An acquaintance apparently started a personal sleep-improvement business, and I got to try it as a monitor.
We have only been at it for about a week, so once it is finished I may still add more to this post.
Even so, personally I felt a clear effect in just one week, so I wanted to write about it at this point.
The flow is roughly: counseling, a diagnostic test, sending a sleep log every day, and having regular web meetings to talk about progress.
Also, that acquaintance is not a doctor, so this is not medical care — it is framed more like coaching.
My sleep quality has been bad for a long time.
I have unpleasant dreams every night, and even after a long sleep I wake up feeling terrible.
After a simple diagnosis, the conclusion was that in my case the cause is brain fatigue.
I do exercise reasonably often and my diet is not that messy, so it made sense.
For example, I am constantly worried whether work messages have come in. (With chat apps like LINE, Chatwork, Slack, and so on, I cannot settle down unless notifications are at zero.)
Before bed I want notifications at zero, and when I wake up the first thing I want to do is clear them to zero.
Beyond that, I want to clear tasks as fast as possible, and I am always anxious about the future.
Then the time I should reserve for hobbies, or progress on businesses I eventually want to do, starts to fall apart.
As a result I get depressed again — and the spiral continues.
The state keeps getting worse, and I end up with constant frustration.
From a time-management point of view, too much of my time and mental bandwidth is taken by “not important × urgent” things — clearing the vague anxieties of the moment.
As a result, judgment and drive drop, and the environment around me gets worse too.
For example, the state of my room.
Because I go back and forth between the office and home, I often do not clean much, and things sit in a messy pile — it looks dirty.
I do not tidy carefully either, so for example I leave unfolded clothes alone.
That kind of state puts a heavy load on the brain without you noticing.
You start putting off tasks that are not that urgent.
So for sleep improvement, in my case I needed two main action areas.
(1) Consciously take actions to reduce brain fatigue
(2) Build a routine from falling asleep through waking up
(1) Consciously take actions to reduce brain fatigue
The abstraction above is a bit off, but (1) is a matter of awareness — something you should keep in mind all the time.
To reduce brain fatigue: make cleaning a habit, declutter, decide where things go, do not pile up tasks, cook with healthy ingredients, and so on.
The phrase “reduce brain fatigue” really clicked for me.
Slightly off-topic, but I do coaching myself, and choosing words that click for the other person is important.
For people who want clearer thinking, or who feel chronically foggy for long stretches, I think it lands well.
Getting off digital devices has been a long-standing challenge, and eventually I want time on them under one hour a day.
Smartphones are so convenient that they become harmful.
Drinking and nights out also create a lot of brain fatigue.
They are fun and relaxing, but the fatigue lingers the next day and the day after.
I used to go out for dinner-and-drinks with office members after work, but I am deliberately cutting that down.
Recently I turned down several invitations.
They sounded fun, so there is a bit of frustration, but putting a burden on the body is still not desirable.
Ideally I want to keep it to about once a week. At least I do not want to drink two nights in a row.
That said, I do not dislike drinking parties themselves, so my sleep rhythm will inevitably break sometimes — I do not want to get too puritanical about it.
(2) Build a routine from falling asleep through waking up
Finish bathing 90 minutes before sleep, and do not touch the phone from one hour before. Summarize tomorrow’s to-dos in a notebook.
After waking, go for a walk and get sunlight.
These are the well-known tips you find in almost every sleep-improvement book — but actually doing them is hard.
And to keep a routine, you need to define the actions; put another way, you need the resolve to decide what you will not do.
For example, caring about notifications, as I wrote earlier, is less about the routine itself and more about deciding not to do something.
Even now, before sleep I still fidget about whether a notification came in. That is where control is needed.
It is probably a matter of getting used to it.
For sleep logging I also bought an Oura Ring — a ring you wear on your finger all the time for sleep tracking.
At the time of writing it has not arrived yet, so I cannot give an impression.
I am not used to wearing accessories on my body, so I am a little worried, but I will probably get used to it quickly.
Watches like Apple Watch or Fitbit were options, but I wanted to go as far as I could toward getting off digital devices, so I chose the ring form.
Abruptly — that is it for now. I will add more if I feel like it.
Update_20240428
About a month has passed.
The sleep improvement is still going, more or less. I am writing this blog around 7 a.m. After waking I go for a morning walk first. Being active in the morning feels good.
With consecutive dinners and so on, I do not manage it every day, but sleep is now a high priority and I have less desire to go drinking.
Again, I think quantity of sleep matters a lot, and I am reminded how brain-heavy my lifestyle had been.
As for the Oura Ring: with it on, sleep and wake times come out accurately.
More accurately than I expected — at first I was logging rough estimates like “I probably slept around this time,” but now I get times down to the minute.
Condition and stress scores show up too, so it is easy to see how my body is doing.
Still, knowing sleep times and condition does not really change what I do, to be honest.
Even without the ring, if I am tired I go to bed early, and even if my condition is bad I still have to do the work I planned.
So if you ask whether there is a clear benefit, I honestly am not sure.
For now it is more like “well, I will keep collecting the data.”
One other thing: people say “Wait, were you wearing a ring?” more than I expected, and it becomes a conversation topic more than I thought.
© 2024 ZUUHE