The military secret to falling asleep in two minutes | Hacker News Reader

The military secret to falling asleep in two minutes

independent.co.uk

46 pointstilt75 comments

The military secret to falling asleep is to be exhausted.

Ever since I was 13 I've been unable to fall asleep quickly except when exhausted or reading anything by the Bronte sisters.

Possibly the most annoying thing about it is the absolute certainty in the presumption of the people making recommendations of how I'm doing it wrong. I've tried, thanks.

I spoke to the doctor the 5th time today to discuss my inability to sleep until I have a headache and am about to passout from exhaustion.

They suggested getting up if I can't fall asleep.

No words

Do you do daily cardio? And/or weight lifting?

Also if I was in the physician cartel- That will be 220$.

I briskly walk the dog every day for 20-30 minutes.

I believe the theory behind this is that you don't want to associate your bed with not sleeping. If you body is not ready to sleep, don't bother trying. I got a similar suggestion after a spell of a week or two with 2 hours or less sleep a night. I was physically and mentally exhausted, but I could not sleep.

I understand the theory.

The problem is I don't associate bed with anything other than sleep, I implemented that practice years ago.

Now I'm actually questioning it, I did a lot better when I could fall asleep watching boring documentaries on YouTube.

Now I watch documentaries until I get tired, but after getting up, going to the toilet, having a drink of water, brushing my teeth, all before hitting bed I'm wide awake again.

I came to the comments to state exactly your first line. When I served in the German army, no combat involved, the amount of physical activity was at a very high level, so I was basically constantly tired and was able to fall asleep in under 30 seconds, even when sitting in the classroom.

Yeah was about to say the same. In my life the only occasions that I got good sleep were due to exhaustion. But in today's world it's kind of difficult to reach that point physically. I got knee and ankle issues from overweight so the only feasible solution to reach exhaustion is swimming.

Or rowing?

Yeah rowing and cycling also works to some extent. Rowing seems to be a little better but I can still feel the drag on my knees.

I'm in the middle of reducing 20-30lbs and see if it helps.

Glucosamine supplements have enough data for doctors to say "might work, won't hurt".

Chinese martial arts guys recommend eating chicken cartilage.

Look into "continuous passive motion" for joint repair. If you aren't in pain from walking - walk, walk a lot. Otherwise, back to CPM.

Diet to reduce inflammation, or cartilage can't repair itself.

Correct postural imbalances. Look into tight hip flexors / weak glutes to take pressure off of knees.

Rant, but might be useful, I looked into this stuff a lot.

Thanks. I'll look into it, the first line is especially interesting but I'll have to double check.

I do get pain after walking for say more than an hour so I'll refrain from that. I'll do a check to make sure it's not gout.

Thanks again for the tips!

Weight lifting might help, since it doesn't have to include your body weight. I remember being an unfit, overweight teenager who would stay up late on the computer. One summer my brother was home from college and we would go weight lift at the public gym in our civic center at 9 PM. I would end up asleep by 10:30, which was very unusual for me.

Thanks, yeah I'm also doing that a bit since I just started. My knees don't feel it because it's mostly dumbbells within 25 lbs. I heard that to lose weight it's best to combine cardio (which I can't do much) and weight lifting.

Best way to lose weight IMO is to restrict eating to an 8 hour (or less) window, eliminate carbs (sugar, bread, grains, beans, potatoes) and reduce fat intake so your body has to burn the fat you already have. After you have lost the weight, increase fat intake to get enough calories. You can go back to carbs after losing weight, but be mindful that they will cause insulin fluctuations that might give you cravings. If you can't manage the cravings, cut back again on the carbs.

Best sleep I had was on board ship. I think it was a matter of sleeping in a sleeping back in cot on a rocking ship that really did it. This was followed by 2 weeks of full blown insomnia after I got ashore where I experienced little to no sleep (max 1 hour a day) until it just went away. Maybe I just need to be exhausted, at sea and miserable all day long so I can sleep well.

I'm not sure it is enough to be exhausted. I recently spent the whole day doing some physical labour. I was exhausted by about 10pm. But I also received some news that day which had agitated me. I had a shower, I ate well and I was exhausted. But my mind wouldn't shutdown and I couldn't sleep.

