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Like other commenters, I recommend melatonin and keeping lights low before bedtime. Blue light seems to reduce the amount of melatonin in the brain, so dimmed incandescent lights are better than fluorescents or LEDs. Programs like F.lux or Redshift can change the color temperature of your screen at night.

More than anything else, vigorous exercise has helped keep me on a 24-hour cycle. Days when I don't run are days when I have trouble getting to sleep. I don't think this works for everyone though. Keeping a regular exercise routine is probably harder than keeping a standard sleep schedule.

Mqrius12y20

My sleep schedule tended to drift further into the night as well. I installed f.lux s little over a week ago, and just realized a day ago that I find myself going to bed around midnight consistently! The amount of sleep has also decreased, to about 7.5 hours. sleep quality seems similar. (I'm using ElectricSleep for tracking movement)

Capitalizing on this, I've ordered orange-tinted blue-blocking glasses, and have attempted to find something like f.lux for Android. There are custom ROMs that can do it, and there's apps like Lux that only change brightness.... (read more)

3wedrifid14y

Red LEDs obviously wouldn't fit the deprecated category. If my understanding is correct they are also good for providing illumination in situations where it is critical that you do not lose your night vision. I have found F.lux useful and surprisingly unintrusive. Without playing conscious attention or turning it on and off to verify the difference is not noticeable. If you do go and turn it off after adapting to the altered display it actually feels unnaturally glaring.

See in context

13 Optimizing Sleep

by [anonymous]

10th May 2011

2 min read

13

I have an atypical sleep schedule. I tend to drift in the hours that I keep (that is, going to sleep later and later each day until a 'reset' is required). I also am willing to sacrifice sleep if something sufficiently interesting or urgent (problem sets, a Neal Stephenson book, a new Less Wrong article about an interesting topic) comes up. While procrastination earlier in the day can also play a part in my staying up late, I've noticed that, left to my own devices, I seem to prefer a day-night inversion. I'm naturally much more active at night than during the day, and will skip a meal or two in order to maintain this schedule. (Note: I realize that day-night sleep inversion can be a sign of a medical illness. For reasons I won't go into here, I don't believe that any of them are applicable.)

The schedule that I have now is not optimal for a number of reasons:

Not being able to socialize with very many other people due to not syncing up with their schedules.

'Drifting' leads to unpredictability in my ability to function at a given time during an upcoming day- which is important for tests and classes.

Sleeping during the day is more difficult than at night (extra noises, distractions, etc.)

What I'd like to do is figure out how to optimize my sleep schedule. I'd prefer not to just 'invert' it to be a typical sleep schedule, but to either alter the sleep schedule or discover changes that I can make in other parts of my life that will mitigate the downsides. Some things are obvious: microwavable food for when nothing else is available at night is one change that I can make right away and would minimize the damage from skipping meals. The social issues and 'drifting' are more complicated and don't present an obvious solution after a few minutes of reflection. The reason I resist changing back to a regular sleep schedule is that I know that I'm groggy and miserable in the morning and less productive until about noon of that day if forced to operate under a regular sleep schedule.

Do you have an atypical sleep schedule now, or have you in earlier parts of your life? I would hazard a guess that among the Less Wrong/Rationality/Skeptic/Bayesian community, experimentation in sleep schedule would be higher than in the general population. Have you tried a polyphasic sleep schedule? (I once unsuccessfully did a few years ago in hopes of solving some of the above problems.) If you have experienced these or similar problems, what 'hacks' have you found that mitigate the downsides?

(Note: This is my first discussion post. I apologize in advance if the formatting or content seems a bit askew as a result. Constructive criticism is of course welcome.)

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[-]James_Miller14y100

I had the exact same problem as you but found two solutions:

Melatonin

Baby (reduced total sleep but made it much easier to fall asleep at night)

[-][anonymous]14y210

"Babies! The persistent, biological alarm clocks that adjust your sleep schedules for you! Available (with some persuasion of a third party) for almost no cost!*"

*Cost projection is for the first nine months only. Fees after this period are not fixed and can increase almost without bound. Contracts are for at least 18 years. Baby, Inc. not responsible for side effects: loss of sleep or hair, drool, vomit, or feces of baby impeding daily life were most commonly reported. Many users reported taking pictures of baby and obsessing over mundane details of baby's life. Uncommon side effects include loss of interest in any other activities, completely unfounded optimism, and socializing only with other clients of Baby, Inc.

