Ask HN: When you can't fall asleep, what do you do?
If you can't sleep, do you get right back at whatever project you're into? If not, then what do you do while waiting to be tired enough to sleep?
I take 6mg of melatonin. Every night. I have found it allows me to fall asleep within a half hour instead of it taking two hours.
Maintaining good sleep hygiene is often very helpful. Avoid blue light before going to bed. Physical activity and exercise are important. Try not to eat right before going to bed.
When I am really stressed out and just can't sleep, I lie in bed and daydream, (often it's some type of fantasy where I get to live in the future where mankind is living throughout the solar system, I digress). I find doing this calms me down, making it easier to fall asleep.
Another thing I experienced was when I cut out sugar and caffeine, I'd be able to fall asleep in almost any place. Again, that may only be my experiences.
I just have to be careful about taking it too late, if I really need to be up the next morning. I find that when I take melatonin, I really need my full 8 hours (or more) of sleep, or I feel pretty groggy for quite a while after waking up.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melatonin
[2]: http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/tc/melatonin-overview
I'm not very good at the "avoiding blue light" part, I really need to start doing that. But I'm really bad for surfing the 'net or reading some kind document on the computer, right up until time to close my eyes. :-(
1. Try to go to bed at the same time every day (and sleep the same amount of time). I'm a night owl and can easily move my day on, but moving it back is very difficult.
2. Sleeping ritual. Mine is pretty simple, I turn the lights off, climb in bed and lie on my right hand side. After a bit (1-10 minutes) I will turn over and then I'm pretty much immediately asleep. If you repeat something it will become ingrained (and will work most of the time).
3. Fix all sources of disturbances. Partner, pets, light, noise etc.
4. Learning to switch your brain off. Try not to watch/read something that's too emotionally charged before bed.
5. After that everything else that has already been mentioned, eating too close to going to bed, having drunk something so you need to get up to pee etc.
For most people sleep shouldn't be a problem, they just have terrible habits and/or environment.
Sometimes I read/listen to educational stuff. I try to keep it on the lighter side. Sometimes I listen/watch comedy. Right now I've been watching Seinfeld before bed. Before that was Khan Academy history.
I remember hearing advice from some credible source (that I can't remember) that it's not good to keep trying to fall asleep when you are struggling. I think 20 minutes was the point where it was recommended to get out of bed and do something else for a bit. Anecdotally, it works reasonably well for me.
While still in bed, lay on your back and think of something you can 'see' (imagine it), anything as long as it's something that physically exists. For example: your car, a guitar, a chair. Imagine it and try to describe it to yourself in the best possible detail. 'My guitar is surf green, it's a Fender Carbonita, it has 22 frets, it has a maple neck, ...' Do this for five things.
Then move on to "things you can feel". Physically feel. For example, describe how your couch feels, how your blanket feels. Again, every little detail. Five times.
Then think of five things you can hear: not at that exact moment in your bed, but things you might have heard throughout the day. Something I think of often is the sound of a train arriving or leaving. Again, try to describe it to yourself in the best possible detail. Do this, again, five times.
Then start over at describing something you can 'see'. Do it four times, move on to feeling, 4 times, move on to hearing, 4 times. Then all over again, except this time 3 times. Then 2, then 1.
I have never made it past the first 5 descriptions of 'see'. I usually fall asleep after describing two objects to myself.
It might help you fall asleep.. Might not. Worth a try, perhaps?
As i understand, when you can't sleep your mind is active and / or is receptive. Mostly its receptive to new ideas, and hence reading aids in thinking and churning ideas.
In case your mind is active and has too much noise like worries / anxiety etc. i find it best to watch videos i saved for later on youtube or ted.
If I'm really awake and don't want to go back to work I put on a movie onto the TV I've already watched a few times, ideally something a bit boring. Usually that makes me drift off.
There's also the more personal option I'm surprised no-one has mentioned yet. That tends to help the boys sleep at least.
First, I'll write down all my ideas, thoughts, etc. Even if just a few words, I think that action helps me brain turn off.
