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Lie still in bed
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- amelius 3y agoBut what if you have restless leg syndrome?
- skyraptor 3y agoI had RLS pretty bad, and that makes it impossible to lay still in bed. I "cured" the RLS somehow. It was probably either, or a combination of, going keto and/or giving up a lifestyle of chronic cardio exercise. I've been RLS free for over a decade now. Lying still in bed is possible now, though still not super easy for me, but at least RLS isn't part of the problem.
- vxNsr 3y agoIsn’t that just a symptom of ADHD? I would say the advice still holds. Movement is just to stimulate your mind to retain focus, but in this case we don’t want stimulation, so you’ll still be able to (with will power) remain still in bed.
- pbhjpbhj 3y agoIt seems for my wife it may have been low iron, second-hand anecdotal reports on low-iron forums only is my basis, sorry.
- smikhanov 3y agoNo, it’s not (see e.g. https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/restless-legs-syndrome/ https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/restless-legs-syndrome/). It’s indeed difficult to lie still when you have RLS, but general sleep hygiene helps with it.
- Nevermark 3y agoIt is 4am and here I am after waking up and having trouble sleeping. Serendipity, since I am reading this article now? I am going to give this a try - the narrowing down of any challenge to its prime implicant makes a great deal of sense.
- Tempest1981 3y agoYou haven't posted in the last hour. Hope you had success.
- hoherd 3y agoThe "buy a blank PDF" part of that site made me chuckle. I wonder what accounting reasons there would be to do that rather than just ask for a tip, or if he did it simply for the humor.
- Hamuko 3y agoSoliciting donations without a permit is potentially illegal in my country, so selling a worthless item might be a better way to go about it. Might be something like that.
- xcdzvyn 3y agoWow, a permit is 300 EUR + 120 EUR / year. There's no way this can really cover a single person asking for donations on their website, can it? That's insane. It also looks like you need to specify information about your "organisation", including specifying a treasurer? How could a single person even fill this out if they wanted to? ~~ It appears permits aren't given to individuals and there is simply no legal way for a given person to ask for donations in Finland.
- niemandhier 3y agoWhich country is this?
- tssge 3y agoFinland for example.
- falcor84 3y agoI would assume you would act as your own treasurer, no?
- Hamuko 3y agoI think that's a feature, not a bug. Money collection permits are really meant for non-profits, not individuals.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoVery similar to “chop wood, carry water” Seems like I’m seeing a cultural shift happening in the last few months to people re/discovering zen-stoicism-minimalism Probably the cyclical nature of trends
- jprete 3y agoIt also might be a response to the apparent chaos of generative AI.
- mathgeek 3y agoIt certainly seems to be the trend currently. There’s money and brands to be made convincing people to stop distracting themselves with all the trends you made money and brands convincing them to do.
- mycologos 3y agoMy perception is that stoicism has been a buzzword on HN for the entire time I've been here (~since 2017?). The uptick in various forms of doomsaying around that time might have had something to do with it.
- AndrewKemendo 3y agoYeah some of these philosophical positions have a baseline frequency generally - biased up or down for the respective group. However, the frequency seems to be increasing, though my caveat is that this increase is cyclical - so not “new” per se, but cyclically new.
- bemusedthrow75 3y agoIt's possibly just that you're noticing it. Tech people on the internet have been like this for as long as I can remember the internet (31 years in my case). Sometimes intolerably smugly, like Jack Dorsey.
- ambrose2 3y agoPeople online were talking about zen and minimalism as being pretty trendy in 2010, so back then I had predicted that probably by now maximalism or something would be trendy as a response. I don’t think simple cyclical trends is a great model anymore.
- Nezghul 3y agoWhat if I am capable of thinking with closed eyes?
- edu 3y agoThis is my case, my trick is to imagine pleasurable fantasy scenarios and go over the smallest details. I go a little bit more meta, and start imagining myself sleeping. Kind of… say I’m part of the Start Trek crew. I imagine how would it be to sleep in the Enterprise. How is the room? What furniture is there? Is there a window/screen showing the outside? Etc… For me, works wonderfully.
- Hamuko 3y agoSounds similar to my trick, although I'm not sure if I really delve into details. I think the main purpose is to push out everything else from my mind, since whenever I have insomnia, it's not because I'm looking at my phone, but because I can't get something out of my mind.
- jprete 3y agoI don’t know if that matters unless you think about things that require action. My own experience is that if I think something needs to be acted on, and it’s very quick or very urgent, I just do it and go back to bed. If it’s neither, I write it down. I find either of those to be easier than trying to sleep with the endless nagging by the back of my brain.
- layer8 3y agoMeditation is one way to stop doing that. OTOH, it doesn’t mean you’ll sleep either.
