The big lie about sleep
businessinsider.com
businessinsider.com
So, the lie is that you can only do so much to improve your sleep while poor and working.
It comes down to being rich, not being required to work, no boss, not submit vacation days a year in advance, able to get quality healthcare whenever needed or electively wanted, have time to exercise, meditate, and eliminate any worries or concerns with money that you rarely care about the costs.
There’s a lot of sleep hackers I’ve looked into who dive into EEG scalp mounted machines worn at night, 8sleep active waterbed addon coolers with sleep data, or sleep bands/rings. The latest is tracking and improving HRV heart rate variability numbers.
You can have all of this and be middle class if that's what you prioritize instead of Keeping Up with the Joneses.
You will likely not have both, though.
> You can have all of this and be middle class
???
Meditation is free and does not take a lot of time. Anyone can meditate, nobody is too busy to have 15 or 20 minutes a day for meditation. The same goes for exercise. 1 hour is 4% of the day.
Work is minimum 8 hours. Add another 2-3 hours for commuting, getting ready for work, and getting ready for being home. Add about 2 hours for cooking and clean up.
So far we’re at 12-13 hours. Add at least 7 hours for sleep (and sometimes turning in bed). We’re now at 19-20 hours. Add about an hour a day of incidentals that come up (social expectations, phone calls with family, etc). Add about two hours if you have kids.
Now we’re at 22-23 hours. Add an hour to two for entertainment and that’s your day.
Now you can change up the math a bit, and you’ll see that “only 4% of the day” is just a bad system for measuring time.
Things I didn’t include:
- bureaucracy related stuff, governmental stuff
- healthcare
- education
- elder care
The time split you did isn't set in stone, you can change most of that. Don't cook for an hour, move cleaning up into the weekend. 2-3 hours is a long commute, consider remote work or getting a job closer to where you are. 8 hours is a typical office workday but other arrangements are possible from contract work to 4-on-4-off type jobs.
I'm not saying that changing these things matches your lifestyle or what you want to do, simply that they are within your means to change (very likely) and that they are a decision. Even a decision that's not consciously made, like falling into a routine that everyone is doing, is ultimately a decision.
Staying up late cutting into sleep time was the only time of day I actually had any agency. College in contrast was amazing for sleep. No one pestering me out of rem because I was allowed to sleep in until my body said I had enough for the first time in my life. Even now after college I rarely get the luxury to sleep in anymore, and I mean really sleep in like until almost noon.
But not allowing your kids to sleep in on weekends ever is just crazy and seems unnecessary.
I’d of loved to have been physiologically capable, as a teenager, of going to bed early and getting up early, especially in a northern climate where the sun is up at 9pm.
[0] Grateful students are motivated, engaged, and successful in school: Cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental evidence, https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30340699/
"Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise."
Looking at their sleep map, that swath of good sleep down the middle of the country seems to go against that, and isn't mentioned in the article (unless I missed it). Most of Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa, and Colorado aren't "rich", but they get the best sleep. Wisconsin is slightly worse than those, but still rather good, and likely the only reason they're not great is that it's the state with the highest alcohol consumption.
But of course correlation yada yada causation.
Either that or, apparently, living in Nebraska or Minnesota
If it was entirely wealth-based, the map should correlate to this map of counties ranked by personal income, but there are clearly differences:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_counties...
It may be less effective trying to become rich or healthier without improving one's sleep schedule. Besides, the article says:
> Americans with sleep disorders earn an average of $2,500 less each year than their well-rested peers.
And 2.5k gross per annum is not a large gap to bridge. Imagine getting a $1k promotion and spending $125 less on something each month — is your sleep automatically fixed? No, it's a ridiculous idea. There is much more control we have over our sleep schedules (most of the people, there are exceptions) than our economic situation does.
People just need to take responsibility for their own actions. Being economically not as well off as someone else is just a convenient scape-goat. There will always be people richer than any other given person. That doesn't mean this given person is now barred from having a healthy sleep schedule.
While the correlation may exist, and even some small degree of causation, it is ridiculous to think that $2.5k per year extra will somehow give anyone more sleep, unless that money (after tax) is specifically going towards sleep treatments. But I think maybe less than 1% of all Americans at any given point are saving up for sleep treatments which are kept just very barely out of reach by their income. And very few Americans are in other such contrived scenarios where they really need that $2.5k to sleep well.
So it’s the persons decision to not have good health habits which result in poorer health and poorer sleep. The article has got causation mixed up.
Literally any effort you put in at all means that you are no longer the average in most cohorts. It's simply bad science.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_We_Sleep
That city is famous for attracting a bunch of people who love hiking and climbing mountains. It isn't a good example here, it is just full of young people who love to exercise, of course they are healthier! Just having an average age of 28.5 years have a dramatic impact on sleep statistics!
There are many other numbers in the articles that are strange, like here they compare average employed people to 13% of unemployed people, that could be true for a single population so it doesn't tell us anything!
> in a 2020 study, 13% of newly unemployed people said they got four hours of sleep or less a night, half of what the average employed person gets
Same how some Eastern European countries like Czechia top alcohol consumption per capita charts, when the numbers are pushed up by tourists going there to get shitfaced.
Touristic cities that attract a lot of people for one thing or the other should just be excluded from some statistics.
I can see how the argument would apply to certain cities or resort regions, i.e. I bet Palma de Mallorca has a much higher daily consumption during the summer season than in the winter.
I am reasonably fit but felt very ashamed of my body when I visited Boulder.
Citation needed.
All of these exist in some places and don't in others, in varying degrees, so in theory a study should be able to look at the effects.
Then I think they got causation mixed up. Studies show that night owls have less self control, worse sleep and health habits.
Allowing paywall sites without ever mentioning the site almost relies on users doing the above is one of the policies I find most annoying on the site. Seems to trip most everyone up.
... a regular sleep schedule
... time to mediate before going to sleep
... a dedicated sleeping room
... a mattress that actively controls its temperature to help you cool down
... a light alarm clock
... avoid stress
... special heavy weight blanket
... a calm and silent environment
and that's about it already.
i would also personally recommend to avoid financial stress and hardship by instructing your family office or portfolio manager to invest more conservatively.