Who’s figured out how to get enough sleep without taking medication?

Reading + no screens before bedtime.

I lot of people have great ideas! I would say that my strategy is all of the above.

Start by asking yourself:

• What keeps me from sleeping?
• What's on my mind when I can't sleep?
• Am I tired?
• Am I stressed?

For me, when I have trouble sleeping it's usually for the following reasons:

• I'm not tired.
• My head is spinning with thoughts.
• My have an idea that I want to work on.
• I'm upset at myself for not getting to sleep and know I have to be up in the morning.

I find staying busy really works well for me. Exhausting my mind and body works like magic but over-exhaustion can also keep me from getting to sleep on my own controlled schedule. I also drink coffee or chai 20mins before I plan on doing some work that requires heavy focus to get the most out of my time. Combining that with taking 20min naps once or twice a day is great! But if I have to take more than 2 naps, that tells me that the rest of my day will be un uphill battle and if I can clear my schedule and take some time off, that would serve me best. Also when napping and going to sleep, I like listening to podcasts and do mantras or gratitudes very slowly until I pass out.

At the end of the day, I find that being thankful for having a productive day and also having compassion for days I'm not able to deliver up to expectations allows for a headspace where I can sleep more comfortably.

Once you setup up your feedback loop, and trial and error to seeing what works and doesn't work, I know you can get to the point where you're more consistently getting good quality sleep!

These kinds of problems are so individual. I would recommend not to follow any of the suggested solutions, neither my. Do not think about it, don't ask, don't analyze why you can't sleep. Everyday go to bed between 22:00 - 23:00. It's the best time because your body is programmed that way. If you go earlier or later than that time, you will probably have a problem falling asleep. Sleep at least 7 hours. It's easy as that.

Been there,I understand what you feel.

Things which helped me :

1. Diary writing habit - Sometimes too many things run in mind,but putting them on paper makes things clear and half the headache is gone.
   Also these days we hardly write on paper(most of us do things with laptop/desktop),but truth is writing is good for mind.

2. Light food for dinner also I finish it max by 7pm.

3. Now crucial time before bed.
   a) Say I wanna sleep by 10pm,
   at 9pm I start exercising which includes little yoga/mainly stretches,then high speed air punches and kicks..I would do this for good 20min.
   Now body is a bit tired.

b) Slow walk either on terrace / balcony just to get some good cool breeze and fresh air.
this for 5 min.

c) Now bath.
Mostly I try to do it cold water or may be room temp water...definitely not hot water.
Now this cools down the body.( 10min)

d) Once done,I do meditation roughly for 20min.
In the beginning, breathing exercise will help.
What it means is just concentrate on flow of breath.
With regular practice that random flow of thoughts will decrease,then you will fall in love with meditation.

Hope this helps.

For me, mostly:

1. Exercising during the day
2. No screens for 1hr before sleep
3. Some breathing exercise

Reading the book Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker helped me a ton. Literally the most important book I've read all year, as it not only offers tips about how to sleep better, but also explains how sleep works and why it's important.

A few key takeaways include:
-Wake up and go to bed at the same time each day
-Avoid blue light before bed
-Be careful with caffeine close to bedtime

Not sleeping really takes a toll, and it often becomes a vicious cycle of not sleeping and worrying about not sleeping. The gold standard treatment for issues like this is something called CBT for insomnia. It's recommended by the American Academy for Sleep Medicine and found effective in numerous clinical studies. If you want to learn more about it you can check out a guide I have written here: https://www.sleepedy.com/cbt-for-insomnia/

I have the same issue, and my secret solution is... Listening to podcasts... Seriously that really helps me to relax and sleep.

I have heard of the fall asleep like a soldier technique. Lay straight on your back and imagine laying in a canoe in a river. That is supposed to calm you down and get you to fall asleep fast. But then again i have never had any issue falling asleep, i'm usually passed out as soon as i lie down in dark, anywhere anytime. I consider myself very fortunate, i definitely do not envy your issues.

Wake up, put on your jacket. Go for a walk immediately. The bright light will tune in your internal clock....at some point make the walk a bit more vigorous.

It's really helped me. I wake up at 5:30am and immediately force myself out the door. ...