Sorry, I couldn't resist :)

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[-][anonymous]14y80

Ha, story of my life.

A few things to check out that I found useful:

How much sun do you get, especially after waking up? Also, how far away from the equator do you live?

Caffeine? Alcohol? Both are evil. Cutting out caffeine was a major improvement for my sleeping schedule and level of concentration.

How much exercise do you get each day? Try walking or standing until exhaustion and see if you find it easier to go to bed earlier.

Also don't dismiss mental problems. Low-level background depression can easily lead to procrastination and drifting sleep. It certainly does for me.

Finally, just get used to it. I've been polyphasic for about a year. (Not anymore; kills my memory.) Spending 10+ hours each day in complete darkness and with no-one awake gives you a lot of time to think. After a while, you don't need people anymore. ;) I also spent a few months in high-school on an inverted schedule, getting up at 6-8pm and going to bed right after school. Works just fine. (Or try to make friends who are equally screwed up or who live in a different timezone.)

[-]gwern14y30

Finally, just get used to it. I've been polyphasic for about a year. (Not anymore; kills my memory.)

Interesting; I've long suspected polyphasic sleep came with that sort of price. How were you benchmarking your memory?

[-][anonymous]14y90

Anki reps, mostly. I found that I could do proper review sessions for about 2-3 days and would hit an impenetrable wall. I couldn't learn a single new card and had total brain fog until I got 3 hours more sleep. That, however, would reset my adaptation.

The whole effect is a bit less pronounced on Everyman, but not much. It is however easier to add sleep when you already have a core.

I didn't notice any other major mental impairment after the initial sleep deprivation. I could (and did) play 16+ hours of BG2 and similar games each day and not break down. (I'm so grateful for the easiest difficulty setting now. One Uberman attempt took me 55 hours until I got any sleep at all and all my cognition went to hell. But I could still play HL2, although I got lost within an elevator.)

The other really bad thing about polyphasic sleep is impatience. Quote from my diary at the time (also notice the slight irritation):

Impatience is really getting annoying. Except for the short core I can't skip any time at all anymore. If something takes 6 hours, like a download for example, I will be awake (almost) all the time and have to wait. Every. Minute. Of. It. You see everything pass. Someone just went to bed and you want to talk about something? Prepare to sit there, for 8 hours or more, fully awake. Wrote some email and await an answer? You'll have memorized 500 digits of π before you get it. You can't skip anything, can't just hibernate a few hours. Once the sun went down, you'll sit in darkness, for 14 hours and more right now. If you are not president by day, superhero by night and mad scientist on the side, you'll be bored right out of your skull. Your puny hobbies are not enough for The Night That Never Ends, mortal!

Besides all that, it's cool and kinda works.

[-]gwern14y40

Anki reps, mostly. I found that I could do proper review sessions for about 2-3 days and would hit an impenetrable wall. I couldn't learn a single new card and had total brain fog until I got 3 hours more sleep.

Oh, cool - as I understand it, Anki keeps fairly detailed statistics and exposes them to you; it'd be interesting to see graphs matched up with you being on Everyman vs Uberman, etc.

I didn't notice any other major mental impairment after the initial sleep deprivation...Besides all that, it's cool and kinda works.

Yeah, but I wonder what's really going on during polyphasic adaptation. Relevant tangential links:

[-][anonymous]14y00

Oh, cool - as I understand it, Anki keeps fairly detailed statistics and exposes them to you; it'd be interesting to see graphs matched up with you being on Everyman vs Uberman, etc.

Well, yes, it would be, if I weren't a dumbass who threw them away. ;) I deleted my complete Anki deck at the time because it was pretty low quality and I was really getting annoyed with the content. I did another one that covered the later half of the polyphasic sleep period (which I also used to test my memory), but that was 1.5 years ago and as I have a fairly strict "delete boring cards" policy, virtually nothing of it is left.

Also, most of my diaries are gone. The only thing left are activity logs of some months (nothing really interesting) and several recaps I wrote based on the earlier material. Mania's a bitch.

[-]gwern14y60

A Lesson is Learned But the Damage is Irreversible. People wonder why I hate to delete stuff, but examples like you are why.

[-][anonymous]14y10

Agreed. I'm now logging and saving much more aggressively. That wasn't the first chunk of important data I lost, but I try to make it the last.

