Good Sleep, Good Learning (2012) - Comments

Sounds like you have a problem with alcohol, not with sleeping.

Weird responses from those two users. Ignore them

> The older I get the more sensitive to a single poor night's sleep I become.

Can relate.

> The most frustrating effect is that even a few drinks in the evening (maybe over 2-3 units). Unsettles my sleep that if I'm in the process of learning something feels like it sets me back several days.

I'm not noticing it unsettles my learning but can relate to a few drinks already upsetting my sleep. I wouldn't be surprised if my learning would be impaired by at least a bit.

> When I was younger I'm not sure I had many good nights sleep let alone noticed a bad one!

Being young is a blessing that way.

I'm +35 years old by the way.

> I've heard that small amounts of alcohol can actually improve learning interestingly by preventing interference from events later in the day.

Do you have a source? Would be curious to look some of it up.

I’m 49 and have all but given up on drinking. It does nothing for me except make me tired and then, ironically, mess up my sleep. On fridays I grill cheeseburgers for the family and usually have one Half-Life tall boy from Manhattan Brewery because it’s my favorite of all time but that’s about it. Otherwise, I don’t drink at all. Being tired and not sleeping well is handled perfectly adequately by my job hah.

For a long time with sleep studies they would give participants a single unit of alcohol. Alcohol has always trashed sleep, even when younger.

>The older I get the more sensitive to a single poor night's sleep I become.

Back when I was 20 I had a drinking problem. One time I drank so much that I passed out sitting at a table. Woke up with friends having stripped my clothes and washed them.

I woke up at 9AM, feeling 100% sober, just anxious about my 20 missed calls from my mom.

That's how I learnt what hangovers were.

Again, at around 25, I helped my brother in-law move bee hives all night, including some 8 hours of driving.

Went straight to work and in the evening I had dinner with my wife at a restaurant.

Now I crash in bed at 9PM and if I'm lucky, I also sleep (but quite often I wake up at 2AM).

Getting old(er) sucks, and I'm only 42 and I miss so much how nice being in my 20 something body felt all the time.

“Their brains… look like small walnuts inside their skull… There's so much atrophy that happens with an alcohol soaked brain chronically that I would say that's, you know, far and away, the most common source of brain damage” - Dr. Matthew Macdouglas head neurosurgeon at Neurolink on the Huberman podcast starting at 1:40:00

If my Oura ring can be trusted, alcohol doesn't interfere with my total amount of sleep or my REM sleep, but it reduces my deep sleep drastically and can even result in me getting zero deep sleep, which hasn't happened a single time without alcohol.

I went sober dor this precise reason. It's a quality of life thing.

IMO Type 2 diabetes is manageable. My father struggled with it for decades and his last few years were not great. Having those same genes, I've spent a lot of time reading and following the data. My take is that T2 is quite manageable. Even reversible, if you focus on it. "Reversible" doesn't mean a lifelong cure, but you can push out your health days by a decade.

There are all kinds of solutions that work. High Protein, Mediterranean, Atkins, or even High Carb (the "good" kind). The breakdown usually happens in the "cocktail" of foods. Our bodies are not hybrid engines; we can not switch fuels mid-stream and expect optimal health. You have to pick a poison, let's say, a protein-based diet—and stick to it. Then exercise and intermittent fasting (IF) are force multipliers. I did strict IF for a year, but I have fallen off the wagon lately, only manage 3-4 days of IF a week. The difference in how I feel is stark.

What worked for me was something called "Lalit Kapoor" diet — basically a WFPB/vegan approach with heavy green juicing and fasting. My failure was primarily due to social friction. My family eats very differently. Making a special effort for every single meal eventually made me start taking the easy way. I still follow it but I wish I could be 100% rather than 80% and which is where all diets fail.

I believe Mathew Walker writes in 'Why we sleep' that people's natural circadian cycle varies but on average is 24h and 15 minutes. But yeah sounds pretty inconvenient for most people.