- defanor 3y agoThere was another technique for falling asleep mentioned on HN, possibly <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17905574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17905574>. It basically suggests to not think, either.
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- Labo333 3y agoThere is an amazing trick that I now use almost every time I want to sleep: the 4-7-8 breathing method. I don't remember using it and not falling asleep in less than 5 minutes, whatever the stress I was in. https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/16/health/4-7-8-breathing-technique-relaxing-wellness/index.html https://edition.cnn.com/2022/09/16/health/4-7-8-breathing-te...
- layer8 3y agoThose ratios drive my music brain crazy.
- phito 3y ago4-4-4 works really well for me
- Tempest1981 3y agoWould 4-8-8 work?
- layer8 3y agoI wondered too. The article claims that the 4-7-8 ratio is important.
- bemusedthrow75 3y agoI have often wondered about how the balance of the 7 and 8 was struck. But I don't really want to think about it too deeply because it might break it!
- bemusedthrow75 3y agoI used this for a while, combined with (usually once, before the breathing technique) a sort of "bed yoga" thing, tightening muscles and then relaxing them until I start to feel at-one with the bed, an unusual feeling I can't much describe. I now don't have to consciously do the breathing counts or the exercise; my brain and body can find their way to that same place with just careful, slow breathing with the long exchale, and a focus on that feeling. But on its own, the 4-7-8 trick is enormously impressive. You don't even have to trust that it works. Though no caffeine after 2pm probably helps too.
- Waterluvian 3y agoThe best kind of parody: the one you almost can’t tell is parody. My sense is that the core issue with people who actually think this way is that they lack empathy. They assume that their context is shared by everyone. So if one simple trick worked for them, it surely must work for everyone else.
- eulgro 3y agoIs it really parody though? I haven't read other posts of the author to be able to know. It does make sense to me. When someone tells me they can't do something the problem isn't usually that they can't, but that they don't want to. In particular I like to apply it to acts for reducing one's environmental footprint: - Want to become a vegetarian? Just stop eating meat. - Want to switch to a more environmentally friendly mode of transportation? Just stop using your car. Or just stop putting gas in it so you won't even be able to use it. - Want to reduce your consumption? Just stop buying useless stuff. And whenever I say things like that, I agree it looks like I'm lacking empathy, because they focus on the action. But the real challenge is the "want to" part. Because once you want to, you can often just do it. And if willpower is lacking, that just means you don't want to enough. Of course you can then take my logic and apply to everywhere it doesn't, like telling me that won't help a blind person to see again. That's beside the point.
- Waterluvian 3y agoIt’s basically a take on “it hurts when I do this.” “Have you tried not doing that?” But I guess if trying to sleep helped someone get to sleep… awesome!
- sneak 3y agoLiterally everyone who stopped smoking cigarettes (whilst continuing to live) stopped using this method. It's underrated.
- sneak 3y agoI think perhaps you synthesized the "surely must work for everyone else" part. The author claims it worked for them, and suggested others try it. That's all.
- datavirtue 3y agoYeah yeah yeah...just give me the pill.
- pictur 3y agoMost sleep problems cannot be solved by sitting still. You should go to the doctor, get a sleep test and look for more serious treatment methods. I wouldn't recommend wasting your time with such suggestions.
- ketanmaheshwari 3y agoTakes 2 months to see a doctor in Canada. Maybe better to give it a shot.
- pictur 3y agoOf course it can be tried. but this solution may only work for those who do not have chronic sleep problems. It doesn't work for someone with sleep apnea or parasomnia.
- nick__m 3y agoAcces to a doctor appears to be quite inequal in Canada as I can log on to my doctor clinic portal and book an appointment to see my doctor in the next week. However, I live in a town with a research hospital affiliated with to an university, so maybe that help.
- TMWNN 3y ago> Acces to a doctor appears to be quite inequal in Canada Understatement. An amazingly high portion of Canadians don't have a family doctor <https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/despite-more-doctors-many-canadians-don-t-have-a-family-physician-report-1.4611149 https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/despite-more-doctors-many-cana...>. In Atlantic Canada (the four easternmost provinces, for non-Canadians) it is impossible, repeat impossible, to get a family doctor if you don't have one <https://web.archive.org/web/20190226051406/https://www.thetelegram.com/in-depth/doctor-shortage/what-we-learned-and-what-you-said-about-doctor-shortage-in-atlantic-canada-286436/ https://web.archive.org/web/20190226051406/https://www.thete...>. It's one thing to have shortages in rural areas—that happens in the US too—but Halifax?!? I've heard the same occurs in Vancouver too.
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- nerdchum 3y agoThis may work for non-neurotic people but laying still in bed is when the demons in my mind come out to play and remind me of all of my problems.