It was only around 3:30am that I was able to get into some sort of delirious sleep and I woke up 3-4 hours later with my mind still screaming.

Maybe it needs practice to calm the mind. I'm not sure how soldiers in the battlefield who are exhausted can sleep when the possibility of death is always prevalent?

In general, the overactive mind is one that is unable to accept or process what has happened or is happening. It’s spinning it’s wheels trying to understand and control something that it fundamentally cannot at the time - and considers important/a threat to understand.

I’ve got a lot of combat veterans in my family. The ones who survived, say the way to survive and function is to accept that shit can and will happen, they have very little control over it (but they can control their little part of what they do), and they might not live through it.

One said ‘I accepted that I was going to die. If I didn’t today that was going to be a nice bonus. It got the worry out of my head and let me focus on doing things the best way, and the way I knew I wanted it to be done, and how I wanted to be remembered if I’m gone.’). He lost a lung in Vietnam, among other things, but is still kicking and enjoying life in his 80’s now. He has had, and still does have, many issues from the war, so don’t take this as a ‘and everything was fine’.

If you are at peace with, and have accepted the possible outcomes (including the horrific), and understand and accept how little control you actually have - the mind doesn’t spin. It truly knows the situation and can react appropriately, instead of a intellectual ‘knowing’ that it is struggling to integrate and process.

It frees you up to act, be present, and actually steer things in a better direction rather than spin/have the overactive mind. And sleep is necessary and helpful to actually doing better. And so they just do what they need to do. Which includes passing out and sleeping.

This makes a lot of sense, thank you for that insight. The news I received was about a business associate who is screwing me over. I knew (and I know) that there is very little I could do to stop him. And I could not accept it. The injustice of what he is trying to do kept me awake.

My wife suggested I find peace by thinking that by blindly trusting someone, I hadn't done everything I could to protect my interests. According to her, accepting that I could have done better will make it easier to accept the injustice. I'm trying, but it's hard to accept being cheated by someone you trusted.

There are techniques to help process what is happening in situations like this - CBT and/or mindfulness have both helped me in the past.

It is necessary to take risks to succeed - including trusting sometimes unknown parties. It is necessary to not trust more than you can afford to lose. It is also necessary to put trust and faith only in those that have earned it.

It’s a complex set of sometimes contradictory requirements. It is impossible to always have it perfectly under control. Sometimes that means learning painful lessons, sometimes that means getting into a fight to protect yourself as best as possible, sometimes it means writing it off - as the flip side of the good bets that pay off.

To know what is appropriate for you will require integrating the experiences and information you have, and calming evaluating for yourself your own values and your own plan, and what you want to do.

Easier said than done. I wish you luck!

I'm not sure if you were being flippant about the book comment, but reading any astrophysics text (even readable ones that popularize/dumb it down) literally inject 10mg of melatonin into my system.

Doesn't work if I'm agitated/worried, but it does help if my mind is racing after a day of problem solving.

I wanted to give you kudos for bringing up the Brontes. For several years I like to read in bed, and the more boring the better if sleep is the aim. Boring reading plus getting up early to work out means I usually only get a few pages per night before I can't keep my eyes open.

As a side note, when I was in high school I threatened to hire my Chemistry teacher to read me bedtime stories, though I never followed through, and alas she is likely no longer living. Always had a hard time staying awake while listening to her.

Had this problem myself, was never able to just fall asleep at night, it was always a struggle. Napping, never, that made no sense. I would usually fall asleep around 2AM, struggle to get up at 9AM, and would do catchup sleep until noon on the weekends. And this was with daily exercise, I was always very active.

About 10 years ago (mid 30s) I moved to a new city and pretty much had an empty apartment and nothing to do in the evening. Most importantly no TV or internet. I decided to just goto bed around ~9:30PM. I think because of the lack of stimuli or something, this stuck and I then found myself in a bedtime routine of falling asleep around 10PM and waking up around 6AM. I guess the key isn't to slip back into the old routine.

Fast forward many years and now I have a family. Not only am I passing out immediately at night, I also can take naps. Yes, im completely exhausted every night.

> You should then spend 10 seconds trying to clear your mind before thinking about one of the three following images:

>You’re lying in a canoe on a calm lake with nothing but a clear blue sky above you

>You’re lying in a black velvet hammock in a pitch-black room

> You say “don’t think, don’t think, don’t think” to yourself over and over for about 10 seconds.