That part didn't make any sense to me either. Yes, the natural circadian cycle in a vacuum is slightly over 24 hours, but exposure to light keeps it synced to the normal 24-hour day. If you free run sleep your cycle should stay locked to 24 hours, just like it has always been with our ancestors who lived without artificial light.

I once tried an extreme version of this. I became single and I already didn't have a fixed work schedule, so other than societal convention there was no reason for me to adhere to any regular day-night cycle.

So I tried sleeping when I was really tired, waking up without an alarm, eating when I was hungry, etc. I ignored watches, daylight and society. For context, my internal days have always been much longer than 24 hours, often finding myself going to sleep at sunrise; so I thought this was gonna be great, not having to spend an hour awake in bed.

It was horrible. And I mean HORRIBLE. I became a zombie, even though I was sleeping more than ever. I felt deeply depressed within two days. I lost all concept of the passage of time, and could never tell how long ago something had happened. I couldn't think properly or comunicate with other people. It affected me physically too, my weight, my stomach.

The experiment didn't last long. But I couldn't tell you how long.

How do I explain this to 15yo teenager?..

In my area there is a saying like "it takes a village to raise a child". i believe that a good social network is not only important for the kid, but for the parents too. it helps so much to have a partner, grandparents, aunts/uncles, who can look over the kid just for a hour or 2, so you can get your rest. And its usually fun for the kids too. Now that i have 2 kids, a loving wife and 2 families around me, i have the highest respect for all the single moms/dads out there.

I can relate to this. Got two kids and I must say if someone told me that it will be this hard I wouldn't believe it.

Raising kids is the hardest and most fulfilling job.

> This is a bug in the universe!

Is it? Couldn't it be a bug in our society/economy instead? What if nature wanted us to take some naps through the day and not just one period of sleep in the night? Waking up multiple times at night wouldn't hurt too much then.

Last month there was a heartbreaking news about a < 6 month old baby being snatched away by a leopard while the baby was sleeping next to the parent and the parent realized her baby was missing only much later.

I imagine the predator situation would have been much worse during the early human evolution years. I don't know if that was a beneficial trait or not in that environment.

As a parent, I just wonder what-if.

FWIW, and understanding that individual babies do differ, most babies can sleep through the night (10-12 hours) by 3-4 months old. Check out the books "Twelve Hours' Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old" or "Precious Little Sleep" for guidance.

In my case where n=2, naps during the day are/were not all that consistent but at night (unless they are very sick or something) the kids sleep.

Part of this is also our culture that somehow decided kids need their own bed, and it's easy to get baby formula.

So the kids are not sleeping in our beds, where they feel 100% secure, getting to the breast whenever they want (and they quickly will want it at a lesser frequency). The woman will feel this, but hardly has to wake up, me... I slept right through all that. Fwiw, we had a bed for the baby that attached to ours.

In our time everybody advised us: Give the bady a load of milk at 23:00 just before you go to bed! We never did, just stuck to about did 20:00, or just when baby cried, both babies took about 2 months to sleep for about 12 hours straight (although soon after the second one developed reflux which had me watch Rick and Morty in its entirety somewhere between 2 and 4 for some time).

Anyway, not saying everybody is that lucky, just saying sometimes it's good to questions things that are given in one's culture. Worst advice imho is "let the baby cry" which was common on our days. How nice to let a baby cry alone in a room, not understanding anything about what happens...

I have as a kid. It might help you. As a kid, I instinctively (and later also consciously) have trained myself to become lucid while dreaming. When I become lucid, I gain some power. Then I trained myself to be more powerful in dreams.

For example, I can't fly, but I can (apparently) move the whole universe by a specific offset. I can also change the specific offset at a specific motion. So basically, I don't have flying powers, but I do have the powers of treating my dream like a Unity3D scene. And in that way, I can mimic flight.

I can also turn into a monster myself, usually into a worse monster than whatever I'm facing. I have become my nightmare's nightmare at certain points.

Nowadays though, whenever a nightmare hit I'm just unfazed. What also helps is that I let my nightmare and the creatures within it know that I am immortal. No matter what they do to me. In my dreams I am The Beginning and The End. I am all that will be there. They are there because of me. I'm essentially the only god that there is (I'm not religious but as far as my dreams are concerned, I am a god).