- kaffeeringe 3y agoThen you should take some time earlier and face the demons while you are not trying to sleep. You have to think about thing - if you don't do it at day-time, the brain will force you at night.
- siva7 3y agoThere’s always an ipad or iphone in the bed to hush away the demons :)
- Tijdreiziger 3y agoI discovered that having my phone next to my bed makes it too easy to say ‘ah, I can’t sleep, let’s just check HN for a while’, and it also makes it too easy to turn off my alarm in the morning. I’ve started putting it at the other end of my room before sleeping, and so far the results are promising.
- microtonal 3y agoIn my experience lying still doesn't really work, because it's a deliberate practice with a goal and your brain starts analyzing that as well. You know the inner voice that says: I am still not calming down, I am still awake. I once read that sleep therapists sometimes give people with bad sleeping problems the opposite advice: keep your eyes slightly open and try to stay awake. Not in the sense that you should put on loud music, put lucifers between your eyelids, etc. But just lie down and don't try to fall asleep. It often works, because people let go of the goal to calm down and get asleep (which makes it hard to do exactly that), once you let go, your body does what it wants to do, calm down and sleep. A similar approach works very well for me: just stop caring. Ensure that you are on a regular schedule for going to bed and waking up (so that you biological clock doesn't get confused), don't drink alcohol (bad sleep quality), don't do anything exciting the hours before going to bed (heated discussions on HN), and write down stuff that bothers you before going to bed. Let your body do the rest. If you are awake for some more time, then just interpret it as: my body isn't tired yet, I am just going to enjoy the cosiness of my bed. Disclaimer: I am not a doctor/therapist.
- tschumacher 3y agoI disagree with the point about exercising. Some days I look forward to running because I remember the great runs where I felt energetic. But once I'm out running I realize it's a bad day and it takes willpower to keep going.
- rognjen 3y agoI think the general point still stands though. It's just that because you didn't use up your willpower to get started, you get to use it to keep going.
- vinaypai 3y agoI went through a period where I'd wake up aboud 2-3 hours after going to bed and couldn't get back to sleep for most of the night. I used a related technique to help. I count backwards from 1000, and force myself to keep my eyes closed. It's a task that takes just enough brainpower that it's hard to do on autopilot while my mind drifts to something else. If I do wander off I just go back to counting whatever number I remember. It's been almost totally successful in the 2 months I've been doing it.
- hojinkoh 3y agoMy sister once taught me a small trick to calm myself down when I was anxious but had no idea what I was anxious about: Count down from a random 3-digit number, subtracting 7 at each count. (e.g. 794, 787, 780, 773, ...) Do it until I drift away and lose track, unable to continue. It works. I guess it's kind of in that "takes just enough brainpower" league. This takes more brain power than simply counting down though, and I'm not sure if this actually helps one falling asleep... Another technique I derived from this is to do a countdown in the foreign language I was learning. Several years ago it was in English, and right now it's in Japanese. It also takes more brain power than counting down in my mother tongue, with the additional benefit of getting a little bit of practice. Killing two birds with one stone I guess :p
- CrzyLngPwd 3y agoCounting down in difficult numbers is also a great way to get rid of hiccups. e.g. count down from 1987 in 23s.
- rladd 3y agoFor hiccups, this always works: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1693610/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1693610/
- forinti 3y agoThe best method I found was listening to youtube videos about philosophy, especially Kant. And rain videos also work.
- d0gsg0w00f 3y agoIt's "primitive skills" videos for me. I'm usually out after about 5 or 10 minutes.
- ravishi 3y agoMy mom worked night shifts as a nurse most of her life. It gave her the opportunity to be with us during the day but also took a toll on her sleep habits and health. She had a lot of trouble sleeping so she said she would just lie still in bed and that would get her _some_ rest. At least most rest than she would get by actively trying to sleep.
- ramoz 3y ago- cut back caffeine significantly - work out daily (lift and/or cardio) - move phone away from reach My key ingredients to sleeping like a baby, deep dreaming almost nightly. 31yo ymmv
- kumarvvr 3y agoI discovered profoundly relaxing and deep sleep by doing this routine. 1. Lie on my back on the bed. Place my hands beside my torso, palms facing down. Keep my legs straight, but free and relaxed. 2. Close my eyes and focus my attention on the region between my eyebrows. 3. Relax my breathing and make it regular and slow. 4. Actively imagine my stress and anxiety to be a form of fluid, filled in my body and then imagine it evaporating from my finger tips. I do this for about 30 minutes everyday, and the days I do it, I have no recollection of my sleep. I mean, no dreams, no moving about, nothing. I also found that this form of sleep, makes me absolutely refreshed even if I sleep for only 5 to 6 hours.
