Why am I sleeping so well lately?

Philip Harker
Mon, 20 Apr 2026 00:54:32 GMT

Introduction: Solving for Sleep

I have had some moderate sleep issues from Autumn 2025 onwards. But in April 2026 as I'm spending the month living at the Lighthaven campus in Berkeley, CA, my sleep has improved significantly despite theoretically worse sleeping conditions. This post is my attempt to break down what my sleep issues are/were, what my sleep conditions were like before and after, what changed, and what actionables I can take next.

I'm at the Inkhaven Writers' Residency at Lighthaven, so I figured at the very least this would be sufficiently ratty LessWrong content.

The symptoms of my sleep issues can be best described as follows:

1. I tend to wake up 1-2 times per night most nights. Sometimes this is me waking up to urinate (nocturia), but lately it's just been random wakeups for no reason. I can usually get back to sleep, but I think these wakeups have disrupted REM, which is very important to avoid.

2. I find it very difficult to sleep in past 7:30 AM or so. This isn't the worst thing in the world, but even when I stay up late my body seems to want to wake up between 6:30 and 7:30. Turning off my alarm is useless. I'm not able to make up lost sleep by sleeping in on the weekends.[1]

3. I have a hard time falling asleep at night more often than not. I hadn't had this issue in many years but it resurged in late 2025.

Having spent many nights thinking about it, I think the causes of my sleep issues are as follows:

1. I do not practice good sleep hygiene. My office and my bedroom are the same room. Though I resolved in 2026 to quit, I still sometimes find myself on Twitter or YouTube in bed in the middle of the day.

2. I do not exercise enough. In the summer I get a fair amount of cardio (in summer 2025 it was unusual for me to take less than 13,000 steps per day).

3. I live in close quarters with a roommate. My apartment is ~625 square feet and my roommate's waking hours tend to vary. I think this is more psychological than anything (we will return to this).

4. I drink alcohol majority of evenings. Moderate alcohol consumption is bad for sleep, though I don't think this is as big of a detriment to my sleep as I thought (we will return to this).

5. I stress too much about not sleeping. The fact that I worry about how little sleep I get is probably doing more harm than good.

I have suspected these were causes for some time, but I haven't been able to test them until this month when my lodging situation changed radically (and my sleep with it).

How I slept before

My bedroom in Toronto is a fairly small space containing a double bed, a large desk, a dresser, and a bookshelf (not pictured):

Not a bad setup. But this pano from 2021 makes it look larger than it actually is. The bed is wedged against the corner (as are the beds of all single men in their 20s), and there is nothing demarcating the sleeping zone, the work zone, and the play/leisure zone. For me, places often mix.

My wakeup routine is highly varied. Sometimes I lie in bed and do nothing for an hour or longer, sometimes I get up immediately. I shower in the morning like 2/3rds of days but sometimes I will shower in the afternoon or even the evening (I work from home so I have some flexibility there).

"Going to bed" for me in Toronto looks like wandering home or switching off my computer, getting changed, and climbing into bed anywhere between 10:00 PM and 1:00 AM. If my morning ritual is weak, my evening ritual is nonexistent.

How I sleep currently

Barring the Bodega Bay Beach Episode of Inkhaven (which our Residents and Team are all enjoying and taking very well), I sleep in this shared dormitory in a guest house a few blocks offsite of the Lighthaven Campus in fabulous Berkeley:

My bed is the bottom bunk on the left hand side.

I currently have a very strict morning routine at Inkhaven. I aim to arrive at Lighthaven between 7:30 and 8:00, which means I need to awake around 7:00, shower, dress (I usually lay my clothes out the night before), and slip out within a small amount of time.

I tend to go to bed between 11:30 PM and 12:45 AM, depending on how silly I got in the Winner's Lounge the evening before. I am often first into bed in the dorm (some of these animals stay awake till 3 or 4 writing about AI safety). I never hear them come in.

I always sleep all the way through the night. I only medicated myself on the evening of 1 April, my second night there, but since then I've been able to get to sleep as soon as I climbed into bed. I usually sleep for 6.0 to 7.5 hours. Maybe 25% of days at Inkhaven I've felt sleepy and woozy during the early afternoon, but never anywhere severe as I've felt on my worst insomnia days in Toronto.

What changed exactly?

I exercise more, at least more than I did in Toronto in Fall/Winter. This is almost certainly the strongest effect. I take many steps per day, both milling about Lighthaven and in my explorations of Berkeley and Oakland and San Francisco. The Bay is very hilly compared to glacier-flattened Toronto, so 10,000 daily steps is a lot more demanding upon me in Berkeley than the Annex.

