Stop Obsessing Over Sleep—Your Brain Will Thank You

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I posted this because the article does talk a bit about tech as well…

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Guilty of OVER obsessing. After 24 years of working “on call” and now retired,I have found it most difficult to straighten the rhythms out.

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Great article! Thank you for sharing! I think about sleep a little too much :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

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Good article, I threw my Fitbit out because it was inaccurate.

I have done shift work (really bad for your body), been on call for several years, and for the last 10 years had to be out of bed between 4:30 and 5:30 am to drive a bus as an AM driver.

I also suffer from “The hour of the Wolf” waking around 2-3 am and fighting to get back to sleep, sometimes for hours. I inevitably spiralled into negative thoughts while lying alone in the dark, fighting for sleep.

The I discovered I could get up, make a cup of tea (NOT coffee) lift the lid on my laptop and do something productive (or even mindless, like Youtube) for 30 minutes, and I could go back to sleep almost instantly.

Problem solved!

Live and Enjoy!

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Regarding waking in the middle of the night and finding it easier to get back to sleep after some activity, this article could be relevant:

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yup, that’s my solution too. I just get up for a while.

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I think its appropriate for this discussion to bring up the ever popular “Siestia”. No doubt invented by Mexico & Spain to counter the mid day sweltering sun. I think more than, that it would benefit all of us. I’ll bet productivity would increase.

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See, I feel worse if I take a nap during the day. Once I am up, I am up. I wish I could sleep an extra hour on weekdays, though…

I am a militant sleeper. I go to bed and wake up exactly at the same time every day and I can fall asleep in about 5 minutes. Left over habits from the Navy.

I use Sleep as Android and have always wondered how much of my assessment of the quality of sleep I get is confirmation bias. As in, I look at my sleep tracker and it says I only went through 2 REM cycles, and then I go “jeez that’s why I am so tired”, even though perhaps I slept fine.

I started using it as around late August I went through a pretty rough transition in medication that caused an overwhelming amount of anxiety. I was having crazy intense nightmares, clenching my jaw and not sleeping at all for a few weeks. I got new meds for sleeping that have been working pretty good and I’ve been slowly transitioning into better sleep quality. With that better sleep has been an increase in REM cycles according to my app so I’d like to think its relatively accurate.

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When I started as a programmer in the 1980s, some of the best people I worked alongside took a 20-minute nap in their lunch break, long before the phrase “power nap” was coined. I haven’t been able to acquire that habit, though.

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Of all the multiple problems I have, sleep as never been one of them (knock on wood). I have always fallen asleep easily. What I have trouble doing is waking to an alarm clock or any music, etc. I seem to need to naturally wake up or else I’m in a fog for two hours.

I solved that problem by working the evening shift of noon to 10:30 pm four days a week. I loved that shift! Most hate it due to having no real morning or evening time. I easily paid that price to go to bed by midnight and wake at 8ish all on my own. Boy, I feel great when I do that!

I think everyone has some natural rhythm to their sleep cycles and do best when they accommodate their rhythm rather than trying to adjust it to fit their work…but, so many just can’t do that…until they retire!

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I take a nap every day. It started as a result of my post above, having about a month of really bad sleep cycles and needing it but now I do it just because I love it. I take off for lunch and park in the back at a park about 5 min away from the office. I have a hatchback with the back seats folded flat, a pillow and a yoga mat. I can lay down completely flat in the back and fall asleep in like 1 minute. I sleep for 40 min, wake up, chug 1/2 a liter of water, eat, and go back to work. It’s fantastic.

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