- bhouston 3y agoI find any advice with regards to falling asleep to be very dependent upon the person. Everyone is my family seems to have different sleep styles and it isn't because of people using phones in bed. So try a lot of different things and do what works.
- srge 3y agoI’ve been meditating every day for 3 years. I now meditate more than 1 hours every day. How did I do it? My only goal was to do at least 1 min of meditation a day but every day. No excuse. It’s my opinion that this is the best and easiest method to build a meditation practice.
- rognjen 3y agoMeditation is kind of like sitting still.
- larodi 3y agoSuch articles are… really laughable, as people differ in their physiology and circadian rhythms and it is NOT generally advisable to blindly follow someone else’s experiences with sleep. There are books like ‘While we sleep’ which can give you some insight into the complexity of causes and effects and even this book was heavily criticised although the author did some actual research with cited sources etc. And I’m saying this as someone who had major problems with sleep for more than year, but now sleeps daily an average of 7-8hours. The only thing actually recommendable (IMHO of course) is to not force yourself into sleep, as this may very well backfire. Laying still and stuff like that is a rather forceful technique. For hyperactive and hollering people (with ADHD and alike) it may even amount to torture. All the CBT that you can apply is NOT universal. Techniques such as not eating too much, not drinking alcohol at night, cooling the room, counting eyes closed, doing exercise, having blinders, doing meditation if you want… are absolutely NOT universal and what works for someone may actually be bad for you and me. In reality the most common advice - to meditate before sleep - may result in contrary results. Courber intuitively there is evidence that sleep deprivation may actually help depression, rather than forcing sleep patterns. Please consult sleep experts, rather than consulting random articles although they may seem plausible.
- karaterobot 3y ago> For hyperactive and hollering people (with ADHD and alike) it may even amount to torture. Seems like a slight overstatement.
- jimmydddd 3y agoSteve Pavlina recommends i) waking at the same time every day, and ii) going to bed when you are tired. If you stick to i), ii) will eventually stabilize, although it may change from day to day. At the beginning you typically stay up too late for a few days. But after a while, with a consistent wake up, your body adapts to a beneficial sleep time. Of course, YMMV.
- ChoHag 3y agoAfter a while this may invert and you find that whatever time you go to sleep (within some degree of normal) you'll wake up precisely n hours later, for whatever value of n your body's settled on. No more need for an alarm clock.
- progbits 3y agoI've been trying this over the years but unless I'm completely comfortable I'm unable to fall asleep. This means perfect position (tossing over for hour or more in new unfamiliar bed), perfect hydration (no need to drink or pee) and perfect sound (rain is ok, for ticking clock in another room I eventually give up and go take out the batteries).
- dorkwood 3y agoI used this same technique to induce lucid dreams when I was younger. My theory for why it worked was that one part of the brain was sending a 'roll over' signal to another part of the brain in order to check if it was ready to enter the next stage of sleep. By purposely ignoring that signal and remaining still, I was able to fall directly into a dream while still conscious. I'm sure there was a bit more to it than that. I also kept a rigorous dream journal, and had several other rituals and practices that I've since forgotten. But lying still was definitely a big part of it.
- Androider 3y agoThe most negative influence on my sleep by far is from using my phone in bed, as I suspect it is for many others. Not only when falling asleep, but also when waking up reaching for the phone is too easy and robs me of any chance of falling asleep again. The only trick I've found that works quite consistently for me, is removing the phone from the room entirely. This makes my laziness work for me for once, as getting the phone from another room altogether is too much of a hassle. Similarly, if you want to stop eating after a certain hour, 9pm in my case, brush your teeth at that exact time. After that I can't be bothered to eat since brushing my teeth again would be a hassle.
- Swordfish12345 3y ago> removing the phone from the room entirely. 100%. Started this recently. It works perfectly if you can withstand the withdrawals! The moment you start doing this, is the moment you have to confront how incredibly addicted you actually are to your phone and the internet. It will feel like you are being tortured. And it's very easy to give in because the immediate consequences are quite tame (getting to sleep a bit later, little less energy the next day). But over time they add up. I highly recommend trying it and observing your mind go crazy. You can truly start to understand addicts and what they go through. The biggest revelation was that cold turkey doesn't work too well. Instantly cutting off access to your phone can cause you to be consumed by the desire to have access to it (moreso than you even felt before), and you lose a lot of mental energy fighting against this. Which can disrupt your work, and disrupt your sleep even more so than if you allowed yourself access to it. I think this is the reason most people don't do it even though its such a simple and obvious advice. Addiction.
- solumunus 3y agoIf you’re that addicted you’ve got real problems and you should absolutely be following through with this and other things to break that addiction. I question how many people would really react like that. I use my phone in bed at times I shouldn’t but it’s a complete non issue to not have it in bed.