So, I only have the last option available for me, due to aphantasia, which, in combination of not being able to just stop having a inner monologue makes the last option basically a no go either.

I also have (in my case mild) aphantasia, and I'll not that it doesn't say you should picture these things, it says you should think about them.

I find that thinking about these things does it for me, and I don't have to picture them at all.

And reciting "Don't think, don't think, don't think, don't think, ..." over and over is a technique to help quiet the inner monologue, so that option isn't a "no go", it's a thing to try to assist you.

For me, trying to think of about an image just stresses me out.

Will try the "don't think" though

Maybe just skip step one, and jump right to the last of the next three: keep "don't think" to drown out the inner monologue. Pretty much what I do when my inner monologue is keeping me awake. Not perfect, but it works a lot of the time.

In the nigth my mind go a full speed too. I learn to have the same "dream" that I repeat (with dialogue an all that!) then help to make the characters mumble and say things without clarity. Some times it works!

Pete Holmes, a comedian, talked about how he utilizes this technique. Ironically, instead of imagining himself laying in a canoe, he would visualize himself as a sniper, bundled up in a ghillie suit, hidden to the world while he awaits his prey. I would imagine that the army would not want you to use that specific scenario to help fall asleep.

I've used the sniper fantasy for decades (since I was a kid). I guess I discovered it by accident, but it has _always_ worked. The key (for me, at least) is trying to concentrate on the imaginary target...waiting for it to appear in the imaginary scene. I'm out like a light in no time.

Interesting. So focusing intensely on nothing, waiting. Seems like a form of meditation to clear your mind.

I (oddly) have a pretty good success rate for imagining dying in some way. Not sure it's something I can recommend for everyone tho.

I'm guessing that acting it out in my mind achieves a similar effect as the steps described - I relax my muscles (as I imagine bleeding out), slow my breathing and stop thinking shortly.

Isn’t systematic sleep deprivation part of military training too? Or is that just used in training for some branches? If so, I imagine that would be a big driver in rebuilding sleep habits from the ground up. If I’m not mistaken, sleep restriction is a big part of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. People force themselves to only be in bed for say six hours a night, so if they don’t sleep in that window, they are so tired the next night that they are more likely to fall asleep quickly.

I’m not sure for all branches, but I’ve read/heard it’s part of the Navy seals training and exam.

Although I’ve never come close to trying, I’m sure it would be one of the hardest parts for me.

Google "Hell Week" if interested. Basically any "special operations" (including Rangers) unit training will put you through sleep deprivation for a week as part of selection, regardless of country.

We were typically awake for about 48-72 hours straight during field training exercises in a combat unit. Somewhere between 36 and 48 hours you start micro-napping, even in the middle of performing other tasks. I remember falling asleep while walking between buildings multiple times. I'm not sure what goes on today, I separated nearly 20 years ago, but back in the early 00s we were doing these FTXs at least twice a year between deployments.

This is not the best version of this I've ever seen. It's close but its missing a few key steps. https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/fall-asleep-fast/ I've used this on myself and my kids and it's worked well. There are some extra steps that I think round out the effect. If you've tried similar techniques, but without some of these steps, it might be worth it to add them. 1. Get physically comfortable, usually layout on your back with your arms at your sides, if possible. 2. Relax each part of your body starting with the top of your head and ending with your toes. This should take a good 10min. I guarantee you are clenching your jaw, making a fist, keeping your shoulders up, etc. You need to make each part of your body completely limp dead weight. You should be able to physically feel the unsupported weight of your body parts. I imagine that I am turning into solid lead and sinking into the earth (bed). 3. Focus on your breathing. I don't have any super techniques for how to breath, other than to focus solely on it. Count your breaths and start counting over again as soon as you think of anything else other than your breath. This will take a long time if your mind is wandering. Just start over as soon as you realize you are thinking of anything except counting your breaths. Once you get to 10 move on. 4. This is the end. Imagine yourself floating. You can be floating on a canoe, in a bath tub, on the ocean, in a cloud, it doesn't really matter. Just imagine that you are no longer laying in a bed in a dark room. I call this going to my happy place. Like with the breathing, as soon as you realize you are thinking about anything at all, stop and bring your attention back to the sensation of floating. If I've gotten this far then I will begin counting breaths again, too. But usually I don't make it this far.

