How to improve the quality of your sleep
Although I have been a programmer and web-developer for all of my adult life (and the majority of my childhood), through a series of jobs I wound up working in the glorious mess of an industry that is publishing, in print, on paper, made of real-life, meat-space trees.
The founder of this blog and I had a conversation on messenger this afternoon about what my first post should be about. I wanted to do something on a conundrum that irritates me every second of my existence; I have lots and lots of business ideas, ideas that are too good to share with anyone else, I have also been burnt in business enough times to know not to enter into anything potentially successful without due diligence and caution.
I do not have lots and lots of time, or enough personal money to enable the set up my own team of trust-worthy developers. I wanted to write a post about this little dilemma and some possible solutions but Mr. Seopher felt this problem (although one that I know effects his life too) is probably too niche – I wanted to share that fact with you to give you the opportunity to speak up if we were wrong and let us know you want to hear more.
As you may have deduced from the title (you're a regular Sherlock Holmes aren't you), this article will be about not sleeping.
That cliché ridden phrase, "there aren't enough hours in the day" gets over-used by mid level managers in an attempt to exaggerate their work-flow, mediocre list of responsibilities and marginally elevated levels of stress. The only acceptable use of the phrase, in my opinion, is as a retort to the disappointingly rare question; "Do you think I could count to 5,184,000?"
Quality not quantity.
It applies to so many things in life (except perhaps fornication and finance) so it's no surprise to learn that sleep is no exception. A report conducted by the Center for Applied Cognitive Studies (CentACS) said that:
"The length of sleep is not what causes us to be refreshed upon waking. The key factor is the number of complete sleep cycles we enjoy. Each sleep cycle contains five distinct phases, which exhibit different brain- wave patterns. For our purposes, it suffices to say that one sleep cycle lasts an average of 90 minutes"
This can be broken down into three periods:
- 65 mins of normal (non rapid eye movement) sleep
- 20 mins of dreaming (rapid eye movement)
- 5 mins of final, normal sleep
In most cases if we're left to our own devices (no lights, alarm clocks) we will sleep in patterns of 90 minute cycles – more commonly 4 ½ hours, 6 hours or 6 ½ hours. It is between these cycles that we're most likely to be disturbed by noise, bladder or lights. But here's the interesting part, and I'll quote that boffins at CentACS...
"A person who sleeps only four cycles (6 hours) will feel more rested than someone who has slept for 8 to 10 hours but who has not been allowed to complete any one cycle because of being awakened before it was completed...."
Perhaps I should set my alarm for 6am, sleep at midnight but set snooze to 90 minutes!
Tips: Sleep Etiquette
So what about actually getting to sleep – there has to be a nack to it right? This list has been compiled from a number of sources:
1. Don't take sleeping pills including over the counter pills and melatonin
2. Diet pills make it hard to sleep, as do drugs like ecstasy, cocaine and amphetamines – leave that coke spone along... until the morning!
3. Don't go to bed until you're sleepy. Still can't sleep? Wake up earlier or go to bed later!
4. Get up at the same time every day – no matter how badly you slept, otherwise your actions with have consequences on your following nights sleep
5. No TV or scary books in bed, in fact nothing besides sleep and sex.
6. No caffeine within six hours of bedtime
7. Hot baths are good – because they induce a drop in body temperature, not because the fluffy bubbles heal your stressy head!
8. Alcohol, although relaxing at first can lead to insomnia when it clears your system
9. Spend time outside – people exposed to daylight of bright light therapy sleep better
So what type of sleep pattern is right for you?
The Everyman Pattern
2-6 hours of sleep per day. Take one core rest period or around 2 hours and several 15-30 minute short naps throughout the day (as and when needed). See the ‘guide to napping'.
The Uberman's Pattern
A strict regiment of 20 minute naps every 4 hours. This is supposed to be difficult to adapt to, and one of the most extreme patterns. Used often by sailors like that little boy heroic woman, Ellen MacArthur on long trips.