That throws off quite a lot of nightmares. The ones that persist, it's fine. They can test my immortality.

My comment is more of a complaint than a discussion so apologies, but I was disappointed recently because I did at an at home test and scored borderline. I was hopeful that it would be sleep apnea so I could go about solving my bad sleep, but a lab test showed conclusively that I didn’t have it.

I got checked out initially because I mentioned to my sister that I didn’t recall the last time I’d woken up and felt refreshed all day, even with 8+ hours, and she said “…that’s not good, get that checked out.”

Back to the drawing board :(

Got a link for some of those open source CPAP hackers?

The at-home test you wear on your finger is so cheap - it doesn't make sense not to do it for anyone who has any issues with sleep or tiredness in the day.

What is name of the product?

Fellow Spaniard here. Our ancestors were definitely onto something! I think the most important thing when it comes to napping is to show up: find a comfortable spot, use an eye mask, and set a timer for whatever time you have (I typically do something between 10 to 30 minutes). Just close your eyes and don’t open them until the alarm goes off.

I don’t always nap, but I make sure to do so if I haven’t had enough sleep or when I’m stressed or overworked. The more work I have, the more naps I take. Three back to back meetings? 15 minutes nap for your brain to organize and process the information dump. You get the gist. Doesn’t have to be after lunch, just a few minutes when you need/have them.

I used to do the Dali nap: find a comfortable spot, hold a spoon in your hand, and close your eyes. Once you fall asleep the spoon will fall from your hand and wake you up. That makes sure you go into hypnagogic state, great for problem solving as the brain is in a creativity sweet spot.

The technique I use now is not strictly a nap but a relaxation technique called NSDR: Non-Sleep Deep Rest. It’s kind of a guided meditation that deeply relaxes your body and nervous system. Just 10 minutes can feel as restorative as hours of sleep. You can check Andrew Huberman's scripts or Youtube videos for a more body-hacking, science-backed vive, or channels like are Ally Boothroyd's [0] for a more spiritual take on the concept, also known as Yoga Nidra.

I hope that helps. And best of luck with your napping, honor the ancestors!

[0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL19-3B-OVYoc1sdjBBKLB...

Set a timer for 20 minutes, lie down (or at least close your eyes) and force yourself to stay motionless until the timer rings. Try to let your thoughts float freely... Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but you should try at least a few times. (And yes, maybe limit yourself to just one coffee in the morning.)

The relatively late dining hours (9pm or later) in Spain wouldn't work for me at all. I'm an early-to-bed-early-to-rise kind of person and if I eat within 3 or 4 hours of bed time my sleep suffers.

Closer to the Time Cube of sleep!

It's an impressive achievement, really. Here's a shorter page of his I've found more digestible:

https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Curing_DSPS_and_insomnia

Clickable link: https://justgetflux.com/

>> sleep only when you are very tired

This flies in the face of all sleep research done at the Stanford Health Care’s Sleep Medicine Center.

You're confusing treatment for insomnia with recommendations for general sleep hygiene.

Wake up without an alarm clock is surely beneficial regardless of when you go to sleep?

or have even a single obligation in the morning

Advice like this turns almost everybody's normal state into a disorder.

"Go to sleep only when you are very tired" is a child's approach to sleep, it's what we all want to do, and by adulthood we learn that it's counterproductive. But we still want it so much that we regularly test it and are reminded why we don't operate that way.

It reminds me of the intuitive eating folks who say, "Ignore standard diet advice, just listen to your body and feed it what it knows you need," but then when you overeat, they say, "You aren't listening properly, you aren't in tune with your body." Then if you ask, "How will I know when I'm in tune with my body and listening to it properly?" they say, "When what it asks for matches standard diet advice."

I agree with how important this is, but for me, the most significant improvement in my sleep has been pushing my dinner very early, ~6 hrs before bed, and having it be my smallest meal of the day. I usually feel quite hungry about an hour before bed but if I get over that hump my resting heart rate is much lower at night and my appetite the next day is much lower. It was validating to see Bryan Johnson sharing the same findings on x.