If I'm still awake, the big guns, I'll read a fiction book in another language. A few minutes of that and I'm exhausted. The kindle is great for that, because it's got an easy dictionary for looking up unknown words. Just make sure you're wearing orange tinted glasses or you're on a non-lit screen, otherwise the blue in the phone screen will wake you up further.
Another thing I do is I climb stairs to my house (I stay on the 6th floor and have to climb more than 100 steps)
Assume that this is probably going to be a bad night, you will not sleep much and tomorrow you will be tired. First of all accept that, or you will feel even more anxious. The good part is that tomorrow night you will be tired, so it will be easier to fall sleep.
Then, try to do something to distract yourself. It is really boring to spend the night laying on the bed and feeling miserable because you cannot sleep. Grab a book or watch a film, at least you will do something profitable during the night. Finally, at some point, you will fall asleep. It will be probably too late, but at this point there's nothing you can do about that.
IMPORTANT: Wake up at your time. You will feel extremely tired, and it will be really hard to wake up; but if you sleep until late, you will be altering your internal clock and next day you won't be able to sleep early neither.
If you cannot sleep for several days in a row, probably you should see a doctor. He will be able to help you.
But more seriously, reading some fiction (not news!) is a great way to clear the mind and distract your thoughts from all the stuff that's keeping you awake.
Its particularly bad tonight/this morning; I found Elixir a few days ago, and I keep thinking about doing things with it.
Often I'll try to go to bed, get in some weird thought-state, and "wake" back up with a fully planned project in my head I just absolutely have to get worked out.... or.... rather, usually, some really weird/dumb idea that I thought was great and probably shouldn't have wasted the night on.
Getting a period of decent exercise (walking, jogging, etc) between work-time and sleep-time also seemed to help break up the day for me, and ensure I am both somewhat physically tired as well as mentally tired.
Lie on your bed. Relax. Instead of trying to fall asleep (and thinking about it) think about making yourself as comfortable as possible. Turn this way, move your arm that way,... Once you've done it, the sleep usually follows. In short, think comfort not sleep.
P.S.
I've used to have troubles falling asleep, but that simple method helped me to solve the problem. I would give the credit to the original author, but I can't remember where I read it.
In my case, sometimes I just don't feel comfortable enough. However, I think even a sugar pill would help some, because in some cases it's just a matter of deciding to stop thinking about things enough to settle down.
Sleeping with blinds open is pretty important for the next day. If you don't have any natural light then getting sunlight as early as possible helps.
If I do take melatonin, I don't take it past 1 AM... I feel like it messes up my circadian rhythm even worse if I do.
Breathe deeply & concentrate on making your exhale longer than your inhale.
Get some exercise — I feel way better after running even just 1 mile. I did 3 earlier tonight, and can barely keep my eyes open right now.
Don't drink — Your sleep isn't as restful: http://time.com/3671777/drinking-sleep
Don't drink coffee after x PM — I always cut myself off from caffeine by 4pm, and try to do it by 2pm. Find out what's right for you.
Take some melatonin — It did me a lot of good when I used to have trouble sleeping.
Address the sources of anxiety in your life — A comparison of how well I sleep now vs. when I had a lot of anxiety in my life (stress from working at Microsoft, stress from trying to drag along my faltering startup, etc.) is stark. I don't fall asleep with much or any worry most nights.
Worst case scenario: ask a doctor to prescribe you Ambien or the like. Re-establish a decent sleeping pattern, and then figure out how to address everything else.
Edit: There's one thing I want to mention about exercising. I started running only two months ago after what essentially amounts to a lifetime of non-exercise. I wasn't overweight by any means—I was just plain skinny. Like, sort of the way you expect your average nerd to be skinny. After my first run of barely a mile (walking about half of it), I wondered if I was going to have a heart attack. I didn't, thankfully. And now, two months later, I can run a longer distance than my first run/walk with basically no trouble whatsoever. I feel great, have more energy, and sleep better.
