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One tip which I didn't see: set an alarm for going to bed, not waking up. You should be able to wake naturally, but artificial lighting changes your perception
by drostie 14y ago
One tip which I didn't see: set an alarm for going to bed, not waking up. You should be able to wake naturally, but artificial lighting changes your perception of when you should go to sleep, shifting you from a naturally 23-hour circadian rhythm to a 25-hour one.
So just set an alarm for 11pm, and when you hear it, immediately stop what you're doing, save any open documents, turn the TV or computer off. The next 30 minutes are for brushing teeth, settling into bed, and preparing for the following morning only. By then you should be settling into a good night's sleep.
- maroun 14y agoI couldn't agree more. This has worked wonders for a lot of people I know. I'm going to update the post so that it mentions this. Thanks! :)
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- dkersten 14y agoI agree with this. I have a wake up alarm, but I'm usually awake before it goes off. I've also never been a morning person, but when I keep to a strict go-to-bed time, I feel refreshed and awake in the morning even if its early. I guess part of this is that when I'm careful when I go to bed, I also time that I 1) get a plenty of sleep and 2) get up on a 90-minute boundary. Unfortunately I have a habit of ignoring my go-to-bed alarm :-(
- hndl 14y agoI thought I could wake up before my alarm went off too, but after a little retrospection I considered that perhaps I "trained" myself to get up at the time. That is, I used to use the alarm, then stopped using it, but continued to get up at the same time.
- tptacek 14y agoA plug here for F.lux, which attempts to correct for the unnatural color balance of computer screens and seems to have more or less eliminated my insomnia problems; the only times I have trouble sleeping anymore are traceable either to caffeine after noon, or forgetting that I've disabled F.lux.
- gingerlime 14y agoI love f.lux, but it doesn't seem to work so well with my dual-monitor setup on xubuntu... and I'm never really sure if it's working properly. I wish it had some kind of a 'temperature indicator' or something.
- bkanber 14y agoYou can always observe what happens if you hit the Disable option. If there's a noticable difference, it was working.
- Inufu 14y agoIf f.lux doesn't work properly, give redshift a try. Does the exact same thing and works perfectly for me.
- sneak 14y agoIf Ubuntu doesn't work properly, give OSX a try. Does the exact same thing and works perfectly for me.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- parennoob 14y agoSnarky as this is, I'm sorry to say that it's probably correct. I've never had to have any configuration or other problems with f.lux on OSX, it just works there. On Ubuntu, it just doesn't work. :) (Ubuntu user since 2004, OSX since about last year)
- superuser2 14y agoYou're clearly not a student :). I'd love to choose when to go to bed, but that's not really compatible with a workload challenging enough to appease admissions counselors.
- huntaub 14y agoYou can get all of your work done before a certain time. It just involves more rigorous organization. It is never good to put anything at a higher priority than your health.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- PagingCraig 14y agoExcuses.
- dredmorbius 14y agoIf you think life's going to become any more considerate of your sleep requirements, think again. Use time-boxing as a scheduling mechanism. If you find you have more work to do than time to do it, start lopping off items from your to-do list, and/or identifying how you can accomplish a sufficient effort in the time available. That is likely to be a far more useful life lesson than whatever subject it is you're studying at the moment. You also have to learn how to schedule downtime. People cannot run 100% 24/7/365, and attempting to do this is at best very painful, and at worst, literally, suicidal.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- groundCode 14y agoyou're clearly not a parent.
- encoderer 14y agoJust curious: Do you think your workload will decrease in the future, or that the workloads of the highly paid professionals here are less than what's required from you in school? Don't expect life to get easier. More rewarding, IMO, but not easier.
- adito 14y agosomeone suggest the opposite[1]: If you sleep set hours, you’ll sometimes go to bed when you aren’t sleepy enough. If it’s taking you more than five minutes to fall asleep each night, you aren’t sleepy enough. You’re wasting time lying in bed awake and not being asleep. Another problem is that you’re assuming you need the same number of hours of sleep every night, which is a false assumption. Your sleep needs vary from day to day. ... The solution was to go to bed when I’m sleepy (and only when I’m sleepy) and get up with an alarm clock at a fixed time (7 days per week). I've done this tips and have good sleep each night (and also become an early riser as side effect). [1]: http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-early-riser/ http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/05/how-to-become-an-ea...
- colkassad 14y agoThe only time I fall asleep in less than 5 minutes is if I am completely exhausted. I have to go through a mental winding down period while I lay in bed. Usually through reading or just closing my eyes and thinking about something pleasant. This usually takes me about a half-hour on average. Anyway, from my point of view, I never understand how someone can just lay down and be asleep in a few minutes.
- gknoy 14y agoPerhaps they read in bed, or otherwise have a calming period (yoga, meditation, etc), before they consider themselves as lying down to sleep. e.g., they lie down in bed, read for $(time), and then put the book away, turn out the lights, and lie down and fall asleep.
- blazingfrog2 14y ago+1 It's called sleep envy and, some nights when I can hear my wife drift off in minutes and I'm not even close to it, it throws me into that mental tailspin that goes through multiple stages like the whiny "why-me", plain anger, frustration and more. The only result, of course, is an even more delayed start of sleep phase.
- loceng 14y agoI like this idea. It'd be a big shift from what I currently do, though I feel I could be more productive at night then.
- exue 14y agoIn general, most humans run 'late' on a 24.5-25.5 hour cycle with lack of any light - it's natural lighting that tends us towards 24 again. So it's true that artificial lighting messes with it, but not in that we were pre-disposed to sleeping earlier every day without it.
- charlieok 14y agoIf you happen to use an iPhone, I highly recommend Sol: http://www.juggleware.com/blog/2012/01/sol-sun-clock-for-iphone-now-in-app-store/ http://www.juggleware.com/blog/2012/01/sol-sun-clock-for-iph... I'm not sure what the equivalent on Android might be; if anyone knows, hopefully they'll weigh in.
- processyellow 14y agoLux is a good one. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vito.lux https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vito.lux
- charlieok 14y agoThat looks cool, but it's solving a different problem. The app I linked to is basically a clock that shows you your local solar times (day, night, golden hours, and twilight) at a glance, and can set alarms by them. If you want to wake at civil dawn, or at sunrise, for example, it'll do that.