Unfortunately not in my case. I wouldn't be surprised if hangovers are worse if you're fit.

But what I've found is that forcing a run when hung over does help me move past it. Maybe it helps expel the metabolites from my body.

this mirrors my experience too. I’ll just add that some times taking a complete break from work is necessary to find the mental clarity to reach the state where learning, stability and happiness are possible.

In my case, I often find life goals and enjoy the journey when I'm mentally healthy, not vice versa.

I can't control my mood, but when I am positive, I start a new hobby like dancing or playing an instrument, cook healthy, lift, sleep well, study new things, etc. But when I'm depressed, I lose all interest in my life goals, eat junk food, skip exercise, and browse the Internet all night. I can't even enjoy my hobbies anymore.

It's always my mood that comes first, then I can find life goals and naturally do all healthy stuff.

Funnily, when I'm mentally healthy I also visit Hacker News frequently, but when I'm depressed all I do is infinite scrolling Reddit/TikTok.

I think we're soulmates. You articulated so well what I think about my own approach or lack of approach.

> Mental stability is probably one of the reasons different people have vastly different productivity or achievements. It is mental stability that brings focus, not the other way around.

Agree, at least in concept. I'm aware that some of my perceived or real lack of of progress in some life areas is due to mental instability. Various forms of it, some more active than others or present than others.

A lot of mine focuses on career things. I've got a bank of knowledge and skills that aren't easy to replicate and a career track circled around those things, but lack (I think) the passion for that career track.

But do I like the passion or do I just not have clear goals? What should they be?

In 2022 I was evaluating a senior position at a start-up and a friend asked: "what are your goals, or what are you solving for." My wife asks this question too.

And I tend to stare somewhat blank at the question. As an adult, the goals I'm sure I want have much less to do with career and much more with self. Be happy. Be productive. Be a warm and loving person. Be a responsible, fun, constructive parent.

That doesn't mean that I don't want a career or have aspirations, but there's so much less clarity. And so I've resorted over time to likely unproductive/destructive approaches - more argumentative than necessary, sometimes very responsive, sometimes unresponsive, substances and behavioral things that look like bad habits, addictions, etc.

What do you do to work through these challenges?

I’ve always envisioned those states as ‘swimming’ versus ‘treading water.’

The deal I have with myself is that it’s okay to tread water for a while - if you’re tired, if you need a break, if you’re not quite sure where to go next - but you can’t wait too long, because the current will move you wherever it wants. To get where you want, you’re always going to have to start swimming again.

It really is. Exercise and eating well was an activity I became capable of participating in as a result of the correct therapy and dramatically boosted its effects, not something I could persist at when already depressed.

When people claim the contrary it's feels more of a test to see if you can be perceived as responsible enough for your own actions to be worth helping. An individualistic mindset like that isn't very productive at alleviating depression.

This is the type of hen-egg dialectic that takes me straight to evolutionary theory. My guess is that the 'standard human tribe', ~200 strong, needs some people to be up at night. But since we don't have dedicated day/night humans, we all get this shared mess of a genome 'you need to be up at night sometimes'.

I agree. In my case I am physically very fit but sometimes neglect my health in other ways, including mentally and definitely including poor sleep habits.

Regarding what you said about focus, I think an ADHD diagnosis might help a lot of people here. I suggest asking for a full profile including WAIS testing, which assesses intelligence, because it is the "deficit" between various types of intelligence and attention that matters. Highly intelligent people sometimes are overlooked because their focus, working memory, etc. seem normal or even better than average, but the gap between those and their intellectual capacity creates a lot friction at least for some people.

I recently got diagnosed and am really looking forward to taking a low dose of stimulants in the mornings on work days, I hope it will help me "find a clear path" in my professional life.

thats what I was thinking when reading the comments. How the heck have people had time to read it all and comment? I guess not :)

Also, I'm really curious to know if some of it is no longer valid. 14 years is a long time in science

Sounds like you have a problem with alcohol, not with sleeping.