You don't even have to start running. Just start walking. Here's a better story than I can offer you at the moment on the value of this: http://www.loopinsight.com/2015/06/16/apple-watch-my-most-pe... and http://www.loopinsight.com/2015/06/18/follow-up-to-how-i-los...
You don't need an Apple Watch. You don't need a health tracker. Just move. It feels better every day, and—I promise—within a month or two you'll start craving it. It's an awesome feeling.
Are you this Tim Schumann? http://projectskyhook.com
edit: to be clear, not that I'm previously familiar with your work; just noticed that you must be another left-coaster, and decided to Google you. And, assuming you are the aforementioned Tim Schumann, hi from a somewhat near neighbor in Seattle.
As far as drugs go benadryl is pretty innocuous. You could always buy that ZzzQuil stuff but it's the same thing for more money.
this list is pretty good, considering the source:
http://www.buzzfeed.com/nataliebrown/charts-that-will-help-y...
* exercise
* wake up earlier
* stop using all electronics after 9
Make sure you're going to bed at the same time every night (notice: that's every night. Not just weeknights.), and getting up at the same time every day (ditto), and make sure the delta between those two times is long enough. Not "I feel rested after 30 minutes of sleep" long enough: start with 9 hours and maintain that until you're getting up < 30 minutes before your alarm by yourself and feeling rested. At this point, you can more or less consider your sleep debt paid off. Then, back off the duration of sleep in ~90 minute intervals (that's the average REM cycle in humans) using the same criteria (note that average time to fall asleep is about 15 minutes). Most people won't get past a 7.5 hour sleep time.
Another thing that really helped me is cutting most processed sugar and all caffeine. As somebody who had a serious coffee and energy drink addiction, this was really hard to do, but it makes a big difference. If you "can't" cut caffeine, then try cutting it after 2pm or so. The biological half life of caffeine is 3-7 hours in adults, so when in doubt, go earlier than 2pm if you can. If you're a smoker, quit that too. Generally, stop putting stimulants into your body. Given that most of those stimulants also come with all kinds of sugars and other less-than-desirable additives, you'll be more healthy for it in the long run.
Along that same line, alcohol, despite being a depressant, is a good thing to avoid, especially in excess around bedtime. It might help you sleep, but long term dependence on alcohol puts you firmly in the "alcoholic" category, and even worse, it can cause or exacerbate insomnia.
When you're doing all of ^, you shouldn't need anything else unless there's some kind of disorder in play. I had https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delayed_sleep_phase_disorder, which the article likens to "Social Jet Lag". It's correctable over time, though, in part by following the rules I put up there ^, and in part by following these next ones (these apply to other sleep phase disorders, including mild insomnia):
0) This is optional, but keeping a log of anything related to your body will provide you with useful data down the road should you need it. Treat this like a personal log file: timestamped entries for when/what you ate, what meds you took, when you laid down in bed, when your alarm goes off, when you get out of bed (those times are usually different for me :P ), your rating of your sleep on some consistent scale, and how long you exercise. The more data, the better.
1) Start with 6mg of melatonin 15 minutes before laying down in bed. Keep doing that for a week. If you are still having problems falling asleep:
2) 6mg of melatonin and 25mg diphenhydramine (Unisom). Note that this is an antihistamine, and that in some cases, they can react poorly with SSRIs (depression medication). I know somebody that ended up sleeping for about 48 hours straight as a result. They're otherwise pretty safe. After a week, if you're still having problems, and you're being honest with yourself about following the rules at the top of this post:
3) 6mg melatonin, 50mg diphenhydramine. This is about the most potent OTC sleep cocktail available. After a week and really, really making sure you're following the rules at the top - see how I keep coming back to that? They're important - if it's still not working:
4) Go to a doctor armed with the log from step 0 and get a prescription for Trazodone, which can (I'm told by my doctor) be safely layered on top of the Melatonin and Diphenhydramine. If you stay awake through this, there are other options too. Zolpidem didn't do anything for me, but I'm told it works wonders on other people.
In any case, start with the minimum effective dose of these things because they can really mess you up.