage is cumulative as far as I understand it now and even though it gave me an edge for a while I wonder if the price was worth it. Maybe get that book from the library and read up on it (and some critiques of the book as well, it's not all equally solid), then make up your mind as to what is the best approach for your?

> the damn leaf blowers

They're a complete nuisance and utterly ineffective as well. Also, everybody has their own schedule for running them. Fortunately here they are not too popular but the few that are there really get me worked up.

Ironically, the book he cites "Why We Sleep" gave me insomnia.

I had never had any issues sleeping before reading it, but then I read it and thought "wow sleeping is soooo critical, I need to do better." I started getting stressed about getting enough sleep. Before long, I would feel anxious the minute I laid in bed.

But the fact that I wasn't sleeping made me even more stressed about sleeping! It was a reinforcing loop.

What helped me get back to sleeping well was to just stop caring about it.

Also an insomniac. I’ve ran into “sleep anxiety” over the past few years which, for me, means becoming anxious when I think I’m supposed to go to bed.

Things that have helped:

- Minimum of 10K steps per day

- Weightlifting and HIIT

- 0 light in my room (windowless room)

What has helped most:

- Letting go of a rigid schedule and just letting tiredness dictate when I go to bed.

My lifestyle is a luxury I can afford because I don’t have kids. I imagine being a parent would really make dealing with insomnia much more difficult.

Same struggle. I found weight liftibg to make it worse maybe due to cortisol but cardio and tennis to make it better. I do lift weights some times but always followed by cardio

Become parent and your insomnia would be gone in a few weeks. You would be exhausted mentally and physically. Drained out. I remember my child when she was 1 - 2 years old. Jesus Christ... I slept wherever I could. In car, even in toilet at work.

A few years ago I found myself experiencing a different sort of very debilitating sleeping problem. It started, as I recall, as something that would just happen on airplanes, my legs would feel almost like a buildup of lactic acid unless I moved them around. I could keep them still maybe for a few second at most, until the sensation built to a point where it was irresistibly uncomfortable and swinging or tapping my feet would instantly provide relief. Restless leg syndrome.

While at first confined to trying to sleep in an airplane chair (interestingly it never happened while sitting in front of a computer to work, or sitting at the dinner table, just when sitting to sleep) eventually it followed me into the bedroom, where it became a serious problem. Basically within seconds of lying down my legs would start winding up. Think like, in order to get them to settle down having to rapidly kick against the bed for 15 seconds and getting like a 2 minute window to try to fall asleep before the sensation built back up. And then even in my sleep, I would still be kicking around. Not very practical to say the least.

What finally solved it for me was a doctor suggesting I try trazodone. It’s an SSRI which was originally developed as an antidepressant, turns out to suck for that, but it is a very nice little sedative. As long as I have 6hrs to sleep, 25mg completely stops the restless leg syndrome and doesn’t make me wake up groggy. It was an absolute lifesaver.

On a separate note, I can absolutely relate to getting my best work done at night. Many times an all-nighter would result in more productive work than multiple days that led up to it. The next day would be a wash, but usually I could find myself back to a diurnal rhythm within a day or two. I never went full vampire because frankly I find it far too exhausting to be trying to keep that level of focus day after day, but many times over the years when workload got out of control a shift to working nights was a crucial strategy.

You might want to check your nutrition. Sometimes issues like this are caused by nutritional imbalances (such as getting too little or too much of a certain nutrient). For instance, iron deficiency can be a cause for restless leg syndrome. Though please be careful with iron, and only take it under the supervision of a physician, as too much iron can be deadly.

I normally have a really difficult time focusing on things, especially work related, this is mainly due to the noise and movement in an office setting. I've been working from home for quite some time now and I used to get most done during the night just like you. It's quiet and it's dark. I think the dark helps as much as the noise as well. There's less things that catch my attention. But I realized that, my sleep schedule was the main culprit behind me being unproductive during the day. I've tried various techniques, but it didn't help too much (I've been meditating regularly for over a decade now). The best way is to tire yourself, brisk walking etc. and also finding what makes you disconnect from your daily life.

