I managed to unintentionally do something valuable—I arranged to carpool with some coworkers, forcing me to get up at about 8:45 every day, instead of sleeping in and working later, as I could do. What I really need to do, though, is train myself to go to sleep closer to midnight than 2 AM; I know it makes me happier the next day, it’s just hard to stop reading or doing stuff. I’ve never in my life been able to stop staying up so late.
No concrete plan on that one yet, I’m consuming plenty of my willpower with other things. Just pontificating.
Since I can’t reply to two people at once: I’ve been using melatonin, and auto-shutdown at midnight, and getting more exercise, and I am finally getting some traction on falling asleep before 1am every night. Can make these things work.
Melatonin allows us a different way of raising the cost, a physiological & self-enforcing way. Half an hour before we plan to go to sleep, we take a pill. The procrastinating effect will not work—half an hour is so far away that our decision-making process & willpower are undistorted and can make the right decision (viz. following the schedule). When the half-hour is up, the melatonin has begun to make us sleepy. Staying awake ceases to be free, to be the default option; now it is costly to fight the melatonin and remain awake.
I use it for exactly this reason and it works brilliantly.
I managed to unintentionally do something valuable—I arranged to carpool with some coworkers, forcing me to get up at about 8:45 every day, instead of sleeping in and working later, as I could do. What I really need to do, though, is train myself to go to sleep closer to midnight than 2 AM; I know it makes me happier the next day, it’s just hard to stop reading or doing stuff. I’ve never in my life been able to stop staying up so late.
No concrete plan on that one yet, I’m consuming plenty of my willpower with other things. Just pontificating.
Since I can’t reply to two people at once: I’ve been using melatonin, and auto-shutdown at midnight, and getting more exercise, and I am finally getting some traction on falling asleep before 1am every night. Can make these things work.
Have you considered melatonin? Quoting gwern:
I use it for exactly this reason and it works brilliantly.
No, I read that at some point but forgot completely about it. That sounds like a really good idea, and I’m going to arrange to try it.
set your computer to auto-shutdown at midnight :)
the kindle
she beckons