[-][anonymous]14y00

I try to avoid the evil influence of the daystar. I live in the lower half of the United States, and in a region in which it becomes uncomfortably hot during the day.

Walking is something that I tend to do in the evening and at night for fun as opposed to as a serious exercise.

The low-level background depression.... that could bear looking into. For me, the complete darkness by myself is a very relaxing sort of state of mind, but it can almost as easily lead to procrastination on the Internet as serious work.

The 'make insomniac friends' option also bears looking into. Perhaps I should post a sign next semester, "Insomniacs of Campus, Unite! You have nothing to lose except a whole lot of sleep!"

[Edited for nonsensical typo.]

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[-]Vaniver14y10

I try to avoid the evil influence of the daystar. I live in the lower half of the United States, and in a region in which it becomes uncomfortably hot during the day.

I suggest buying a blue light for light therapy, and using that in the morning. Melatonin at night is also pretty effective at cutting down insomnia (but can only do so much for me). Doing a significant amount of exercise during the day will also help you fall asleep more quickly, but that isn't really time-saving.

[-][anonymous]14y00

Does a blue light really work? Do you use one yourself? I'm considering buying one for next fall (Germany gets pretty dark), but I'm still fairly skeptical given how useless most other treatments for sleep/mood disorders are.

[-]Vaniver14y00

I use one myself sometimes. I cannot quantify its effectiveness, though, and so that's not terribly helpful.

[-]DanielLC14y70

I suggest going back in time two hours every day. It works for Rationalist!Harry.

[-]JenniferRM14y60

Lamps with progressively brighter bulbs controlled by power outlet timers have given me the ability to have an artificial sun rise and set right next to my bed according to a mechanical policy. It did wonders for my sleep cycle :-)

[-]AngryParsley14y10

I had a similar set-up for a while and it was quite useful. I used some X10 modules and cron jobs to turn on lamps in the morning. The automated lamps became superfluous after I moved to a place with east-facing windows. It's not easy to shut off the morning sun.

Barring a bedroom with east-facing windows, I'd say the outlet timer is the best option. Home automation stuff is harder to set up and more expensive.

[-]knb14y50

Do you have an atypical sleep schedule now, or have you in earlier parts of your life? I would hazard a guess that among the Less Wrong/Rationality/Skeptic/Bayesian community, experimentation in sleep schedule would be higher than in the general population.

I had a similar creeping sleep schedule. It was a persistent problem during high school, but it got much worse during undergrad, since I usually scheduled my classes in the afternoon, when I felt more active. I've always suffered from onset insomnia, so going to bed was an anxiety-producing thing for me. I would lay in bed for hours worrying about not being able to fall asleep, and even tiny distractions made sleep totally impossible. Going to bed became an "Ugh field", and I responded by procrastinating. My bedtime drifted later and later.

What finally worked for me was a number of lifestyle changes. First, I started taking Melatonin 1.5 hours before I wanted to be asleep. The Melatonin causes serious sleepiness within 30 minutes. After it takes effect, I usually linger for a while, until the desire to sleep becomes intense. I go to bed usually within an hour and fall asleep within 90 minutes of taking the pills. I don't procrastinate about taking the pills, because it doesn't feel like a commitment.

The other changes are smaller. I started running a box fan in my room. The fan noise blocks out distracting noises, making sleep much easier. Also, it ensures that I don't feel too warm, which is another sleep-killer for me. I've eventually gotten more sophisticated. I started using a Philips brand "wake up light" I received as a gift. It gradually lightens your room, for a period before you want to get up. It can also play nature sounds. This makes waking up much more natural feeling and pleasant than most people are used to. I've also noticed I usually wake up feeling less groggy and more cheerful. Since incorporating these changes I've had an excellent sleep cycle, and that has improved my life in countless ways. I think improving sleep really is one of the most important ways you can become happier.

[-][anonymous]14y00

White noise is an interesting suggestion I haven't heard much elsewhere. The wake up light and melatonin bear looking into, as other people here have said those as well.

The "Ugh field" about going to bed describes almost exactly my problem with sleep. Sleep becomes associated with not getting stuff done needed for tomorrow, sleep becomes a bad thing to be avoided by all Good and Industrious People, and then the sleep problems get worse.