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- intrasight 3y agoI've suffered insomnia most of my adult life. Took Trazodone for years and decided to eliminate that dependency. My technique - YMMV Lie still on my back. Play a boring (at night anyway) history podcast. Mentally focus on my breath. Might even count them. I rarely get beyond 30.
- smeej 3y agoMost of these comments are about sleep, but the article really isn't. It's about where to apply willpower to change a habit, slowly but surely. I found the part about recognizing small changes rather than fixating on the end goal especially helpful. You don't need to go to sleep an hour earlier to be building a habit. Two minutes more effort counts.
- rognjen 3y agoI appreciate that you recognize that. I'm not sure if I'm not writing clearly enough or if HN as an audience is a bit pedantic, but most comments here seem to have missed that.
- smeej 3y agoWell, I really appreciate it. I'm planning to apply it in two ways specifically: Increasing my daily average step count by only 2% per week, and decreasing my daily average calories by only 1% per week. Both numbers are high enough that I think I should be able to round to whole numbers pretty well. Using the rule of 72 for some quick math, I think that means I can double my step count in 36 weeks. (I haven't figured out quite how the math works for the calories if I'm counting down, not up, but I'll get it!) I have a strong tendency to err on the "either I jump all the way to my goal or I've failed" side and burn myself out, so I'm actually going to try to use my will power to refrain from walking more steps, or eat a couple more calories. I'm hoping it'll help drive home that I succeed in the long run when the short-term change is small. Thanks for writing it!
- maerF0x0 3y agomany life advices would additionally claim that one should mostly abandon "end goal" thinking and instead focus on how to live a rhythm/pattern of actions that you can celebrate today, and that cumulative could result in the goal you care about (given a reasonable amount of successful dice rolls) . This is a sort of values based form of living vs target fixation. I go to the gym because I value my health today and therefore eat healthy + go to gym. I don't do it because I want the end state of "abs".
- Pooge 3y agoI used to be really bad at falling asleep. I'm not talking 30 minutes or 45 minutes, but sometimes 3 whole hours without being able to get 1 second of sleep. I didn't even touch my phone once while in bed. I also had a lot of trouble finding the right position in which to sleep to feel comfortable (not even talking about finding the right mattress/pillow combination). Somehow, I trained myself at sleeping on my back (I was a big stomach sleeper). It's actually easier than you think. Couple that with counting backwards from 200 to 0 - and starting over whenever I reach 0 or forget where I was because my mind wandered - and I now fall asleep well within 1h on average. Now I don't have any pain at all when I wake up, I don't need to spend hundreds on finding the right pillow/mattress combination and I have less trouble falling asleep. I don't actually think about it a lot, but I'm only in my 20s and I can't fathom the life problems I avoided solving this one early on. I'm really happy.
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- sureglymop 3y agoWill try this! Sounds like a good strategy to roll over to 200 once you reach 0. In the past when I tried the "endless counting" strategy that was still too much brain activity.
- Pooge 3y agoCounting backwards from 200 and starting over is easy enough to be done almost mindlessly, but at the same time hard enough to make you concentrate and thus keep your mind from wandering.
- dloss 3y agoFor people sleeping alone, this counting technique might be a nerdy alternative: http://www.dirk-loss.de/calmyourmind/ http://www.dirk-loss.de/calmyourmind/ Moreover, I find Shinzen Young's reframing helpful: "Amazingly, it’s possible to get a good night’s rest without necessarily sleeping much or at all. Two things are required: (1) that the body get rest by lying very still and corpse-like. (2) that the consciousness get rest by engaging in a systematic focusing technique." https://www.shinzen.org/help-for-insomnia-yet-another-use-for-mindfulness/ https://www.shinzen.org/help-for-insomnia-yet-another-use-fo...
- m3kw9 3y agoNo coffee after 1pm does some Magic. There are many other difficult variables too but this one is easy
- m3kw9 3y agoA rule I set is that I don’t ever lie down on my bed unless I’m sleeping which means you don’t relax and use phone. Better if you don’t use your bed ever for any other activity than sleep and f’ing
- rognjen 3y agoNo TV in the bedroom is also a good rule.
- estebarb 3y agoI think I'll pass. When I lie still in bed with eyes closed I end up with sleep paralysis.
- xwdv 3y agoI’ve never actually slept. I lay still in bed, until I find myself waking up. Time has passed, but I have no idea what happened during the time in between laying down and waking up. I only feel the effects of having slept. Similarly there is a version of me that has only ever slept, and knows nothing of the awakened life. Yet still I wonder, if there is even a third version unknown to both of us?