Weird responses from those two users. Ignore them

> The older I get the more sensitive to a single poor night's sleep I become.

Can relate.

> The most frustrating effect is that even a few drinks in the evening (maybe over 2-3 units). Unsettles my sleep that if I'm in the process of learning something feels like it sets me back several days.

I'm not noticing it unsettles my learning but can relate to a few drinks already upsetting my sleep. I wouldn't be surprised if my learning would be impaired by at least a bit.

> When I was younger I'm not sure I had many good nights sleep let alone noticed a bad one!

Being young is a blessing that way.

I'm +35 years old by the way.

> I've heard that small amounts of alcohol can actually improve learning interestingly by preventing interference from events later in the day.

Do you have a source? Would be curious to look some of it up.

I’m 49 and have all but given up on drinking. It does nothing for me except make me tired and then, ironically, mess up my sleep. On fridays I grill cheeseburgers for the family and usually have one Half-Life tall boy from Manhattan Brewery because it’s my favorite of all time but that’s about it. Otherwise, I don’t drink at all. Being tired and not sleeping well is handled perfectly adequately by my job hah.

For a long time with sleep studies they would give participants a single unit of alcohol. Alcohol has always trashed sleep, even when younger.

>The older I get the more sensitive to a single poor night's sleep I become.

Back when I was 20 I had a drinking problem. One time I drank so much that I passed out sitting at a table. Woke up with friends having stripped my clothes and washed them.

I woke up at 9AM, feeling 100% sober, just anxious about my 20 missed calls from my mom.

That's how I learnt what hangovers were.

Again, at around 25, I helped my brother in-law move bee hives all night, including some 8 hours of driving.

Went straight to work and in the evening I had dinner with my wife at a restaurant.

Now I crash in bed at 9PM and if I'm lucky, I also sleep (but quite often I wake up at 2AM).

Getting old(er) sucks, and I'm only 42 and I miss so much how nice being in my 20 something body felt all the time.

“Their brains… look like small walnuts inside their skull… There's so much atrophy that happens with an alcohol soaked brain chronically that I would say that's, you know, far and away, the most common source of brain damage” - Dr. Matthew Macdouglas head neurosurgeon at Neurolink on the Huberman podcast starting at 1:40:00

If my Oura ring can be trusted, alcohol doesn't interfere with my total amount of sleep or my REM sleep, but it reduces my deep sleep drastically and can even result in me getting zero deep sleep, which hasn't happened a single time without alcohol.

I went sober dor this precise reason. It's a quality of life thing.

IMO Type 2 diabetes is manageable. My father struggled with it for decades and his last few years were not great. Having those same genes, I've spent a lot of time reading and following the data. My take is that T2 is quite manageable. Even reversible, if you focus on it. "Reversible" doesn't mean a lifelong cure, but you can push out your health days by a decade.

There are all kinds of solutions that work. High Protein, Mediterranean, Atkins, or even High Carb (the "good" kind). The breakdown usually happens in the "cocktail" of foods. Our bodies are not hybrid engines; we can not switch fuels mid-stream and expect optimal health. You have to pick a poison, let's say, a protein-based diet—and stick to it. Then exercise and intermittent fasting (IF) are force multipliers. I did strict IF for a year, but I have fallen off the wagon lately, only manage 3-4 days of IF a week. The difference in how I feel is stark.

What worked for me was something called "Lalit Kapoor" diet — basically a WFPB/vegan approach with heavy green juicing and fasting. My failure was primarily due to social friction. My family eats very differently. Making a special effort for every single meal eventually made me start taking the easy way. I still follow it but I wish I could be 100% rather than 80% and which is where all diets fail.

I believe Mathew Walker writes in 'Why we sleep' that people's natural circadian cycle varies but on average is 24h and 15 minutes. But yeah sounds pretty inconvenient for most people.

That part didn't make any sense to me either. Yes, the natural circadian cycle in a vacuum is slightly over 24 hours, but exposure to light keeps it synced to the normal 24-hour day. If you free run sleep your cycle should stay locked to 24 hours, just like it has always been with our ancestors who lived without artificial light.

