I had sleep problems all my adult life, which I eventually found were due to sleeping too much (or more accurately, thinking I should get 8 hours’ sleep, and thus allowing too much time to sleep in).
I conducted an experiment on myself over several months using 21 different factors claimed by the literature to affect sleep. None of them helped. (Though a few of the factors I was doing anyway, e.g. having a comfortable mattress & pillow, so weren’t worth varying; and several made sleep worse for obvious reasons, e.g. stress & illness, but weren’t things I could actively improve.)
However, I then tried a (very good) online sleep course at www.sleepio.com, which among other things got me to try various adjustments to my sleep hours. This revealed something I hadn’t considered—viz. I’d always assumed I should ideally be getting 8 hours’ sleep. So I was allowing too much time to sleep in, producing shallow sleep, and waking up often in the night. The web site made me gradually shrink my sleep time so I slept shorter but deeper, until I stopped waking up in the night. It also helped by making me establish a regular wake time.
As a result, I went from getting a full night’s sleep just once a year, to almost every night. And also wasted less time in bed, either lying awake or snoozing.
I did a talk about all this, which is here. E.g. it goes through the 21 factors, which people may find useful.
I heard recently that sleepio is now prescribed by the UK’s National Health Service, so has presumably been clinically demonstrated to be very effective.
I had sleep problems all my adult life, which I eventually found were due to sleeping too much (or more accurately, thinking I should get 8 hours’ sleep, and thus allowing too much time to sleep in).
I conducted an experiment on myself over several months using 21 different factors claimed by the literature to affect sleep. None of them helped. (Though a few of the factors I was doing anyway, e.g. having a comfortable mattress & pillow, so weren’t worth varying; and several made sleep worse for obvious reasons, e.g. stress & illness, but weren’t things I could actively improve.)
However, I then tried a (very good) online sleep course at www.sleepio.com, which among other things got me to try various adjustments to my sleep hours. This revealed something I hadn’t considered—viz. I’d always assumed I should ideally be getting 8 hours’ sleep. So I was allowing too much time to sleep in, producing shallow sleep, and waking up often in the night. The web site made me gradually shrink my sleep time so I slept shorter but deeper, until I stopped waking up in the night. It also helped by making me establish a regular wake time.
As a result, I went from getting a full night’s sleep just once a year, to almost every night. And also wasted less time in bed, either lying awake or snoozing.
I did a talk about all this, which is here. E.g. it goes through the 21 factors, which people may find useful.
I heard recently that sleepio is now prescribed by the UK’s National Health Service, so has presumably been clinically demonstrated to be very effective.