Sleep

Sleep #

Some tips and tricks that work for me to get better sleep.

Smart Alarm #

Sleep as Android has a feature where instead of setting an alarm to go off at 8am, you tell the app to wake you up say between 7am and 8am. Then the app uses your movements to wake you up during a lighter sleep phase. I’ve found this to be way more pleasant than waking up at a fixed time. In fact, I’ve found that I more naturally wake up by myself in the morning right before the alarm goes off, as if my body associates it with lighter sleep.

This app also tracks my sleep, which is kinda useful sometimes.

Causes of Bad Sleep #

Racing Mind #

Anything that causes me to be constantly thinking about something will usually interrupt my sleep. This includes:

  • Trying to make sure I remember something that I need to do tomorrow. See Task Tracking for an excellent solution to this problem.
  • Worrying about an event or something that I need to wake up for (like a flight).
  • Worrying about a personal conflict or argument, or any kind of unresolved tension between me and someone else.
  • Trying to sleep right after doing an activity I was really engaged in, like playing a game. This will happen if my mind is continuing to ponder the decisions I was making in the activity, or if it’s re-remembering parts of the activity (and e.g. how I could have done them better).

Writing the thing I am worrying down can help a lot to alleviate this issue. This makes me feel like I don’t need to keep the thoughts in my mind to remember them.

Food #

Eating more that ~1/3 of my daily calories, especially from high protein foods like nuts/nut butters, in the 5-6 hours before sleeping will often lead to me getting overheated and sweaty after being asleep for a couple hours. This is especially true if it’s otherwise cold in the room where I’m sleeping and I need to tuck myself in more tightly to my blankets. Eating protein at other parts of the day helps with this.

Eating bread or grains generally 2-3 hours before bed seems to help me sleep better.

Caffeine definitely does not help me sleep :).

Dirty Sheets #

Clean sheets, or specifically sheets that I haven’t sweated in before make it much less likely that I will sweat when sleeping (all else being equal), which in turn will make me sleep better.

Temperature and Airflow #

Skin Stimulation #

For me I find that keeping my skin calm makes a big difference to my sleep quality. For me, this means keeping myself a proper temperature and keeping myself protected from breezes and other forces that can tickle or otherwise stimulate my skin.

In practice, I best accomplish this by:

  1. Wearing socks or lower-leg warmers to sleep so that my feet don’t get uncomfortably cold. See this cool paper about hands/feet and temperature regulation.
  2. Wearing boxers.
  3. Wrapping myself with flannel or otherwise “warm-feeling” sheets to that my skin is constantly in contact with something constant and not exposed to fluctuations in air temperature or movement.

Cold #

One common pattern I fall into that leads to poor sleep is being too cold when going to sleep. This leads me to tightly hug my arms close to my self and tuck my sheets up to my neck (holding onto them with my hands). While this is comfortable when going to sleep, I find that it leads me to overheat once I actually do fall asleep. This leads to me getting sweaty, and then cold and uncomfortable. I feel a similar effect when using sleeping bags or wearing a shirt when going to bed.

I think the best way to manage this problem is actually to warm myself up before getting into bed. When I don’t do this I find getting warm while in bed (even with a heated mattress) takes a long time and may not fully happen before I fall asleep, leading to the bundling problem.

Due to this pattern, I find that it’s paradoxically better for me to use more blankets and/or a heated mattress pad and fall asleep in a more relaxed posture with looser sheets/more airflow. This is less likely to cause the overheating -> sweaty -> cold/uncomfortable issue.

In addition to making me bundle myself too tightly when going to sleep, being cold also just generally stimulates my mind/body, which hinders my ability to fall asleep.

I’ve found a good way to manage cold is to use a heated mattress pad or heated blanket to pre-warm my bed, which helps me feel relaxed and warm as I get into bed. Then, right before going to sleep, I turn off the heat and make sure I have enough warm blankets around in case I do end up cooling down. This is less effective than just getting warm before going to bed though.

Showering #

Taking a shower generally gives me temperature sensitive skin that makes it hard to find a good equilibrium when falling asleep, making it more likely that I’ll get too cold or overheat later in the night.

Going to sleep with wet hair from a shower also can exacerbate temperature issues. At the very least it make my pillow wet, which is annoying.

I find that showering ~2 hours before sleeping makes these non-issues.

Snoring #

Not I problem I currently have, luckily.

Seems to correlate with increased adiposity.

Several behaviors seem to correlate with dream presence and intensity for me in a dose-dependent way:

  • Playing video games in the evening, especially role-playing type games.
  • Having eaten a lot of food during the day/evening.

TODO: Put some actual raw data here.

Sleep Resources #

Categories: Health And Longevity, Important

Backlinks: Manifesto, Aging Science, Daily Physiological Tricks, Task Tracking,

Calendar March 1, 2025
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