I hesitate to speculate as much as I'm about to on the basis of a blog post alone, but here goes...

Everything about this post screams to me that the real problem may be chronic stress. Rather than seeing the trouble sleeping as a symptom of stress, and addressing that, the author is just treating sleep as one more thing to be aggressively managed and thereby adding even more stress to the mix ("the time has come to put a stop to this" -- yikes! sleep is meant to come naturally, it's not another checkbox on a to-do list!).

I haven't read the book and don't know the author's life circumstances, so maybe I'm completely wrong, but that's just how the post reads to me.

Probably more than a grain of truth in there, but there is a cyclical element at work here: not enough sleep -> less efficient the next day -> more stressful -> even less sleep. There are a lot of those cycles at work here all of which can have cause/effect switched around at will and still be valid. So sleeping better has remarkably reduced my stress levels.

But thank you for pointing this out.

I feel like I leave this comment every few months on HN but the podcast “Sleep with Me” has been so immensely helpful to me that I take every opportunity to share it. Something about Scooter’s voice and the way he talks about nothing gets my brain in just the right spot to turn off. It has been more effective for me than any sleep aid medication I’ve tried.

I know it won’t be a magic bullet for everyone but trying a podcast for a few nights is about as low-risk as a potential insomnia solution gets.

I’m not affiliated with the podcast at all other than being a very happy listener. Or maybe non-listener is a more accurate term? I’m usually asleep in the first ten minutes or so.

I fall asleep too using podcasts but that only works for 1-2 hours then I wake up without being able to fall asleep again.

Peter Yearsley's Librivox recordings are great for this, too. When I'm not tired, he's an excellent reader. When I am, he gets me straight to sleep.

I used to have a lot of problems falling and staying asleep. The best thing for me was implementing a no caffeine after 10am rule - caffeine's half-life in you body is about 5 hours so if you have a cup of coffee at lunch time (12pm) you'll still have a quarter cup sloshing around inside you a 10pm when you should be starting to get ready to sleep. (Adjust times as to your preferred schedule - but as I have kids demanding food waking me earlier than I'd like every day so I need to be at least semi functional from 6am so working backwards I need to be asleep by about 11ish each night).

I think sleep (and getting in and out of it) is hugely individual and you need to work with your own physiology. My discovery was that I can't "think" when other people are talking because I think verbally. So putting on speech and lying down == sleep. I've listened to podcasts or audiobooks every night for several years now and am asleep within 5-15 minutes.

The other benefit is I've also listened to hundreds of books and podcast episodes, but all in tiny chunks. The next night I seek to the spot I last remember and continue.

I've had horrible sleeplessness all my adult life. I have a 10 month old baby now and with the pandemic, it's been hard to get things done since both my wife and I work full time. A few things that have helped:

- going to sleep when the baby sleeps ~8:30p-10p.

- getting up super early ~3:30a-4:30a

- cutting out coffee and replacing with a mixture of black/green tea.

- not having caffeine after 8a.

- following this routine even on weekends.

My sleep quality is WAY better and I don't feel so tired during the day. Also I get a lot done in the morning and spend the afternoon with my daughter.

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 nothing on the market. Something with a processor for NC and normal audio input for audio.

Bluetooth uses the 2.4GHz spectrum (along with a lot of other stuff) which is non-ionising, the main side effect is heating but bluetooth transmitters have tiny power output so any heating effect would be unmeasurable.

Your body is constantly bombarded by radio sources both natural and artificial, honestly I wouldn't worry about it.

I recently bought the Taotronics Soundsurge 90 (TT-BH090). They have ANC (although I suppose not a very good one compared with Sony/Bose/Sennheiser), which can be used with the headphones plugged in with the standard audio jack. There's another version with USB-C (TT-BH085).

While I second the other poster's assertion that you don't need to worry about the radio effects (and remember, the headphones are _mostly_ receiving -- you're probably getting more RF from your WiFi), I have a pair of Plantronics BackBeat Pro, and they will still do noise cancelling with Bluetooth off.

Stressed out from covid quarantine I started having insomnia which spiraled me down to self reinforcing insomnia and Anxiety cycle.