My work, play, and sleep are very separated. I work exclusively at Lighthaven. I hang out/scroll Twitter exclusively at Lighthaven. If I want to lie down for a quick catnap (which I've never done), I'd do it at Lighthaven. I never go on my phone/laptop in bed, not even in the mornings/nights. This is very good sleep hygiene, the best I've ever practiced.

Going to bed is high friction. There are so many lovely people at this Residency, and I want to stay up talking with them late at night. Going to bed requires me to pack up my briefcase and walk 4 minutes offsite. That's enough friction that I'm not going to head to bed until I'm so sleepy that I have no choice.

I'm not stressed about sleep/mornings. Not only do I not lie awake thinking about "oh no, I'm gonna have an insomniatic night", I'm also not stressed about fighting over the shower/kitchen in the morning. In my dormitory I'm always first awake and first to the shower; through all of April I've never had to wait to bathe or make coffee or get breakfast.

I am sleeping somewhere different. Novelty seems to matter to my brain when I need to sleep. Even when I am tired, I no longer associate my bed with sleep, so I don't fall asleep easily in bed. But if I'm tired on a couch or a subway or a zimzilbang spa, the drowsies kick in almost immediately.

What didn't change (and didn't seem to matter)?

I still use screens before bed. Except for the 10 minutes it takes me to walk to my accomodations, get changed, and get into bed, I do not do any kind of screen detox before going to sleep. My sister once did a nightly one hour screen cleanse before bed. Maybe that worked for her, but I was always suspicious of it. Indeed it seems like I can stay up late writing or watching a movie and still get a decent sleep the next day.

I still drink alcohol at night. I've never gotten roaringly drunk at Lighthaven, but I'll have some beer or wine most nights after a hard day's work. Sometimes it's in a social context, sometimes it's as I sit in Rat Park performatively reading poetry or blogposts. I've been drinking a lot less in the last 4 months or so— Dry January in particular seemed to curb my nocturia— but it's interesting that my habits haven't changed much at Inkhaven yet I feel like my sleep is much better.

I still naturally wake up around 7:00 AM. This isn't a short-term frustration of mine (I'm glad I get up early because I want to spend more time at Lighthaven!) but it's weird that I still have literally zero pressure to sleep in. I have no idea why this is.

What actionables can I take?

I am more convinced than ever that sleep hygiene is my current biggest life impediment. I am more productive, more pleasant, and I feel better when I sleep well.

Mentally I feel really stuck in my tiny Toronto bedroom. I feel as though there is no solution; as though when I return home I will fall back into my terrible sleep habits. But this is an emotional response, not a rational one. I think there are some concrete actionables I can take.

Exercise more. There's nothing like May in Toronto. Now that I've had my boot soles serviced and I've figured out how to treat blisters (the trick is to put a bandage on the blister), I have zero excuse not to hit 10, 15, or 20 thousand daily steps for the next 5-6 months. I'd do well to start strength training again after a 4.5 year hiatus. I've also learned that I really like boxing, so maybe I should look into that too.

Work more outside of the house. My current work does require me to use my big fancy PC at home sometimes (and answer video calls at a moment's notice sometimes, which is really irritating) but a lot of my work can be done from libraries and cafes. (Honestly getting a new job would probably help with this in a number of ways, which is something I was already considering.)

Recreate more outside of the house. Again, Toronto in Spring and Summer is wonderful. I gotta get out of the house more and create more barriers between unwinding after work and going to sleep. I should watch more movies or go to tboy oil wrestling shows or something.

Create physical dividers between my bed and the rest of my life. My living room and kitchen area is shared with one roommate, but I don't think he would have an issue with me doing more of my work on the dining room. I should also watch YouTube and films on our TV rather than my computer monitor, but I have a weird neurosis about other people seeing what videos/films I am watching, and I much prefer to keep it private. That's a problem for another post. Also, maybe I should get some kind of divider to separate my bed from the office side of my bedroom.

Travel more? Maybe the sea air of California has been disproportionately helpful to me in a way I've not considered. My brain seems to reward novelty above all else, but that's also a problem for another post.

Maintenance of good sleep is important to Not Being Miserable. Not Being Miserable is a cornerstone of my long-term survival strategy, and I ought to investigate any small adjustments I can make to decrease my misery. The ROI is probably going to be worth it.

1. ^

My mom has a worse version of this problem where it's impossible for her to stay asleep longer than 5:30 or 6:00 or so. I hope it never gets this bad.

Discuss