Or there's the obvious, sleep at night for however long you fancy. But that's not really a pattern now is it! The fact of the matter is, if you're busy enough to be looking at altering your sleep pattern dramatically you might as well do it according the the latter schedule. After all, the line... "I need to take a nap" can only be altered enough to make you not sound like a total gaylord if you conclude it with... "I have my UBERMAN schedule to adhere to". Infact forget it, I'm renaming this schedule "Operation: Chuck Norris"
If you're considering trying any of these schedules, you are presumably single – if not, you're going to get a bollocking for trying any of these, and probably dumped, so use your new found twilight hours to stash the cutlery and CDs that you want to keep when she (or he) leaves you!
How to Nap (like a king!)
Step 1 – Before you nap, drink a cup of coffee – the sleep-deprived only need 15 mins kip, and a cup of joe to feel right again.
Step 2 – Close your eyes and relax
Step 3 – Wake up! Limit naps to 15 minutes. A half hour sleep causes the brain's prefrontal cortex to start spinning down, this can take 30 minutes to start back up!
Facts
# Taking sleeping pills every night does the same for your life expectancy as a packet of cigarettes a day.
# If you sleep too little the brain's ability to problem solve is impaired – keep it up long enough and you'll start having hallucinations, hypertension, tremors (I've had that myself), irritability (I AM that) and more.
In Conclusion, there are many ways to skin a cat (albeit, they all end in the grim conclusion of having one angry skin-less kitty!) similarly, when it comes to sleeping there's many different methods and possibilities, with lots of ‘real scientists' doing ‘proper experiments' and all that sort of stuff to bring you more convincing and detailed explainations as to why the information I've handed to you is infact honestly usefull.
Whilst depriving yourself of sleep may be unnecessary or unsuitable for your lifestyle, it's undeniable that occasionally there are times when you would just like to ‘get stuff done'.
I bet you've been reading this blog for a while, thinking that you'd like to start your own site and unleash the knowledge that you've unlocked form the pages of this site. So why not just do it?
Forget about TV for a while, perhaps if permitted I'll teach you how to acquire television shows from the interweb at a later date. Come home from work, have a drink (without caffeine), start working on putting together your new website, have a nap, then get up and WORK. Back to bed at 4am for your ‘core sleep' and (providing you can have a nap at work) you should be fine – and a week later you'll have a shiny new blog.
Alternatively, if you're having trouble sleeping – go and read some of the ridiculously dull corners of the internet that I had to look through in order to bring you this little production.
And if you're curious which sleep patterns I have tried... it's 1am, I have about three proposals to write, 50 emails to answer – I'll nod off at 3am, wake up and 7am and head into the office. That's an average day.
A bad day's sleep is not getting any at all, when an edition of the magazine I own goes to print I'll be in the office for around 50 hours straight, punctuated by two three hour naps under the board-room table – which is made of glass.
And my final thought:
If you have any kind of marketable skill and have considered or wanted your own company, then this is the perfect way to get it started. Don't you wish you could launch a company with a partner that wouldn't take any equity? Well working a 16 hour day gives you just that, find clients during business hours and work in the night, with any luck you'll flip out and go all Tyler Durden a la Fight Club on me, develop schizophrenia and then you'll have a real business partner – business cards and all.
Actually here's an after-thought: I bet Rusty wishes he could stay awake for longer:
Sources
A) – 2006 National Institutes of Health Consensus conference. Robin Lloyd from Live Science: http://www.livescience.com/health/060323_sleep_deprivation.html
B) Wikipedia – of course - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyphasic_sleep
C) Wired's Cheat Sleep posting - http://howto.wired.com/wiredhowtos/index.cgi?page_name=cheat_on_the_need_to_sleep;action=display;category=Live#
D) ABC TV Science sounding like a bunch of girls: http://www.abc.net.au/catalyst/stories/s1789852.htm
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