Hiya,
I studied nutrition for three years. You may want to look into seeing a nutritionist who can look at your diet in a detailed way. There are lots of tips and tricks that can help with sleep. A lot of people these days do online consultations.
Hope you get to the bottom of it.
Yasmeen

A long walk or run just before bedtime makes my body so tired, my brain also become quieter. Good luck. These are demoralizing times.

I used to have similar problems and fixed it using many of the same bits of advice below. Personally for me I enjoy the Headspace app sleep casts more than say a regular podcast. They are a combination of a short breathing exercise or similar, ambient sounds like rain or a fireplace and a narrated story but designed for sleep so nothing is going to try to engage your brain.

Definitely need to work out harder and you will get a denser sleep at least, even if its a shorter duration. Wake up early (5:30am) and stay up all day with no naps. Also I'd get your blood test done to make sure you're not lacking vitamins which can influence your sleep-wake cycle.

I can't even imagine running on 3 hours of sleep, I feel spent thinking about it!

Can I ask when you run? I've found exercising too close to when I should be getting to bed leads to poor sleep.

For instance, there are nights when I don't get back from BJJ until around 9pm and I know I won't cool down enough to sleep until at least 11pm or later.

It sounds like a lot of people already have the right idea but here are some things that help me:

• No coffee after 2pm (on weekdays)
• Set a schedule and do your best to stick with it (even on weekends if you're serious about this)
• Sleep mask (Not sure why but I'm very sensitive to light when trying to sleep)
• Not sure if you drink but alcohol will definitely disrupt sleep
• Don't drink too much water before bed
• If you do find yourself awake at night, get up and do something that doesn't involve a screen like writing or reading.

Lastly, and this one is going to sound weird:

• Remove your tongue from the roof of your mouth - I don't really know what the deal is but it takes away a lot of tension while your laying down to sleep 😅

Also, if a big part of it is too many thoughts going on in your head, I'd recommend keeping a journal nearby and writing things out. It's a good way to release them.

Try reading a book which you've already read. And yeah, drop the phone 30 min before going to bed.

There are so many people who believe that depriving themselves from sleep will make them productive. It's exactly the opposite - during sleep the brain reorganizes the information which we accumulate during the day. When you sleep enough you get better ideas and solve problems faster.

Additionally, there are more and more studies that show connection between lack of sleep and neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. Having a company, or money, or fame but not being able to move or remember your family is not good, in my estimations. Sleep people!

A huge plate of sadza always does the trick.

Edibles and exercise. Sleep has two 'E's in it after all.

Same here. If someone find a solution for that for sure would be the most successful indie hacker ever.

Sleep? What is that?

Reducing caffeine helped me significantly, my sleep is much deeper.

I have the opposite problem, I sleep 8h+ and have a hard time waking up each day, I just love sleeping and my body loves the bed. I tried sleeping less in order to have more time to work, but I just had more unproductive time which was not worth the trouble.

I also don't sleep much. Here's what works for me:

Exercise during the day. I went out for a long walk on Saturday afternoon, brought my headphones and listened to an audiobook. Come night time, I was much more tired than normal. Same thing yesterday. Went dirt biking with a friend, a few hours after that I was sore all over, and last night I slept like a baby. If you have trouble getting into the habit of exercising, I recommend scheduling it as an event on your calendar with a set time, and also trying to get others involved, so you feel obligated to them to show up.

Get some blackout shades. I remember staying in a hotel years ago that had blackout shades. I was with some friends from college, and we all ended up oversleeping by several hours. It was 10am yet it looked and felt like 2am in our room. If you find yourself waking up early before you're fully rested, making your room pitch black can really help.

I get my 8 hours every night and I find that exercising, eating healthy, meditating, and doing relaxing things/avoiding tech around the last hour before bed helps a lot!

Have the same problem.

I know what works for me, but sometimes I don't follow it. Trying my best.

1. Stop work at least 2 - 3 hours before sleep. I used to work till the last minute until exhausted, but my brain wouldn't stop
2. Drink a little wine.
3. Read a paper book comfortably with warm light
4. Sleep as soon as I feel a bit drowsy. If I wait for too long it may be gone.
5. When I realize my brain is racing, acknowledge that, calm down, and tell myself "tomorrow is another day, you don't have to finish the thinking now."