I once tried an extreme version of this. I became single and I already didn't have a fixed work schedule, so other than societal convention there was no reason for me to adhere to any regular day-night cycle.

So I tried sleeping when I was really tired, waking up without an alarm, eating when I was hungry, etc. I ignored watches, daylight and society. For context, my internal days have always been much longer than 24 hours, often finding myself going to sleep at sunrise; so I thought this was gonna be great, not having to spend an hour awake in bed.

It was horrible. And I mean HORRIBLE. I became a zombie, even though I was sleeping more than ever. I felt deeply depressed within two days. I lost all concept of the passage of time, and could never tell how long ago something had happened. I couldn't think properly or comunicate with other people. It affected me physically too, my weight, my stomach.

The experiment didn't last long. But I couldn't tell you how long.

How do I explain this to 15yo teenager?..

In my area there is a saying like "it takes a village to raise a child". i believe that a good social network is not only important for the kid, but for the parents too. it helps so much to have a partner, grandparents, aunts/uncles, who can look over the kid just for a hour or 2, so you can get your rest. And its usually fun for the kids too. Now that i have 2 kids, a loving wife and 2 families around me, i have the highest respect for all the single moms/dads out there.

I can relate to this. Got two kids and I must say if someone told me that it will be this hard I wouldn't believe it.

Raising kids is the hardest and most fulfilling job.

> This is a bug in the universe!

Is it? Couldn't it be a bug in our society/economy instead? What if nature wanted us to take some naps through the day and not just one period of sleep in the night? Waking up multiple times at night wouldn't hurt too much then.

Last month there was a heartbreaking news about a < 6 month old baby being snatched away by a leopard while the baby was sleeping next to the parent and the parent realized her baby was missing only much later.

I imagine the predator situation would have been much worse during the early human evolution years. I don't know if that was a beneficial trait or not in that environment.

As a parent, I just wonder what-if.

FWIW, and understanding that individual babies do differ, most babies can sleep through the night (10-12 hours) by 3-4 months old. Check out the books "Twelve Hours' Sleep by Twelve Weeks Old" or "Precious Little Sleep" for guidance.

In my case where n=2, naps during the day are/were not all that consistent but at night (unless they are very sick or something) the kids sleep.

Part of this is also our culture that somehow decided kids need their own bed, and it's easy to get baby formula.

So the kids are not sleeping in our beds, where they feel 100% secure, getting to the breast whenever they want (and they quickly will want it at a lesser frequency). The woman will feel this, but hardly has to wake up, me... I slept right through all that. Fwiw, we had a bed for the baby that attached to ours.

In our time everybody advised us: Give the bady a load of milk at 23:00 just before you go to bed! We never did, just stuck to about did 20:00, or just when baby cried, both babies took about 2 months to sleep for about 12 hours straight (although soon after the second one developed reflux which had me watch Rick and Morty in its entirety somewhere between 2 and 4 for some time).

Anyway, not saying everybody is that lucky, just saying sometimes it's good to questions things that are given in one's culture. Worst advice imho is "let the baby cry" which was common on our days. How nice to let a baby cry alone in a room, not understanding anything about what happens...

I have as a kid. It might help you. As a kid, I instinctively (and later also consciously) have trained myself to become lucid while dreaming. When I become lucid, I gain some power. Then I trained myself to be more powerful in dreams.

For example, I can't fly, but I can (apparently) move the whole universe by a specific offset. I can also change the specific offset at a specific motion. So basically, I don't have flying powers, but I do have the powers of treating my dream like a Unity3D scene. And in that way, I can mimic flight.

I can also turn into a monster myself, usually into a worse monster than whatever I'm facing. I have become my nightmare's nightmare at certain points.

Nowadays though, whenever a nightmare hit I'm just unfazed. What also helps is that I let my nightmare and the creatures within it know that I am immortal. No matter what they do to me. In my dreams I am The Beginning and The End. I am all that will be there. They are there because of me. I'm essentially the only god that there is (I'm not religious but as far as my dreams are concerned, I am a god).

