ShareThisImprove Sleep Hygeine
Completed
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1) Cut back on caffeine. 2 espresso shots, 2 cups of tea, or 1 french press coffee per day. I'm allowing myself a second espresso shot in the afternoon for weaning purposes at the beginning. <b>ADDENDUM: No caffeine after lunch</b><br/>
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I will create and embed here a spreadsheet tracking bedtimes, wake times, and nap start and end times, as well as subjective evaluations of my alertness and creativity.
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I will try this for a month. If I notice a drastic pernicious effect sooner I may abort the experiment. |
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Hopefully I'll feel better rested and all around better. |
Comments & Observations
Matthew Cornell Looking forward to your observations. No Melatonin? (I'm ready for your thoughts on taking it.) I like naps as needed - the heck with advice that they throw you off. Re caffeine, some like tea (but some teas have lots of the stuff). I drink chocolate, which - contrary to most thinking - has theobromine, not caffeine. zzzzzzzzzz
2010-05-19: Update: Chocolate apparently has *both* ingredients, with caffeine levels roughly equivalent to a decaf tea.
Oct 06, 2009
Brock Tice Last night: Got to bed on time, but couldn't sleep. Had some discomfort from maybe too much beans that I won't get into. Single espresso shot might have been too late in the afternoon. I'm adding the stipulation not to take any caffeine after lunch. Didn't get to sleep until 23:30, and the little one woke us up at 05:00 (she was let to fall asleep in the bed after a feeding -- oops. But nice snuggles at least!)
Oct 06, 2009
Matthew Cornell Please: How specifically are you embedding the docs, Brock? SO cool.
Oct 06, 2009
Brock Tice Embedding Google Docs:
1) Create the document
2) Click the blue 'Share' button
3) Select 'Publish as a web page'
4) Click 'Start Publishing'
5) From the dropdown below that, select 'HTML to embed in a web page' or something like that
6) Paste the resulting HTML in the TTL project description
7) Done!
Oct 06, 2009
Matthew Cornell Edison hacking at its finest. Thanks!
Oct 07, 2009
Brock Tice Let this slide too much. Getting back to at least logging. Have been keeping my caffeine intake within my limits for the most part. Haven't had much success with napping. Need to get better about going to bed when I'm tired though. So much to do!
Oct 22, 2009
Liza Cunningham [Liza wrote] Brock, have you read about cortisol and how it rises and falls during the day? This impacts the sleep cycle. So around 9pm there is cortisol drop and that's the body saying "time for sleep". Then it rises again from about 11 pm - 1:30 am. So if you stay up past that time it will be hard to get to sleep until the natural cortisol drop. This is also the reason people get tired from 3-5 pm (cortisol drops during that time). There you go, everything you ever wanted to know about cortisol. Perhaps an experiment matching sleep times to cortisol drops, seeing if sleep comes easier.
Oct 22, 2009
Brock Tice Liza, thanks for the tips on cortisol. I am familiar with it. The time course depends on various signals or "zeitgebers", particularly intense light in the morning, so the times you list are not absolute.
Nov 03, 2009
Brock Tice I'll call this a success. I didn't log enough, really, but I've been observing and it seems to be working. The couple of times my sleep schedule has really been thrown off (mostly by my daughter), and I've resorted to more caffeine than this, I felt totally awful.
The tricky thing is that it's easy to come to regard that awful feeling as normal if you don't realize the problem is not having enough sleep.
Dec 31, 2009
Matthew Cornell I love your insight, Brock. Without changing things up, we have no reference for comparison. Well done.
Jan 13, 2010
Brock Tice Thanks!
Jan 18, 2010
Brock Tice Just revisited this because I've been having sleep problems again. Since it was a success I'm just going to follow the rules from before, and maybe log.
May 17, 2010
Matthew Cornell Good for you. I wonder: Did it help having your experiment here in Edison to return to? Also, from a TTL angle, is it still an experiment if you've done it once with success? I'd say sure.
May 18, 2010
Brock Tice It definitely helped. I was going to start a new experiment but I vaguely remembered having done one before. I don't think I'd call it an experiment at this point. It's a lesson learned from an experiment that I'm applying.
Perhaps I need a new experiment on how *not to forget* the importance of getting enough sleep, and the rules listed here that facilitate that.
May 18, 2010