They should have mentioned in the article this works best if you are exhausted already.

Personally I don't have the useful military pre-requisite of physical exhaustion so I just use sleep-phones and Audible with a 30 minute sleep timer and something engaging but not too exciting to listen to; eg. a good history of something undramatic.

Slow the reading pace down to match your breathing cycle, and its really effective.

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/41528/relax-and...

https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/47674/can-you-t...

I read the book - original source is "Relax and Win". The whole book was fluff for the one-page exercise, and the author has questionable credentials.

The technique does not reliably work for me, though I still try it sometimes. I found that the people who fall asleep the fastest just don't think about anything at all, rather than focusing on a technique.

Totally agree. Unsurprisingly, the "best-kept secret for sleep" is to lead a healthy, low-stress, balanced lifestyle.

I have a friend who used to sleep fine. Started using some app on his phone to record his sleep, and it suggested that he was a fidgety sleeper and could get better quality sleep. So he bought a smartwatch that was supposed to help. It didn't. So he bought some special headphones that are supposed to pump out whitenoise while he sleeps. He slept worse than ever. In the end, he went back to no app, smartwatch, or headphones and now says he sleeps almost as well as he used to.

> The whole book was fluff for the one-page exercise, and the author has questionable credentials.

I usually fall asleep in minutes, although medication or a big day ahead can make it hard to calm down.

My wife asked me how did I do that, and I suspect I somehow Pavloved myself. When it's time to go to bed, I imagine myself comfortable, cozy and relaxed while resting on my pillow, covered with my blanket, sleeping. When I get to the bed all I can think of is that, and I fall asleep before noticing.

I think I'm qualified to sell a book around this paragraph too.

There's this clip of a chicken "sleeping on the job", the first few seconds of which make me sleepy almost instantly:

https://youtu.be/u8VDbFUjHmI

Oh, I might try watching a sleepy animals compilation while in bed. Never tried it, but seeing cute animals yawn also makes me sleepy.

First time I saw it I went to sleep almost immediately. I think it's this feeling of security and peacefulness that chicken must have felt to just go asleep outside, vulnerable to predators.

The human mind is truly amazing.

I wonder how many other normal body functions could be optimized with regular practice? Six weeks as is the case with this article

Same source material, without paywall and more detailed: https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/fall-asleep-fast/

The Independent article is so annoying, the first 4 paragraphs are useless fillers, and they do the "let's aim for the illiterate" thing of having each sentence be a different paragraph...

[This article was originally published in March 2018]

Maybe not a secret anymore?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17905574

Have seen this earlier. Did it work for you?

It works because soldiers are exhausted by default, the problem isn't physical for them, it's mostly mental.

If you take the average non exercising overweight westerner who sleep too much, eat too much and spend 75% of his day either sitting or lying down and watch netflix before going to bed there is no magic bullet to fall asleep fast.

Exercise, eat properly, skip screens at night and have a solid sleep schedule, these are all you need, the rest will fall in place by itself. You don't get to optimise the last 0.1% of the process if the first 99.9% are trash

Diet and routine does help. Many people in their late 30s and up I also recommend trying to reduce the amount of sugar and caffeine at least 3-4 hours before they sleep (ie 0 amount).

I personally have used a meditation technique for years. This method looks like a variation of that. I think as long as you relax and have the meditation bits you brain will start to associate 'do this means sleepy time'. Basically relax, breath normal but regular, minimize thoughts, meditation exercise. Me personally my 'exercise' for it is to calmly "count to 50 I will not make it past 20'. I rarely get to 5. For me if my brain is 'calm and clear' sleep is usually no issue. But if there is something that is concerning then it is more difficult. There are a very few times I have to go up to 50 and start over 2-3 times to get it to work right. But usually only if I am stressed about something else.

Routine is key also. But if the meditation is part of that your brain will do odd things. Even just thinking about this is making me feel sleepy :)

Yeah caffeine is a big one too, even up to 6+ hours before bed time it can still disrupt sleep: https://jcsm.aasm.org/doi/10.5664/jcsm.3170

I also do the counting thing, or other "actively try not to fall sleep" things

Didn't work for me in 80%+ of cases where I was having trouble sleeping. And when it did work, I tend to assume that it worked because I was having a good night and probably everything would have worked.

