I worked as a strategy consultant for several years, with an unreasonable work-life balance, and in college generally did not get enough sleep, so I have some experience to draw on here :-).
I’ve found transcending-based meditation to be super restorative and often much easier to drop into than a 20 minute nap. I practice Natural Stress Relief Meditation ($40 self study course at nsr-usa.org), but I read a recommendation for the 1 Giant Mind app, which teaches a similar technique and I think is free.
As for being productive while awake: I’ve found the following most effective:
Maximizing energy
cold showers (you can start with a hot shower, just end with a one minute cold shower at the end… Feel free to warm up afterwards with clothing or bedding)
high intensity cardio (I personally do 15 min on the elliptical, alternating between 30 second intervals of sprinting and 30 seconds of easy walking—but the general goal is to get your blood flowing and heart racing without exerting yourself so much that it significantly tires you out).
Eating low carb and as little as you can
Listening to non-vocal electronic music
Staying focused
Using the pomodoro technique
Using blockers like leechblock and appblock
Turning my phone off and putting it in a different room physically
Maximizing clarity of thought:
Storing as much as possible on paper (electronic or physical) - diagrams, bullets, detailed action steps—rather than my working memory
I used to do cold showers but stopped a while back. Maybe I’ll revive the practice.
Eating low carb and as little as you can
I’m curious about this one. You find that eating low carb/less keeps you sharper on days when you sleep very little? I’ve anecdotally noticed that fasting gives me an energy boost on days when I sleep well, although at the cost of making me a bit more jittery, but haven’t noticed the same effects on days when I don’t sleep enough. Is this purely anecdotal or can you share some articles/papers about this?
Sorry, long hiatus from LW so just saw this comment.
I actually found / find eating low carb maximizes my energy levels generally, sleep deprivation or no. Or, more specifically, it avoids the sluggishness / energy dip that often comes after eating a satiating amount of carbs. I know Atkins and other low-carb proponents claim that it provides more / more sustained energy (IIRC, the mechanism of action is avoiding blood sugar swings), but I haven’t looked into it rigorously, TBH.
I am having trouble understanding why one would think I would want to be happy for an arbitrary number of people to live with me.
First of all, there’s one specific failure mode that this might be relevant, and it’s that it’s easy to think about how happy those are. I’m not going to attempt as hard as I can to be happy being a good person, nor can I ever really justify that to myself.
Suppose I am sitting around in bed with my friends, who have no emotional response to certain stimuli or desires. I am also waiting for a sound teacher’s phone number, a restaurant with an unknown family, and the class as a whole. We are waiting on the bus to get somewhere, and the sound teacher decides to put the “real” car behind it by giving us a dollar amount and a fraction of it. I have the feeling later that there is some $10 in that money, but later that $10 is just an outright trick to get me back.
But I don’t even know what it is that I am feeling? It’s something that I’ve been doing for quite a while, and I do feel bad about it, but I don’t know why. I don’t even know why I am feeling that. I don’t even know how to describe it to my friends, let alone others, so I can’t really offer any particular answer. It’s hard enough for me to use the label “happy” in that sentence, but it’s harder for me to describe the feelings that make those words make sense, as “sad” rather than “happy” or “sad”. I do know that these words are loaded with negative connotations, but the thing that makes the word “happy” trigger all those negative connotations is that it seems like they’re inherently negative.
My only exposure to a technique or book on the internet was when they were very young. Then I stumbled onto some of the principles of active meditation and of of course was surprised by how much sense they took in the process. This was my first exposure to it, for many reasons. I found it very useful to know how and what the technique or book changed so I just took it for granted, and have become my expert.
I worked as a strategy consultant for several years, with an unreasonable work-life balance, and in college generally did not get enough sleep, so I have some experience to draw on here :-).
I’ve found transcending-based meditation to be super restorative and often much easier to drop into than a 20 minute nap. I practice Natural Stress Relief Meditation ($40 self study course at nsr-usa.org), but I read a recommendation for the 1 Giant Mind app, which teaches a similar technique and I think is free.
As for being productive while awake: I’ve found the following most effective:
Maximizing energy
cold showers (you can start with a hot shower, just end with a one minute cold shower at the end… Feel free to warm up afterwards with clothing or bedding)
high intensity cardio (I personally do 15 min on the elliptical, alternating between 30 second intervals of sprinting and 30 seconds of easy walking—but the general goal is to get your blood flowing and heart racing without exerting yourself so much that it significantly tires you out).
Eating low carb and as little as you can
Listening to non-vocal electronic music
Staying focused
Using the pomodoro technique
Using blockers like leechblock and appblock
Turning my phone off and putting it in a different room physically
Maximizing clarity of thought:
Storing as much as possible on paper (electronic or physical) - diagrams, bullets, detailed action steps—rather than my working memory
Thanks! These are good recommendations!
I used to do cold showers but stopped a while back. Maybe I’ll revive the practice.
I’m curious about this one. You find that eating low carb/less keeps you sharper on days when you sleep very little? I’ve anecdotally noticed that fasting gives me an energy boost on days when I sleep well, although at the cost of making me a bit more jittery, but haven’t noticed the same effects on days when I don’t sleep enough. Is this purely anecdotal or can you share some articles/papers about this?
Sorry, long hiatus from LW so just saw this comment.
I actually found / find eating low carb maximizes my energy levels generally, sleep deprivation or no. Or, more specifically, it avoids the sluggishness / energy dip that often comes after eating a satiating amount of carbs. I know Atkins and other low-carb proponents claim that it provides more / more sustained energy (IIRC, the mechanism of action is avoiding blood sugar swings), but I haven’t looked into it rigorously, TBH.
I am having trouble understanding why one would think I would want to be happy for an arbitrary number of people to live with me.
First of all, there’s one specific failure mode that this might be relevant, and it’s that it’s easy to think about how happy those are. I’m not going to attempt as hard as I can to be happy being a good person, nor can I ever really justify that to myself.
Suppose I am sitting around in bed with my friends, who have no emotional response to certain stimuli or desires. I am also waiting for a sound teacher’s phone number, a restaurant with an unknown family, and the class as a whole. We are waiting on the bus to get somewhere, and the sound teacher decides to put the “real” car behind it by giving us a dollar amount and a fraction of it. I have the feeling later that there is some $10 in that money, but later that $10 is just an outright trick to get me back.
But I don’t even know what it is that I am feeling? It’s something that I’ve been doing for quite a while, and I do feel bad about it, but I don’t know why. I don’t even know why I am feeling that. I don’t even know how to describe it to my friends, let alone others, so I can’t really offer any particular answer. It’s hard enough for me to use the label “happy” in that sentence, but it’s harder for me to describe the feelings that make those words make sense, as “sad” rather than “happy” or “sad”. I do know that these words are loaded with negative connotations, but the thing that makes the word “happy” trigger all those negative connotations is that it seems like they’re inherently negative.
My only exposure to a technique or book on the internet was when they were very young. Then I stumbled onto some of the principles of active meditation and of of course was surprised by how much sense they took in the process. This was my first exposure to it, for many reasons. I found it very useful to know how and what the technique or book changed so I just took it for granted, and have become my expert.