- AltruisticGapHN 3y agoMakes sense. Read the basics about the Autonomic Nervous System, the sympathetic and para-sympathetic branches. You don't want to stay in sympathetic activation. Browsing on a phone may seem relaxing, but it keeps your sympathetic nervous system engaged. Think of it as "goal oriented activity". I've got into a habit of laying on my back for like 10-20 mins before I turn to the side. It really does help calm me down a bit. I don't try to "stop thinking" or count or anything like that, just laying on my back and feeling the sensation. Some arguments in favor: - if you work in IT likely you're sitting a lot, and your psoas shorten. When you lie on your back it opens the psoas a little bit, so you feel that very gentle stretch in the tummy area - for anxious people, we are designed by nature with eyes that can scan in front of us, but our back is less secure. I think lying on your back for a little while, lets you "secure" this area, as well as release the neck and back muscles a little more Following this intuition, in the summer when it's too hot to have a blanket, I found a trick where I would roll my duvet in like a long tube, then when I lay on my side, I would pull the "tube" with one arm, and press it against my back. This way I would not be covered on top, but have a more secure feeling in the back and I think it also helped me fall asleep. Think of lying on your back as rest. It's not about willpower so much, but engaging the para-sympathetic part of the nervous system, which is typically about release/relaxed curiosity (ie. feeling the body a little bit) rather than being engaged and pursuing what nowadays is typically an endles stream of content.
- tekkk 3y agoIm not a bad sleeper but it drove me insane when i wasnt able to sleep anymore about month ago. I was doing like the article suggested, lying in bed, but when it was 3-4 AM i kinda gave up and started just doing stuff. Then i either held off for next evening or slept in the day. What changed it for me was turning my massive portable AC on and let it hum through the night. I think my body just dont sleep that well when its hot/warmish. So there can be multiple factors in play. I agree though being really pedant about sleep rhytme helps, especially waking yourself up in the same time.
- lost_tourist 3y agoI find that my diet affects my sleep as much as anything. I eat lower carb (one carby meal a day allowed, others are "keto" style, I just never could give up carbs completely, I always ended up backsliding) and having a regular sleep schedule, 6-7 hours a night is fine. If I'm just "eating whatever" (and I love carbs and junk food) I'd have to sleep 9-10 hours or I would be a wreck the next day. One thing I have always been blessed with was being able to go to sleep though, only the most stressful times in my life have I ever had insomnia.
- Swordfish12345 3y agoThe biggest problem of our modern age is the removal of agency. We are being pathologized by pseudo-science all around us. When people mention "willpower", everyone today is looking for a diagnosis as an excuse instead. Some things really are as simple as articles like this. The failing is education. People don't understand the way they have re-shaped their brains from pretty much everything spawning from the internet and tv.
- InSteady 3y ago>When people mention "willpower", everyone today is looking for a diagnosis as an excuse instead. >People don't understand the way they have re-shaped their brains from pretty much everything spawning from the internet and tv. Sounds like people are looking to understand, but maybe according to you they are looking in the wrong places? Also, who is everyone? I think a ton of Westerners and especially Americans have been conditioned into believing various convenient lies that advertisers and cultural mythology tells, along the lines of "you can have everything you want without doing hardly anything at all as long as you belong to the right groups and spend your money 'correctly.'" As I think you correctly identify, this is further exacerbated by modern tech which treats attention span as a commodity and tries (often very successfully) to hack and hijack it for the benefit of advertisers and data miners. It seems to me the above is far more damaging to everyone's ability to execute plans involving willpower than any increasing awareness and expanding diagnostic criteria for various physical and mental health disorders. What diagnoses are we talking about here exactly that everyone is looking for that are totally bunk and pseudo-science? Depression? ADHD? Autism? Anxiety disorders? It's true that as awareness spreads there will be more people who incorrectly think "maybe this is totally me, and it's why I haven't been able to achieve what I want..." But identifying this as the reason people don't have any willpower, I think puts the cart before the horse. People already didn't have much willpower (and also don't know how to use what they have effectively)... so they are looking for reasons for that and end up looking in the wrong places. Also, just because something can be explained in simple terms does not mean it is simple for everyone nor that it is easy. If it is easy for you, great. You're probably lucky in more ways than you realize.
- 3y ago
- kevin_thibedeau 3y agoI recently broke a shoulder blade and was forced to sleep on my back without shifting for a few months. It became somewhat tolerable but my heels would go numb from the lack of any movement. I'm enjoying the ability to spend more time on my side and change positions now.
- kbutler 3y agoThe biggest effects helping me fall asleep are: - get some exercise during the day. 30 minutes of exercise is basically free from a time perspective, because of improved sleep - if I need to fall asleep earlier, get up earlier Sometimes my brain is too busy, and an audiobook with a just-interesting-enough-to-listen-to-but-not-care-about can help disengage from the thoughts of the day.
