I'd like to have a series of discussion posts, where each post is of the form "Let's brainstorm things you might consider when optimizing X", where X is something like sleep, exercise, commuting, studying, etc. Think of it like a specialized repository.
In the spirit of try more things, the direct benefit is to provide insights like "Oh, I never realized that BLAH is a knob I can fiddle. This gives me an idea of how I might change BLAH given my particular circumstances. I will try this and see what happens!"
The indirect benefit is to practice instrumental rationality using the "toy problem" provided by a general prompt.
Accordingly, participation could be in many forms:
* Pointers to scientific research
* General directions to consider
* Personal experience
* Boring advice
* Intersections with other community ideas, biases
* Cost-benefit, value-of-information analysis
* Related questions
* Other musings, thoughts, speculation, links, theories, etc.
This post is on sleep and circadian rhythms.
Like many people here I often have a problem with being too wakeful at night and too sleepy in the morning.
Getting lots of exercise early in the day seems to be most helpful for fixing my sleep schedule. That's not always possible (the best I can do with computer work is a standing desk) and I've found melatonin in the night and caffeine in the morning to be barely-adequate substitutes.
A college roommate had good experiences with light therapy in the mornings; I haven't tried a "light box" myself but this may be a confounding factor with my experience with exercise; was the exercise helping me directly or was it the additional time outdoors in the sunlight?
The best solution to the problem has often been "don't solve the problem". I've been lucky enough to have a career that lets me get my best work done at 1am at home, as well as supervisors who are too smart to try and cut open the goose to get more golden eggs out. Unfortunately this is now only an option a few months out of the year; my kid's school is not so flexible about scheduling.