I'm still very fond of the image of being blanketed and cosy in a canoe looking at a blue reddish sky after the sun went down and waiting to drift into sleep.

The article doesn't do a great job of explaining the technique in full, but another few posts link to better articles that describe the process more fully.

I typically have problems falling asleep and can confirm that these "clear your mind, scan your body" approaches worked for me after some practice.

How about: Get drunk? Works for me.

Passing out and sleep are VERY different things.

I do know that, strange as it might seem.

If you're serious: lower sleep quality, physically damaging in the long run. I never had a good night of sleep after consuming alcohol, even as little as a 0.5L beer is enough to disturb my ability to sleep.

> lower sleep quality, physically damaging in the long run

Well, 50 years of alcohol doesn't seem to have caused any problems for me.

> I never had a good night of sleep after consuming alcohol, even as little as a 0.5L beer is enough to disturb my ability to sleep.

Not so for me. Not everyone is the same.

> Well, 50 years of alcohol doesn't seem to have caused any problems for me.

Do you have an identical non drinking twin to compare ?

Unless you have a genetic condition or are a literal alcoholic experiencing withdrawal symptoms I doubt sleep quality increase with any amount of alcohol, I have never seen any study remotely close to hinting that

> Do you have an identical non drinking to compare ?

Do you have an identical drinking (I suppose you mean "person" here, but who knows) to compare (I suppose you mean "to") here?

> I doubt sleep quality increase with any amount of alcohol

Well, in my experience it "increases".

The entirety of health/sleep<>alcohol scientific data support my point so you do you...

I feel stronger and sexier when I drink, it doesn't make it a scientific fact

> I feel stronger and sexier when I drink

Well, that is a bit sad - I don't. Perhaps, just perhaps, alcohol affects different people in different ways, like all other drugs?

Well the answer to your original question is "most people sleep worse, live worse lives, and die earlier if they frequently get drunk." Even if you're somehow different, you're an edge case. Either way, your comment reads like that of a teenager trying to be edgy and not that of a mature adult.

I'm a 67 year-old adult. And I don't think I'm an edge case. Most of the adults I know in the UK drink a lot.

How old are you, may I ask?

I'm in the UK, and most of the adults I know drink very, very little, and many drink no alcohol at all. You obviously move in different circles.

And the grandparent comment said:

>> ... your comment reads like that of a teenager trying to be edgy and not that of a mature adult.

It doesn't matter that you're 67 ... your comment still sounds like that of a teenager trying to be edgy. You might, of course, regard that as a compliment -- in a sense you're staying young at heart and in attitude.

> You obviously move in different circles

Being an adult, I think I probably do. When was the last time you went into a pub, Covid allowing?

> your comment still sounds like that of a teenager trying to be edgy

Well I bow to your teenager observational expertise. Did you happen to notice any slight drunkenness on Sunday, perhaps?

I'm a 60-year-old adult, and I work with teenagers in education. So I have experience of teenagers. I'm a director of a company that produces equipment that does the maritime equivalent of Air Traffic Control, so I have experience of both civilian and military adults.

And most of the adults I know drink very little, including this last Sunday. Most people I know have decided that getting drunk is less fun than staying sober. As I say, we clearly move in different circles.

I'm not denying your experience, I'm just providing balance.

I am 40, and drank 2 pints, one of Suffolk County and Old Growler respectively (both from the excellent Nethergate Brewery). It was truly a wild night for me.

Yeah - no trouble getting to sleep, but waking up two hours later to go to the bathroom and then laying awake for another two hours after that isn't pleasant.

How old are you? Curious, because in my twenties, a few beers used to put me to sleep. Now that I'm in my 40s, any alcohol within ~2 hours of bed is guaranteed to result in a terrible restless night.

EDIT - never mind, I see you're in your 50s or 60s (based on another comment).

It's heartburn city whenever I have alcohol. I can have a bit, but ... anything to the point where I can actually feel effects from it is guaranteed to give me bad heartburn all night. That and the price tag are enough to keep me away from regularly consuming alcohol.

It boils down to practising meditation/mindfulness.

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