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[-]AngryParsley14y40

[-]wedrifid14y30

Blue light seems to reduce the amount of melatonin in the brain, so dimmed incandescent lights are better than fluorescents or LEDs.

Red LEDs obviously wouldn't fit the deprecated category. If my understanding is correct they are also good for providing illumination in situations where it is critical that you do not lose your night vision.

Programs like F.lux or Redshift can change the color temperature of your screen at night.

I have found F.lux useful and surprisingly unintrusive. Without playing conscious attention or turning it on and off to verify the difference is not noticeable. If you do go and turn it off after adapting to the altered display it actually feels unnaturally glaring.

[-]Cyan14y20

Without playing conscious attention or turning it on and off to verify the difference is not noticeable.

I notice it. I don't mind it, but I do notice it.

[-]Dorikka13y00

If you do go and turn it off after adapting to the altered display it actually feels unnaturally glaring.

I've had the same experience, so I now just leave it on the nighttime setting all the time. I wish that I'd have known about it during the years that I played video games for hours on end. :P

[-]Mqrius12y20

I'm using EasyEyez right now, which can put an ugly red overlay over the screen. I don't know how effective it is, but at least you'll need to reduce blue to go from a white colour to a red colour.

YMMV, my girlfriend didn't notice any change since using f.lux.

[-]virtualAdept14y20

I have the same general proclivities that you describe. I've got some flexibility in my schedule (grad school is kinda awesome), but realistically speaking it's not reasonable to go with a full schedule inversion - while sleeping during the day is not difficult for me, my lab and occasional classes make it necessary to be up in the morning sometimes.

I have tried two extremes in how I handle sleep, and liked neither of them: forcing myself to a slightly abbreviated 'normal' schedule of 7 continuous hours of sleep from ~12-1 to 7 or 8 AM, and burning the candle at both ends and just existing on 3-4 hours a night, and 'catching up' for a 12 hour binge on Saturdays.

The first, as you might expect, annoyed me because I feel like my evening's only just starting by 10 or 11 PM; the second doesn't work well because it brings down my baseline functionality during the week. I've considered trying out one of the popular polyphasic schedules, but my work is variable enough as to make that difficult or infeasible to implement.

The best solution I've found is this: Starting from the basic knowledge that human sleep 'cycles' (in which you go into and then back out of REM) are considerably shorter than the ~8-9 hours that's considered a 'full night's sleep,' I experimented with different shortened sleep amounts (or, more accurately, in undergrad when I was often getting only 3-4 hours/night anyway, I kept track of the exact times I slept and how I felt the next day). I found that, for me, I feel like absolute crap if I wake up after 3 hours, or after 4.5, but somewhere between 3.5 and 4 there's a sweet spot where I can wake up fully and have high functionality through most of the day afterward.

Since that 'high functionality' doesn't last all day, it works best if I grab a half hour (in my case) nap in the late afternoon/early evening.

Staying slightly sleep-deprived (this is fairly slight for me; I just never have slept a lot when left to my own devices) allows me to shift the schedule essentially as needed (whether for work or to account for social activities), since I can always fall asleep when I want to, and I make sure I get one or two 8-hour periods (essentially inserting one extra cycle) a week to keep the debt from climbing.

Lately I've lengthened the 'night' to more like 5.5 hours, which seems to work well, as successive REM cycles tend to be shorter, but still generally running on less sleep than most people. YMMV, of course; the flexibility afforded by a short 'night' has always been worth the slight energy hit for me, with the trick being to avoid losing mental clarity as well. (Hence where figuring out what shortened cycle is best for you comes in.)

[-]Risto_Saarelma14y20

I've been trying a biphasic sleep schedule on and off for a couple of weeks now. Instead of the normal 8 hours per night, I sleep 6 hours each night and take a long nap in the afternoon. I have a wakeup lamp to wake me up after the night's sleep, and wake up naturally from the nap, generally after something between one and two hours.

A couple of rebound effects I get from trying to reschedule a full night's sleep is that going to sleep much earlier than what I'm currently used to makes me wake up after a couple of hours and stay up the rest of the night, and sleeping less than usual on two consecutive nights is hard to do. Doing the biphasic thing and taking a nap every day fixes both these problems. I'm no longer trying to get to sleep early enough that my body thinks it's only having a late nap, and the naps counterbalance the sleep deprivation from sleeping less than usual at night.