The most terryfying thing was that I was worried that if I don't sleep I am damaging my hippocampus forever and slowly getting Cognitive decline. That obviously made me unable to sleep. At some point after some months I upped my physical exercise and started melatonin and valerian and they seem to work for now.

ASMR works well for me, most of the time (quality of ASMR matters - what's popular is just clickbait and not great content). Other times I need to meditate for a while to calm down and clear my head.

Personally, the most important thing for me is to not work or think about anything that would get me in the obsessive problem-solving or worry mode, around the bed time hours.

> quality of ASMR matters - what's popular is just clickbait and not great content

Any recommendations?

I've found a pretty effective means for me to fall asleep when I have insomnia characterized by racing thoughts: I simply count from one to four over and over again, non-stop until I fall asleep.

Now some details, background, and theory regarding this method. The idea behind it is to try to keep the mind occupied so that it doesn't have a chance to think about all those things that keep me awake.

In the past I'd tried a bunch of different methods for falling asleep, including the common one of counting from one to a hundred (or backwards from one hundred to one), but found that I would often lose track of where I was in the count, and have to start over. This minor annoyance was why I decided to count a much smaller number, so I'd never lose track of where I was.

Another problem that I had was that if I counted too slow, then some thought would sort of "sneak in" in between the numbers and there'd be some chance that I'd start thinking about that rather than continue the count. To counteract this I started counting faster, and found if my counting was fast enough and if I tried to focus on the count rather than letting my mind drift while counting automatically, it usually worked pretty well at letting me fall asleep.

Now, this isn't foolproof, as major anxiety, the effects of stimulants like caffeine, physical issues such as pain, etc, can overwhelm such a method, but for more "ordinary" insomnia caused by racing thoughts I found this simple method to be quite effective.

Incidentally, chamomile tea will make me drowsy, and so will small doses of melatonin, and if I don't fight the drowsiness and try to fall asleep as soon as I get drowsy, that often helps too.

Something else that helps is being slightly chilly. Not so much that the cold keeps you awake, but just enough for that the blankets feel comfortably warm. Being either too hot or too cold is bad for sleep.

Wearing earplugs and a blindfold can help, as can pot, if you get the right strain and the right dose.

Finally, I've found that certain types of food (like a big bowl of pasta) will make me pass out, even at inconvenient times like that middle of the day. I haven't tried eating as an insomnia cure, since I generally don't like to eat big meals before bed time, since digestion stops for me while I'm asleep and waking up with a half-digested meal can sometimes be uncomfortable.

If you’re like me and noise cancelling headphones make you seasick, try 3M Peltor Optime ear protectors - very effective.

Thanks for this. I've always hated noise cancelling headphones - they make my ears hurt. I'll give these a shot.

This is not insomnia, but delayed sleep phase, and it's usually treated with light boxes or melatonin.

Having trouble to fall asleep and sleeplessness is typically called insomnia, that it is paired with delayed sleep phase is an unfortunate side-effect for those days that I did get (some) sleep, and from my preference for working when it is quiet (ie: nights).

The one feeds into the other which eventually results in missing lots and lots of sleep. I was under the - mistaken - impression that you can get by on 4 hours of sleep or less but this is really not the case so if you suffer from this in some for or other then better take it serious.

Sticking to a routine, avoiding stressful subjects just before sleep, relaxing activities (music, reading) before trying to fall asleep all helped in making it easier to fall asleep. Staying asleep is another matter, and addressing the noise that reaches my bedroom is one more thing I plan on tackling to avoid frequently waking up during the night.

DSPD lets you get 8 hours of restful sleep, just not at a convenient time.

Insomnia means you don't get enough sleep at all.

Yep. See article.

I find melatonin can be very effective.

I'm sure noise cancelling headphones would prevent me from hearing my alarm!

I would never sleep with them on.

Not if the alarm is in the headphones.

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.

Could you share some information about the earplug type/brand that works for you?

I am looking for a decent sleeping earplug or earbud as I have recently moved to a noisier place. I’ve tried sleeping in noise-cancelling over ears and AirPods with white noise but neither worked for me, they were far too uncomfortable. I am also concerned that an industrial ear protector would prevent me from hearing alarms or emergency situations.

