Those fundamentals matter — and if you’re not doing them yet, they’re worth implementing. But if you’ve already got the basics down and are looking for some lesser-known strategies to enhance your sleep, we’ve got you covered below.
~ Brett McKay from, 45 Tips — That You Haven’t Heard a Million Times Before — to Improve Your Sleep
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Ironically, I was up at 4am when I read this.
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For example, fasting stimulates the natural production of growth hormone. So does vigorous exercise, particularly resistance exercise with a strong anaerobic component (not cardio though). And, to the surprise of many people, deep sleep stimulates the natural production of growth hormone, perhaps more than anything else. (Although only once every 24 hours; sleeping all day does not seem to work.)
~ Ned Kock, from Health Correlator: Growth hormone: The fountain of youth
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Let me see… *checks answer key* Yes. Good sleep is still the best answer.
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Much of insomnia and trouble sleeping is ultimately caused by worrying. When you worry, you get anxious, and when you’re anxious, your body gets ready for action, which directly inhibits relaxation and sleepiness. And to make matters worse, routinely worrying in bed – either as you’re trying to fall asleep initially or when you’re awake in the middle of the night – eventually teaches your brain to associate your bed with worry (this is the same classical conditioning process Ivan Pavlov discovered in his experiments with dogs who learned to drool at the sound of a bell previously paired with food). This means that, even if you weren’t worried before night-time, simply being in bed can become a trigger for worries and anxiety!
~ Nick Wignall, from How to sleep when you’re a perfectionist | Psyche Guides
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I do recall that I had that problem at one point. The way I solved it was to create other opportunities—for me, it was journaling—to empty that stuff out of mind. These days it’s a three-pronged approach: I’m a wizard at organization so I trust myself and my systems. I regularly reflect on what’s in my control and remind myself of the correct perspective about life in general. I regularly dump out my mind’s various, and endless ideas and possibilities into notebooks. I’ve no idea what would work for you… but you really do need to try a bunch of things to figure out what does work for you.
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It’s a common experience that a problem difficult at night is resolved in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it.
~ John Steinbeck
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Each night as you lay down to sleep, you embark on an extraordinary journey – not through space, but through the shifting terrain of your own consciousness. This transition, known as the sleep-onset period, is not a simple flick of a switch from wakefulness to slumber, but a gradual, nuanced shift that suspends you between two worlds. Long regarded as a mere prelude to sleep, recent studies suggest there is far more to this fascinating twilight period.
~ Célia Lacaux, from The brain’s twilight zone: when you’re neither awake nor asleep
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Back in The Interlude I wrote about an experience… pretty sure this was a prolonged dip into that state.
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Modern luxury is the ability to think clearly, sleep deeply, move slowly, and live quietly in a world designed to prevent all four.
~ Justin Welsh
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Rather than try to escape these thoughts, you can begin by trying to understand them differently, which could change how you react to them. […] Have you ever paused to wonder why certain thoughts tend to grab your attention when you’re in bed? The reasons might seem obvious on the surface (eg, ‘Work is important, so I worry about work’), but Ehrnstrom suggests it can be helpful to give this some deeper consideration. You can do that while you’re having the thoughts at night, or during the day.
~ Matt Huston, from What to do when racing thoughts keep you up at night
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Sometimes my over-wrought processes for how I find things, read them, queue them for inclusion on my blog or 7 for Sunday pays off a bonus. In this article’s case, I read the advice given back in April (it now being late July if you don’t want to scroll for the date) and set about trying to use it: For me at least, it really does work. Trying to escape the racing thoughts has never worked for me, but getting all meta about those thoughts has worked on several occasions. Often, my thoughts are racing because I care about whatever-it-is, and being clear then about what (if anything) I can do, and when I can do it, shifts my thinking enough that I… wake up the next morning.
And sometimes I don’t actually care. Here too, being clear about what I should do (nothing) and when I should do it (never), has been enough that I… wake up the next morning.
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Simply put, all of my problems stem from trying to jam too much into each day. Partly that’s from my having too many ideas. But mostly that’s from insufficient self-awareness to let things go. Over a few decades I’ve steered away from the typical schedule (and it was never anything like a 9-to-5 job.) But I’m still on a strict sleep schedule, with strict light hygiene practices, and no alarm clock. I sleep in utter darkness, and I awake as the room lighting slowly comes up to full brightness—a mimicked sunrise. But I’m still clinging to set times.
Sometimes I break routine by staying out, or up, past my usual bedtime. Sometimes I’m traveling and staying with others. In either case, I don’t seem to have trouble bending my sleep schedule. I’m often the first person to “crash”, but other than that, with a bit of balance-the-total-sleep-time over-sleeping… I feel pretty normal the next day.
All humans, animals, insects and birds have clocks inside, biological devices controlled by genes, proteins and molecular cascades. These inner clocks are connected to the ceaseless yet varying cycle of light and dark caused by the rotation and tilt of our planet. They drive primal physiological, neural and behavioural systems according to a roughly 24-hour cycle, otherwise known as our circadian rhythm, affecting our moods, desires, appetites, sleep patterns, and sense of the passage of time.
~ Karen Emslie from, Broken sleep
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Except for how much I can get done. On those “next days” where I’ve been off my rigid sleep times. I get vastly less done, and not just because there are fewer hours in the day when I sleep longer in the morning. In fact, the more I glimpse that other world—went to bed whenever, slept until the right amount of time… and then face a less-productive day. The more I realize, that is the better amount of things to attempt to accomplish: Sleep on a healthy, light-driven cycle, and do half as much in the day.
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The best bridge between despair and hope is a good night’s sleep.
~ Harry Ruby
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Taking a break is really difficult. A short break is often easy enough if you’re comfortable simply ignoring everything… for 10 minutes. But if you really want to take a real break, the difficulty escalates rapidly. I recently spent a long weekend camping a short, walkable distance from the beach. Each of the three full beach sitting days I tried to lengthen the stretches of time I literally sat in a beach chair without getting up. By the third day I was feigning agitated exasperation, and making jokes like, “That’s it! Today I’m getting serious about holding my chain down in the sand. No more standing up for me!” But in reality, I was bumping up against bodily functions, sun exposure (even under a magnificent umbrella), and peer pressure from my beach pals warning me of deep vein thrombosis. (I hope you never know what that is.)
I’m only half kidding. Everyone talks about taking a day off from work, and about looking forward to the holidays (for family and experiences, sure— but we all mean for the break we pretend we’ll get, but never do.) We even have a dedicated word, staycation (a word so legit it even passes my spell–checker) for suggesting some days we’re taking but not even going anywhere, just because we need a break. Our phones ring, our apps go bee-BOOP! and it’s ping! notification this, and ding! notification that. And an email arrives, and the dog needs walking, and the children need this, and the housemate that…
The hard work is actually prioritizing, pruning and putting one’s life in order. The impossible work is getting sufficient duration, and premium quality, sleep.
Taking a break isn’t lazy – learning to recharge is a skill that will allow you to enjoy a more creative, sustainable life.
~ Alex Soojung-Kim Pang from, How to rest well | Psyche Guides
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What’s that? How long did I manage to sit in the chair? On day three I managed a transcendental 5-and-one-half hours of literal sitting, toes in the sand. And I was on a roll, no where near needing to arise, having perfectly judged my fluid consumption, sweating, and kidney function up to then. I was foiled by my beach mates forcing me out of the chair (and at least part way into the ocean.) Which, all things considered, was very nice of them.
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