First of all, it is depressing to me that I haven’t posted since April 20th. A ton has happened since then and I’m a little sad that I haven’t had time to talk about any of it.
Anyway, I do have good news. I’ve made more progress in the last week to my sleep than I had in years.
Basically I started listening to the Huberman Lab podcast, and it has some excellent information and recommendations for improving sleep.
I’ve been getting up without my alarm the last few days and starting to sleep better. I’ve been up generally early and have been much more productive overall.
The key is to just tie in to a lot more physiological processes than I have been to help me develop a proper rhythm. Brute-forcing a habit hasn’t worked for me in the past and I think it’s mostly just because I didn’t understand the physiological processes that control a circadian rhythm.
So I started getting up early and actually going outside and exposing my self to the morning light, which helps set your clock for the day. Specifically, I haven’t been using my phone at all, and I’ve gone outside and hot tubbed for a bit first thing in the morning.
In addition to being great for the light reasons, it’s also just easier for me to get up and do something I enjoy vs. say, a strenuous run or something.
And then I’ve also made an effort to be outside for a bit around sunset, which also helps regulate your internal clock and circadian rhythm.
And then of course, I’m trying not to stay up too late. Falling asleep has still been a challenge but I feel like it’s getting easier every day as I fall into this new rhythm.
I’ve also been just generally much more productive, though that may literally be just because I’m getting up earlier.
I also have avoided news and entertainment sites (aren’t they the same thing at this point?) almost completely, which in turn has also made me much more calm and focused, and generally improved my mood.
All good things!
I’m really hoping I can continue all of this and just keep improving. The more I learn, the more I realize that my terrible sleep habits are likely causing lots of other problems in my life, or at the very least: preventing me from performing optimally.
So this is just one thing that’s going well, but I hope to continue improvement from here.
Obviously this has been back and forth over the years, but the trend is still upwards.
While in the short term this was a bad thing, it’s actually a sign that things are going well: it has taken me around two weeks in Spain to finally get over jet lag. In the past I hadn’t really experienced it at all, and I think that’s because I really hadn’t ever developed a proper circadian rhythm. Apparently now I have!