Exercise definitely helps. So I try to combine all together instead of doing only one thing or two to maximize the effectiveness.

For the whole "can't stop thinking of things to do or new ideas" problem - Writing it all down in a list, and then actually working through that list during my waking hours (or at least acknowledging it, prioritizing it, etc.) went a long way towards calming my mind down.

Writing all those thoughts down seems to tell my mind "okay, I acknowledged it, it's not going away, we can relax now instead of reminding me of these things over and over."

It's also way more productive to have an objective list you can reason about rather than following all the whims that pop into your mind.

If you drink caffeine, I can also recommend taking a 1 week break or more.

On the more serious medical side of things, you might consider seeing a doctor or having a sleep study done to see if there's more going on.

Hi, Zviko
Did you consider your diet could be influencing your stress and sleep pattern?
I would recommend following PD Mangan.
Since I started doing some of the ideas he recommends, like intermittent fasting, etc, many parts of my health improved.
Hope you get to sleep better!

Hi Zviko,

I have the same first issue as you (but not so much the second). Even at 2am I'll have constant thoughts running through my head and it also seems to the time where my mind wants to do all of it's thinking. Once I fall asleep; however, I'm fine and I stay asleep.

What I've found to be really helpful is Headspace (surprisingly). But not for the meditation. They have these sleepcasts that are great - there's one specifically that I use called Rainday Antiques. Firstly, the narrator has a really calming and soothing voice. But secondly, there's some great white noise such as hearing rain in the background. I don't actually listen to the cast itself, but the background noise still really helps as a mental "stop sign" to stop thinking! It's 45 minutes long, and 99% of the time I fall asleep before it's over.

Hope this helps - I highly recommend it!

Hey Zviko!

I 100% feel you — I’ve had a lot of nights where I can’t seem to shut my mind off and before I know it, it’s 3am.

What’s helped me the most is

• having a regular routine (forcing myself to wake up before 9am and sleep no later than 12am)
• having a relatively busy daily schedule, so my mind is working 100% for most of the day and is too tired to have any deep thoughts at the end of the day
• getting intensive exercise in every 2 days
• reading a physical book before bed to take my mind off of work
• putting on a face mask and lying down for 20 minutes before sleeping
• listening to random stories on the Calm app before sleeping

Hope that helps and good luck! ❤️

Be careful, 3 hours each night is not healthy. I was on a similar boat and thought I was a lost cause, but it's been better in the last months. What has worked for me:

• Physically: Exercise, period. I do cycling / lift weights. My eyes simply close by themselves at the end of the day. If you're not physically tired, then you're not giving your body enough intensity. Of course, not every day, but exercise should be challenging enough and implement progressive overload (more miles, more weight, faster, etc). Some people walk 5 blocks and call it a workout. If you're just starting, yes, but eventually your body will adapt and won't feel it like a challenge.

• Mentally: No screens 1 hour before going to bed. Deep breathing exercises while on bed. And the most important: force myself to stop thinking by concentrating on something neutral, like the color black. Otherwise, my mind just starts wandering around and I can't sleep at all.

Hi Zviko,

Meditation with soothing music and binaural beats therapy works for me. Here is the link to the app and it is FREE.

https://www.entrainlabs.com/mobileapp

Glad to know I'm not the only one like that.

Here's what works for me

• lie down and watch boring YouTube videos
• read source code of any project on GitHub that's written in a language you don't know, and just navigate around in the code base
• jot down thoughts when getting too many of them

The second one is too boring. It simply exhausts the brain of its capacity to wander around at the moment, thus giving an instant sleep

I agree with a lot of the comments here. Like exercising, reading, no screens, etc. A couple things I didn't see that work for me:

• No coffee at least 9 hours before bedtime. I have a hard caffeine cut off at 2pm even an after lunch coffee can impact my sleep.
• I don't eat in the hours leading up to bedtime. Typically after my dinner, I'm done eating for the day.

I think the goal is to avoid stimulus and really try get your mind and body to slip into a a natural cycle. The moment stimulants(like coffee), are later removed then your body and mind are left lacking and it's another process to ween your body off them to get into a natural cycle.