Not parent, but I've tried a few different earplugs for sleeping, and settled on Hearos Ultimate Softness Series [1]. I buy them in a box of 100, which lasts for ages (I generally get 3 days out of a pair).

Other ones I tried tended to cause pain after a day or two. It did take a couple of days to get used to having them in, but now I really miss them if I don't have any with me.

Regarding alarms/emergencies, I always wake up to my phone alarm, and I find that I'm generally able to hear 'past' them for things I'd usually be on the alert for.

[1] https://hearos.com/collections/sleep-1/products/ultimate-sof...

I personally like this model [1]. Cheap. Sometimes they can get uncomfortable or even fall out in the middle of the night, but usually if I reseat them, they are fine.

The trick to getting them in easily is to squish and lick them. Totally gross, but you get used to it and it really works well. I wash mine every morning with water and just keep reusing them for a while.

Agreed with the other, you rarely sleep through stuff you really need to wake up for like a phone alarm next to you.

[1] https://i5.walmartimages.com/asr/b683124e-a538-4bec-9dfa-5bd...

I've tried similar ones this week... I've never slept so well!

You might be surprised how well the brain can filter things while asleep, at least for some people (and will change over time). I have a light alarm clock that also has bird sounds and one place I lived there were birds just outside my window with the same song as the alarm and they would start a bit earlier than I woke up (hopefully I wasn't disrupting them too much :/). I would sleep through the birds that were at least as loud as the alarm but still wake up to the alarm. I suspect the light part of the alarm helped in that case, but I've had other cases with just very quiet audio alarms that also woke me up, in some cases a radio set to an empty channel at a barely audible level. The light alone does not wake me up most of the time.

Relatedly, a friend once told me about a method of just telling yourself when you need to wake up right before you go to bed. I've tried that quite a few times and always wake up within about 15 minutes of the intended time.

For me, waking up is the easy part, but I really don't function well at all with little sleep and actually getting out of bed can be almost impossible if I've had little sleep. I can't relate to how anyone can work on very little sleep over a long period of time, although lately I have been doing a bit better on little sleep when not using alarms at all (and predictibly returning to an irregular Non-24 schedule).

I had bad insomnia during graduate school, tried just about everything under the sun (medication, sleep studies, lifestyle changes, herbs) and eventually did CBT-I with a therapist, and that was my ultimate solution. She had me start with going to bed at 3am and waking up at 7am for a week. I was absolutely exhausted, felt like my days were dreams. Then, we pulled forward he’s time to 2am. Checked how long it took me to fall asleep, and if I reported it was quick, then pull it to 1am, etc. until I was falling asleep quickly but also felt refreshed. I kept this all down on some worksheets provided.

The key was absolutely no matter what, no matter how tired I felt, I had to wake up at 7am and get out of bed. No naps.

We found the optimal spot to be 11pm lay in bed, and wake up at 7am. I always keep that schedule, deviating only by 30min or so even on weekends. Haven’t had trouble sleeping since!

I also think going from graduate school (little solid schedule) to a corporate 9-5 job helped. Covid has mangled that a bit, but I still keep the same sleep schedule.

tl;dr- CBT-I was a life-changer for me.

Good point about the naps. That's the one rule I still violate every now and then and it is almost certain to be followed by a bad night.

CBT-i more or less fixed me too. It should be noted that sleep restriction (the practice you're describing here) is only part of CBT-i but it seems to be the most important.

I also gave up coffee and I stop looking at screens 30-60 mins before my bed time. Before the therapy ~30% of my nights were sleepless.

This article helped a lot: http://ilya.sukhar.com/blog/an-algorithmic-solution-to-insom...

Really good point - there was a bunch of other restrictions/lifestyle changes that probably helped contribute. I think the main one was going from two cups of coffee (morning, and then afternoon) to one cup (morning) really helped me.

Also the recommendation that if I couldn’t fall asleep within 15-ish minutes, to get out of bed and do something until I’m tired again instead of lay there and “try” to sleep.