That throws off quite a lot of nightmares. The ones that persist, it's fine. They can test my immortality.

My comment is more of a complaint than a discussion so apologies, but I was disappointed recently because I did at an at home test and scored borderline. I was hopeful that it would be sleep apnea so I could go about solving my bad sleep, but a lab test showed conclusively that I didn’t have it.

I got checked out initially because I mentioned to my sister that I didn’t recall the last time I’d woken up and felt refreshed all day, even with 8+ hours, and she said “…that’s not good, get that checked out.”

Back to the drawing board :(

Got a link for some of those open source CPAP hackers?

The at-home test you wear on your finger is so cheap - it doesn't make sense not to do it for anyone who has any issues with sleep or tiredness in the day.

What is name of the product?

Fellow Spaniard here. Our ancestors were definitely onto something! I think the most important thing when it comes to napping is to show up: find a comfortable spot, use an eye mask, and set a timer for whatever time you have (I typically do something between 10 to 30 minutes). Just close your eyes and don’t open them until the alarm goes off.

I don’t always nap, but I make sure to do so if I haven’t had enough sleep or when I’m stressed or overworked. The more work I have, the more naps I take. Three back to back meetings? 15 minutes nap for your brain to organize and process the information dump. You get the gist. Doesn’t have to be after lunch, just a few minutes when you need/have them.

I used to do the Dali nap: find a comfortable spot, hold a spoon in your hand, and close your eyes. Once you fall asleep the spoon will fall from your hand and wake you up. That makes sure you go into hypnagogic state, great for problem solving as the brain is in a creativity sweet spot.

The technique I use now is not strictly a nap but a relaxation technique called NSDR: Non-Sleep Deep Rest. It’s kind of a guided meditation that deeply relaxes your body and nervous system. Just 10 minutes can feel as restorative as hours of sleep. You can check Andrew Huberman's scripts or Youtube videos for a more body-hacking, science-backed vive, or channels like are Ally Boothroyd's [0] for a more spiritual take on the concept, also known as Yoga Nidra.

I hope that helps. And best of luck with your napping, honor the ancestors!

[0] https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL19-3B-OVYoc1sdjBBKLB...

Set a timer for 20 minutes, lie down (or at least close your eyes) and force yourself to stay motionless until the timer rings. Try to let your thoughts float freely... Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, but you should try at least a few times. (And yes, maybe limit yourself to just one coffee in the morning.)

The relatively late dining hours (9pm or later) in Spain wouldn't work for me at all. I'm an early-to-bed-early-to-rise kind of person and if I eat within 3 or 4 hours of bed time my sleep suffers.

Closer to the Time Cube of sleep!

It's an impressive achievement, really. Here's a shorter page of his I've found more digestible:

https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Curing_DSPS_and_insomnia

Clickable link: https://justgetflux.com/

>> sleep only when you are very tired

This flies in the face of all sleep research done at the Stanford Health Care’s Sleep Medicine Center.

You're confusing treatment for insomnia with recommendations for general sleep hygiene.

Wake up without an alarm clock is surely beneficial regardless of when you go to sleep?

or have even a single obligation in the morning

Advice like this turns almost everybody's normal state into a disorder.

"Go to sleep only when you are very tired" is a child's approach to sleep, it's what we all want to do, and by adulthood we learn that it's counterproductive. But we still want it so much that we regularly test it and are reminded why we don't operate that way.

It reminds me of the intuitive eating folks who say, "Ignore standard diet advice, just listen to your body and feed it what it knows you need," but then when you overeat, they say, "You aren't listening properly, you aren't in tune with your body." Then if you ask, "How will I know when I'm in tune with my body and listening to it properly?" they say, "When what it asks for matches standard diet advice."

I agree with how important this is, but for me, the most significant improvement in my sleep has been pushing my dinner very early, ~6 hrs before bed, and having it be my smallest meal of the day. I usually feel quite hungry about an hour before bed but if I get over that hump my resting heart rate is much lower at night and my appetite the next day is much lower. It was validating to see Bryan Johnson sharing the same findings on x.