Maybe there's a need to look at your daily inputs. This comes down to normally: diet and exercise. The more you're putting in correctly, the more your body is balanced and acting accordingly, and better the outputs. I make sure I get a good breakfast in with healthy fats, and protein, be it a smoothy, or some avo and eggs on toast. You'd be surprised at how this will effect your whole day, and then lead into healthy rest periods.

Exercise in the morning/afternoon, instead of evening. You'll then use up energy during the day, above and beyond when you go to work, and hit the graft. When I exercise in the evening it actually energises me and kicks me into a '2nd wind', instead of tiring me out.

Lastly, calming the mind and learning to 'switch off'. May sound cliche but a meditation practice helps massively. 10 minutes in the evening, may help just to calm your mind, and detach from your thoughts. If your thoughts are controlling you, and making you anxious or overly active when you want to be relaxing, then you're losing. Being able to detach from your thoughts, and see them just as thoughts is a powerful practice.

I highly recommend above this, switching off electronic devices an hour before you go to sleep. Removing blue light before you try rest is massively important. I then put my focus elsewhere and read pure fiction. (choice at the moment, Game of Thrones). I'm able to in a form of escapism read for enjoyment and intrigue, with no link to my daily life or work. I normally get in a few pages, but my body and mind knows this routine now. I;m not reading to absorb as much information as possible, but to switch off. Once I start feeling groggy I make sure I don't lose my spot in my book, and boom. Lights out.

To your point in waking up, Make sure there is no lights disturbing your sleep. Be it the red light on the bottom of your tv, or your cellphone near to it. You're body still picks up on these distractions, especially when it's trying to rest. Your basically one big ass Antenna. Cut off uanessacry stimulus.

I hope this assists, but there's definitely a way to bring back rest, and sleep naturally rather then looking for more inputs to try achieve this. Less is more in this regard.

Things that have helped me:

1. Meditation
2. Physical exercise (not at night though, that keeps me awake more)
3. Reading a physical book
4. Not looking at a pc/phone screen for at least an hour before going to bed
5. Earplugs, in case there is some noise

I did take sleeping pills for around 2 years and found that it's just a temporary fix. A combination of the above fixed what seemed like a lifelong issue of sleep deprivation.

Meditation might help. It has done wonders for me.

It's not medication, per se, but I've found that 1-2 melatonin about an hour before bed helps best. That and making sure to reduce caffeine consumption to mornings (anything after 2pm and you can bet you'll be up).

I go to the gym everyday for an hour after I wake up and I push myself hard. Makes you start the day full of energy and at the end of the day I just want to sleep ahah. Hope that helps!

I try to pack as much in a day as possible and by the end of it i'm both mentally and physically exhausted. Mostly coding + gym.
Another thing that might seem counter-intuitive is coffee, yes coffee. Brain stimulants overwork the brain, so if you take it during the day it's more likely to be mentally tired at the end of it.

If you on android try the calm app https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.calm.android&hl=en

It just has sounds from nature that you play while trying to sleep. Hope it helps

Hi Zviko, I had phases in my life where my anxiety would keep me from sleeping. I decided to do yoga and meditation regularly. It transformed my life to the extent that left my corporate job and dedicating to learn and spread it those in need. Throughout the day (whenever you drink water), just stop what you're doing for 30 seconds, close your eyes, breathe, and relax your entire body. Hope this helps. Here is a gentle stretching and relaxation that you can even do before bed. https://zealdesai.com/yoga/2020/04/28/step-often-ignored-in-yoga.html

Hey @Zviko things that really improved my sleep:

1. Significantly reducing caffeine and sugar intake in my life
2. Taking acid reflux medicine in the night before sleep
3. Listening to music before bed (taking mind off work)

Hi @Zviko!

My service: Yuaco is a virtual friend, which helps people to sleep better through psychological and data-driven approach: https://yuaco.cc/

In the Evening you write everything that bothers you. Yuaco holds it while you sleep and sends it back to you in the morning. It helps you to fall asleep easier with your mind being fresh and without fear to forget anything that you have had in mind before sleep.

Wow! Thank you for the great suggestions, everyone! I had no idea so many of us struggle to get enough sleep.

It rained last night and I managed to get 5hrs of sleep, split into 2 hr chunks, so I'm calling that a win.

I'll start implementing your suggestions so I don't have to rely on the weather to get a good night's sleep.

I haven’t read. May be take a look at the book “why we sleep”