The routine got messed up when I started running this spring and got my leg muscles sore from a lack of training. My body likes a full night's sleep a lot more when there's a bunch of damaged tissue to heal, so I didn't manage to keep waking up after only six hours of sleep any more.

[-]falenas10814y10

Just because nobody has posted it yet, XKCD did a comic about this here.

[-]John_D10y00

Some other ways to optimize sleep:

Metformin helps improve sleep, and a theorized mechanism is through improved glucose metabolism. This might also explain why exercise, which has a similar effect on glucose metabolism, improves sleep as well, and why deteriorating health worsens it.
Some blood pressure lowering drugs worsen sleep, but the possible mechanism is through melatonin suppression.

Source:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/dme.12362/full

[-]rebellionkid13y00

I'm starting an experiment today. The program is Everyman: 3 20 min naps at midday, the afternoon and the evening with core sleep gradually decreasing, hopefully to a small number of hours. I have early morning lectures and function well at night, so short of being nocturnal decreasing my core sleep looks the best way to be efficient. Will keep this tread updated with results.

[-]gwern13y20

Are you tracking your sleep with a Zeo or at least a cellphone accelerometer?

How are you benchmarking your mental state? Memory may take a serious hit, are you using something like Anki which records statistics on forgetting/memory performance? (Working memory and executive function are also issues, so I would suggest dual n-back.)

[-]rebellionkid13y00

At the moment I'm tracking sleep with a pen and paper, just started with an Android app. Zeo was totally unknown to me. Thankyou, will investigate this.

My plan is to go by the metric that matters to me, university work. I get enough data there to notice something going wrong. Not the same detail as proper Anki-style benchmarking, however there is an extra variable in my case (resulting in high variance on the day/week scale), that would spoil such results.

[-]gwern13y00

I'm a big fan of the Zeo, I should mention. You may be better off with one of the cellphone apps (I think some are even free, while the cellphone-based Zeo is like $100, plus something like $20-40 in headband replacement a year depending on how fast you use them up).

[-]David Althaus13y00

(Working memory and executive function are also issues, so I would suggest dual n-back.)

What do you think are the best ways to measure mental performance? (The problem with dual n-back is that I'm constantly improving and I would like to have a somewhat constant benchmark.) Do you think tests that measure visual reaction time or the time you need to solve arithmetic problems are worthwhile?

[-]gwern13y10

If you haven't plateaued on DNB yet, you could always try a suite of things like Gbrainy or Lumosity. (But needless to say, improving on DNB simply means that data is harder to interpret - if your scores drop, even after you think you've adapted, that's significant data!)

[-]rebellionkid13y00

Update. I've discovered I dont function nearly so well at night as I had anticipated. I was running with core sleep 4-8, after shifting this to 2-6 I can see an improvement.

Also notable features: I can shift the naps around a fair amount, but too much core sleep, or hitting the snooze button after waking from core sleep throws me off for a long time after. The amount of sleep in each session doesn't seem as important in how I feel afterwards as how I wake up. Waking up in the middle of deep sleep going blurg and snoozing for 10 mins is followed by feeling awful. Being in light enough sleep that my phone screen turning back on before the alarm goes off is enough to wake me and then getting straight out of bed is followed by feeling really energetic.

It's incredible how much sleep I'm able to get in the naps. Sometimes schedules mean I can only really afford 10/15 mins, and I feel myself waking up from real sleep after this.

[-]Risto_Saarelma14y00

There's a purported trick where you don't eat for 16 hours before the time you want to be waking up regularly and then eat a big breakfast. This is supposed to reset some internal sleep cycle clock. Haven't tested this myself yet.

[-]Goobahman14y00

Forgive me if someone has already mentioned this but making sure your sleep space is a nothing else space helps a lot too.

For me, bedtime was a place for cognitive exercise, wherein I awoke my mind to all the things that required thought, generally speaking a poor idea when your trying to get your mind to slow down. Also now that I'm married it's a place for discussion and other enjoyable activities.

Ideally though, the Bed should be for sleep and sleep alone, no thinking, no reading, etc. If your thinking a lot or feel like reading, maybe do it at your desk until your feeling more drowsy.

Apparently it trains your body to instinctively think it's time for sleep if the environment provided for sleep is consistently exclusive. I have a friend who did this and managed such deep sleep that he could get by on 6 hours a day without need for naps or catch up days.

[-]Goobahman14y10

but then he had a baby :p

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