- rognjen 3y agoExercise is magic. It's improved so many things for me.
- ironborn123 3y agoWhile willpower may work for some people, what actually works for me (and i believe the majority of people) is self-deception or distraction. To sleep, use white noise/rhythmic music/soothing voice To climb a mountain, tell yourself that my next goal is to just reach that particular rock about 100 metres higher In the gym, make a friend and chat and joke with them while doing your exercises While sprinting, divide 32 by 13 to many decimal places, as Joey from Friends once suggested.
- lubesGordi 3y agoFor me, to get good sleep, I need to have a surprising amount of exercise during the day and have tried hard at something so that I'm mentally tired. That plus not eating any calories at all for the 4 hours before bed and I'm pretty guaranteed to get good sleep.
- tasuki 3y agoThe important thing is to wake at a regular time and to go to sleep when you're tired. It's not necessary to go to sleep at a regular time. This no-bullshit page has some more detailed info with references: https://insomniasos.net/ https://insomniasos.net/
- rognjen 3y agoFor me the spread between mentally and physically tired was too large.
- flurdy 3y agoI 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-to-sleep https://blog.flurdy.com/2010/02/excellent-tip-on-how-to-go-t...
- ibmoreira 3y agoThat'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.
- quag 3y agoI’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.
- thomasahle 3y ago> 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.
- l72 3y agoI also struggle to sleep due to anxiety about what I could or should be doing. I started using a visualization meditation technique. I don’t watch a wide variety of tv, instead I tend to watch my favorites over and over again so I have a pretty good visual in my head. I have ripped the audio from my favorite shows and put them on random with a 30 minute sleep timer. I focus on visualizing the episode as I’m listening to it as that keeps my mind from wandering, but since I know the episodes so well it also isn’t a struggle. I’m rarely still awake by the time it stops playing after 30 minutes. And if I am or I wake up in the middle of the night, I can just tap the button on my nightstand and it continues playing for another 30 minutes. No need to open my eyes or take off my sleep mask. For reference my primary shows are futurama (original seasons), psych, and next generation.
- stephenitis 3y agoI'll try this but just play the film on my laptop with the screen/keyboard light off.
- parasti 3y agoThis comment reminded me that I did something similar as a kid in the 90s. I recorded TV shows as audio onto cassette tapes and listened to them before bed to make falling asleep less boring. In retrospect, the coolest thing about it was the intensity and persistence of visual recall.
- bemusedthrow75 3y agoIf I ever have to rely on listening to something to get me to sleep, it's Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet by Gavin Bryars. I am an atheist and attach no meaning to the religious aspect of the little loop of vocals, but it's an extraordinarily striking piece of music with an unusual pattern of repetition. But I just broke the first rule of Bryars Club.
- rungood 3y agoThis makes a lot of sense. For those who are struggling with sleep, I'd wholeheartedly recommend adding this to a CBT program for insomnia, which was immediately effective for me. Here's a book that outlines the steps: https://www.amazon.ca/Sink-Into-Sleep-Step-Step/dp/0826148158/ https://www.amazon.ca/Sink-Into-Sleep-Step-Step/dp/082614815... It's surprisingly simple and works.
- JohnBooty 3y agoJust like you can practice going to sleep at a reasonable hour, so can you practice keeping your bed made, liking a particular food, or doing collage. This is so true and so powerful. People in general really underestimate how "hackable" their brains and habits are. It's probably the single biggest fixable difference I see between people who are successful and happy and those who aren't. I think the general HN demographic is perhaps more inclined to recognize this than the general population. Not that the hacker community has a monopoly on it by any means. Athletes, successful executives, etc. They know it too. Edit: I want to be extremely clear. I am talking about a mindset of self-improvement. It is not a magic cure for anything. I am not telling you that you can just magically "mind hack" problems away. I recognize that there is a fine line to walk here. There are a lot of people who think that your depression or your ADHD or your whatever is a result of you simply not trying hard enough or not finding the right "hack." Those people are wrong, and that attitude is misguided and hurtful. In my experience happiness and success is the result of finding a happy middle ground between (a) learned helplessness (b) a toxic and delusional belief in magical positive thinking. You should believe that you can continually hone your skills and habits. You should not take that sort of attitude to a toxic extreme, and you certainly should not use it as a tool to hurt and judge others.
- anonyfox 3y agoADHD chiming in. That approach just doesn’t work when you have to actively spend nontrivial brain energy to even brush your teeth, every day. There is no such thing as a hackable routine, atomic/keystone habits, or „too lazy to stay on track“.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y agoI have ADHD and I choose not to make excuses.
- tonyarkles 3y agoI'm having a hard time not saying something really snarky here, but that's not particularly productive. Your comment isn't going to bring any good into the world, it just serves to shame someone who's struggling. We've got enough of that already.