Yes the 15-20 min rule helps a lot! I tried a morning coffee again recently (I miss it) but it messed up my sleep that night. But that could be due to my mind playing its tricks on me rather than the caffeine remaining in my system.

I have rarely felt so identified with a blog, for a huge part it's like I'm reading my own story. Thanks a lot for sharing!

I'm going to read the book you mentioned and I'll consider taking magnesium as suggested here.

Thanks!

In my imagination it works something like: If melatonin levels have to exceed cortisol not challenging yourself physically would never require a lot of melatonin? You might still sleep but barely?

This article seems relevant.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21546850

I had the same issue. The way I solve it is to get rid of all digital gadgets in my bedroom and turn down the light as much as can. It’s simple but works for me.

I've had a lifelong struggle with insomnia. Last year, I worked with a sleep therapist to help get things under control. I still have bad nights, and jet lag still messes me up. But I don't take nearly as much sick leave for insomnia as I used to.

I had tried individual "sleep hygiene" things over the years with little success. She helped me realize that I was running a system that lent itself to bad sleep. Single changes were unlikely to help. For me in particular, keeping a regular routine, getting sunlight exposure, and minimizing caffeine were important. It's amazing how much impact a few fundamentals have.

Normally, I would fall asleep anytime from 12 to 3 and wake up between 8 and 9. I committed to falling asleep at 11:00, waking up at 7:00 every day and immediately going for a walk. Ordinarily I would have resisted these measures, but I had been in a bout with insomnia for months at that point. I was willing to try anything. Over time, this helped set a regular rhythm.

I was also overcaffeinating myself. She gave me some helpful guidelines for determining when I've had too much coffee. This amounted to taking the half-life of caffeine, measuring how much will still be in your bloodstream at bedtime, and asking yourself, "Would you drink that much coffee at that time?" I also would use caffeine to fix bad nights of sleep. She suggested replacing extra caffeine with midday walks. This helped quite a bit.

I don't have problems falling asleep (just staying asleep), but she recommended wearing orange safety glasses that block blue light. I would feel sleepier before bedtime when I did this. I didn't keep this measure going, but I still have them in case I ever have trouble falling asleep. I also wear a sleep mask, which is the single-best change I've made.

This came with some sacrifices. I went on a beach vacation with some friends last year, and I went to bed at 11 while they all stayed up until 1. This created a weird dynamic. But I had just started to overcome my severe insomnia bout, so I didn't want to throw it all away. Now, I find myself continuing to stick with the schedule because I know that I get results. This means that I leave a lot of events earlier than other people. But it feels easier to say "no" now that I'm in my 30s.

It also had some benefits. I now have an hour and a half before work that I use for side projects. It turns out that despite my mental model of being a night owl, I'm actually very productive in the morning. I've maintained a regular writing schedule and have managed to do some side project work. Previously, I had struggled to fit time in for these things.

> The noise cancelling tech is a key element in this story

The author has my sympathy. I’ve learned to ignore noise, but I understand not everyone can do that.

Have you tried weed? If I really can’t get to sleep I smoke one puff and it always works.

I hate all drugs and the industry they bring with them, if that's what it would take I'd rather be awake. Rhyme entirely unintended must find another way to mend it.

so you don't drink tea? What's the difference with a cannabis tea?

ASMR is the only thing that has helped me.

I've always had trouble sleeping but the conditions around the coronavirus have made it increasingly worse.

I've been able to force myself to sleep recently with enough sleep aids, but the amount I have to take to knock me out is terrible because it lasts so long into the next day. Whereas previously I may have had to fight microsleeps if I was particularly sleep deprived, I find myself having to fight full on passing out until mid afternoon at least.

This, is a huge must for me:

> Absolutely no intra-day napping. When I violate this rule (as I still sometimes do) I usually have a bad night.

Prior to wfh, I would often come home from the office completely drained. Even i did nothing at all and just sat aroud the exhaustion was worse than the rare occasion I get physical exercise these days. It almost felt like my brain was calling me to bed. But I've learned taking naps almost certainly means I wont sleep the coming night.

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