Unfortunately not in my case. I wouldn't be surprised if hangovers are worse if you're fit.

But what I've found is that forcing a run when hung over does help me move past it. Maybe it helps expel the metabolites from my body.

this mirrors my experience too. I’ll just add that some times taking a complete break from work is necessary to find the mental clarity to reach the state where learning, stability and happiness are possible.

In my case, I often find life goals and enjoy the journey when I'm mentally healthy, not vice versa.

I can't control my mood, but when I am positive, I start a new hobby like dancing or playing an instrument, cook healthy, lift, sleep well, study new things, etc. But when I'm depressed, I lose all interest in my life goals, eat junk food, skip exercise, and browse the Internet all night. I can't even enjoy my hobbies anymore.

It's always my mood that comes first, then I can find life goals and naturally do all healthy stuff.

Funnily, when I'm mentally healthy I also visit Hacker News frequently, but when I'm depressed all I do is infinite scrolling Reddit/TikTok.

I think we're soulmates. You articulated so well what I think about my own approach or lack of approach.

> Mental stability is probably one of the reasons different people have vastly different productivity or achievements. It is mental stability that brings focus, not the other way around.

Agree, at least in concept. I'm aware that some of my perceived or real lack of of progress in some life areas is due to mental instability. Various forms of it, some more active than others or present than others.

A lot of mine focuses on career things. I've got a bank of knowledge and skills that aren't easy to replicate and a career track circled around those things, but lack (I think) the passion for that career track.

But do I like the passion or do I just not have clear goals? What should they be?

In 2022 I was evaluating a senior position at a start-up and a friend asked: "what are your goals, or what are you solving for." My wife asks this question too.

And I tend to stare somewhat blank at the question. As an adult, the goals I'm sure I want have much less to do with career and much more with self. Be happy. Be productive. Be a warm and loving person. Be a responsible, fun, constructive parent.

That doesn't mean that I don't want a career or have aspirations, but there's so much less clarity. And so I've resorted over time to likely unproductive/destructive approaches - more argumentative than necessary, sometimes very responsive, sometimes unresponsive, substances and behavioral things that look like bad habits, addictions, etc.

What do you do to work through these challenges?

I’ve always envisioned those states as ‘swimming’ versus ‘treading water.’

The deal I have with myself is that it’s okay to tread water for a while - if you’re tired, if you need a break, if you’re not quite sure where to go next - but you can’t wait too long, because the current will move you wherever it wants. To get where you want, you’re always going to have to start swimming again.

It really is. Exercise and eating well was an activity I became capable of participating in as a result of the correct therapy and dramatically boosted its effects, not something I could persist at when already depressed.

When people claim the contrary it's feels more of a test to see if you can be perceived as responsible enough for your own actions to be worth helping. An individualistic mindset like that isn't very productive at alleviating depression.

This is the type of hen-egg dialectic that takes me straight to evolutionary theory. My guess is that the 'standard human tribe', ~200 strong, needs some people to be up at night. But since we don't have dedicated day/night humans, we all get this shared mess of a genome 'you need to be up at night sometimes'.

I agree. In my case I am physically very fit but sometimes neglect my health in other ways, including mentally and definitely including poor sleep habits.

Regarding what you said about focus, I think an ADHD diagnosis might help a lot of people here. I suggest asking for a full profile including WAIS testing, which assesses intelligence, because it is the "deficit" between various types of intelligence and attention that matters. Highly intelligent people sometimes are overlooked because their focus, working memory, etc. seem normal or even better than average, but the gap between those and their intellectual capacity creates a lot friction at least for some people.

I recently got diagnosed and am really looking forward to taking a low dose of stimulants in the mornings on work days, I hope it will help me "find a clear path" in my professional life.

thats what I was thinking when reading the comments. How the heck have people had time to read it all and comment? I guess not :)

Also, I'm really curious to know if some of it is no longer valid. 14 years is a long time in science