Hacker News Reader

Comment by flurdy | Hacker News Reader

I wrote [1] about my tip for falling sleep: Daydream. I now coach my own kids to do the same and it works.

Essentially do not think about things that has happened; It just gets you annoyed with regrets that can not be changed. Do not think about the future; You will get excited, anxious, annoyed and too worked up to sleep. Also covers sports, politics, relationship, technology etc.

Think about things that do not affect you as a dream. A fantasy world etc. That has nothing to do with you personally so that it is just calming but distracts you enough until you are soon asleep.

[1] https://blog.flurdy.com/2010/02/excellent-tip-on-how-to-go-t...

View on HN

For years I fell asleep thinking about some math problem I was working on. Worked wonders, never had any issues falling asleep.

Then I left academia, and were no longer thinking about math all day. An unforeseen consequence: I started having issues falling asleep.

Now I need to regularly look up puzzles or maybe challenging programming problems, just to have something relaxing to fill my mind while falling asleep.

This has the exact opposite effect on me because I find it too mentally engaging and it also ends up tied up with anxiety. I can end up in weird spirals and have to stick on some noise to break my brain out of it. I do envy the ability to relax that way though.

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

It bears a risk of developing a connection and feeling sleepy every time you need to do some math. :D

I have certain books that I just gave up on for this reason. Once it becomes my "bedtime book" its impossible for me to read a few pages and not nod off!

I have occasionally had an opposite experience with you: sometimes I worked out some math problem in my dream and I woke up to write it down.

If I think about some problems while I'm trying to sleep, it would just keep me awake though.

What kind of problems would you be thinking? How does that work—Is the thinking process making you tired so you fall asleep, or does it make you more relaxing?

For me I sometimes fall asleep to undergrad math problems, the more challenging ones. By then, I'm too tired to want to write things down (since that will wake me up), so it's really hard to make actual progress, or thoroughly plan out the formal steps required to verify a proof approach. So I just keep turning it over while trying to keep everything in my head. The focus required stops my mind from wandering and getting distracted.

There are a few podcasts that just tell stories about nothing in a very calm and relaxing way.

https://www.nothingmuchhappens.com/stories is one I've used sometimes, but there are others that are similar.

That's something I've actually been doing for years.

In my case, the fantasy that tends to work best is one where I become something akin to Batman, fighting crime in my hometown of Rio de Janeiro.

I begin to imagine where I'd set up my Batcave, the types of villains I'd confront, the kind of vehicle I'd use to navigate the city, and then I gradually fall asleep.

I experiment with various stories, but it's safe to say that the superhero genre has a much higher success rate for me.

I like to write short fiction sometimes as a hobby (usually just for myself, or occasionally posted anonymously on the internet), with a big reason being that I have something to think about when I'm trying to fall asleep or distract myself from anxiety. The only annoying thing is that sometimes I come up with a great idea as I'm falling asleep, and get excited to put it down in writing, only to find the next morning that I can't remember what it was.

Many great ideas have been invented/solved at night to mostly be forgotten by the morning

This is what I found as well, too late in life, but definitely works.

The only problem was that sometimes the daydreams would come on their own, and sometimes memories would come instead.

I read somewhere, maybe here, about inventing situations...one in particular was being dropped onto an island with nothing...and going from there. What do you see? What do you do first? Are there other people? Animals? I use that one quite often!

  Do not think about the future;

A variant of this technique I'm using since age ten, is to project myself in aspirational situations, tipically what I want to be when I grow up. So I'll be a cosmonaut or a famous writer planning projects and interacting with people

I empathize and can second this as well. For a few years I’ve been visualizing a spaceship I travel in. By now there’s a lot of detail, so it doesn’t always work; but if the day got me in a sour mood, at least I know my ‘special’ space is waiting for me at bedtime.

I’ve found something similar: to fall asleep visualise something vividly. It could be a scenario (a daydream as you suggest) or a scene.

The steps go something like this: be still, relax face, stop thinking (or distract self with audio you’re heard before), vividly picture, wake up.

> I’ve found something similar: to fall asleep visualise something vividly. It could be a scenario (a daydream as you suggest) or a scene.

This method also has the advantage for those of us who can't normally visualise while awake. When you are on the boundary of sleep you can somehow take advantage of your dream circuits to help you out. This is the only time of day I'm able to see anything but black when closing my eyes.

Thanks, this convinced me to give this a try!

You clearly don't have aphantasia

I pretend I’m snowboarding and imagine the scenery passing by and works like a charm.

I don't need to tell myself to daydream. I spend most of my life, I sometimes think, inventing worlds and indulging in various fantasies. I really should write some of them down sometimes.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com