- dan_mctree 3y agoCooling my forehead by applying water has helped me fall asleep, especially on warm days. I suspect an inability to fall asleep plus chaotic mind wandering is often related to an overheated brain and that this is a good artificial way to help the body cool your head. Brain cooling is supposedly one of the purposes behind yawning, but at least for me, yawning can't seem to keep up Note: if you try this, don't dry the forehead after applying water. The main longterm cooling mechanism is through slow evaporation just like with sweat
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago> it didn’t work the first night. But it did in a couple of weeks. > Eventually, I was able to take that to an extreme and became a morning person. Worked for me as well. I believe that humans can adapt to any routine. I was not a morning person and now I am.
- zaat 3y agoResearch shows that there's genetic disposition to being a morning person or night owls. Sure, humans can adapt to any routine, or at least to many routines that are going against their nature, but at least with regards to some areas there's a cost associated with going against one's nature. Reference for example: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/3106/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/search/research-news/3106/
- rustybolt 3y agoGetting really tired of these posts telling me how to sleep. I tried going to bed earlier. Getting enough exercise, but not too late. No coffee after lunch. No eating after 20:00. I would have 8 hours of sleep or slightly longer and feel exhausted every day. Turns out if I go to bed later and sleep 6-7 hours, I feel much better, even if my "sleep scores" are much worse. If I'm not tired, I can lie with my eyes closed for hours. It's better to get out and do something else for an hour, then try again. For me, at least.
- bemusedthrow75 3y ago> Getting really tired of these posts telling me how to sleep. Haha -- if you meant it as a joke! And if you didn't... nobody is telling you how to sleep. It's just someone with an opinion. > Turns out if I go to bed later and sleep 6-7 hours, I feel much better, even if my "sleep scores" are much worse. Sleep cycles are generally between three-and-a-half and four-and-a-half hours long, I think, but maybe yours are slightly on the shorter side. Either way, if you're getting two cycles in and you wake up cleanly after the second one, that is a great place to be. If you're sleeping such that you're being woken by your alarm in the middle of a sleep cycle, that is hell after a while. Before the industrial revolution really settled in, before the electric light, many people used to routinely have "first sleep" and "second sleep", splitting up two cycles, and they would have meaningful time to do stuff in between. There are references to it in stories and it's seemingly where the whole "midnight adventure" trope in children's stories comes from. Sometimes I am like this, depending on my stress levels. That time in between sleeps can be lovely if you know you have time for it.
- rustybolt 3y ago> nobody is telling you how to sleep You're right. I am a terrible sleeper, and these articles with advice on sleeping just grind my gears. When you spend so much time exhausted, wondering what you do wrong and trying to improve, "just lie down and close your eyes" sounds like a parody. It's like telling someone that you do math by reading the problem, thinking about it, and writing down the answer. Obviously it works for some people, but this advice will not help anyone do math.
- teekert 3y agoI have never had any sleep issues and people are always surprised to hear my tactic: I just really enjoy the bed. It’s clean, it’s soft, I’m tired. I enjoy lying in bed. Sometimes I just don’t want to fall asleep because it feels so nice. I always fall asleep very fast. Useless information probably, but who knows. Also, it’s not really a tactic. But perhaps you can try it, look forward to lying in bed. Enjoy it, it’s me time, I can think about whatever I want, I have all the time in the world. So nice. I’m gonna go right now.
- err4nt 3y agoThis strikes a chord - though I have no issue falling asleep, I totally agree with this method for moving closer toward a desired outcome. If someday I want to play the piano effortlessly and beautifully, I should start by spending time with my fingers touching the keys. Habits can be formed slowly and as an accumulation of many positive steps in the direction toward a goal.
- senectus1 3y agoI've never understood why people have issues falling asleep. I just shut my eyes and tell myself its times to sleep... off i go. My issue is that I never want to fall asleep... getting myself to actually do it rather than do something more interesting is a battle of will power.
- maerF0x0 3y agoOn the topic of sleep deprivation, also consider all the gradient of rest + recovery that you can do to support your body even if it's not getting the best sleep. Mindfulness Meditation, NSDR[1], Box Breathing[2], Saunas / Cold showers, adequate protein intake, basic movement like walking for bloodflow/lymphatic drainage etc. [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKGrmY8OSHM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AKGrmY8OSHM [2]: https://www.webmd.com/balance/what-is-box-breathing#1-3 https://www.webmd.com/balance/what-is-box-breathing#1-3
- beaugunderson 3y agoMy most powerful "getting to sleep hack" involves paradoxical intention... if I'm ever unable to fall asleep I think to myself "I wish I could stay awake but I'm just so tired" and I'm out within a few minutes.