Biohacking sleep

Sleep is another one of the goals I had set this year. Sleep had been something I tried to get as much of, and didn’t put too much thought or planning into it recently. But since having a baby in the room, the sleep situation had changed drastically. Understandably, but not complaining. Some days I’m just getting 5-6h of sleep. Even when I do sleep 8h, it’s interrupted 2-5 times during the night, depending on whether the baby’s growth phase (growth leaps tend to be tougher as they cry or wake more often). I’m pretty useless in the day without coffee now, and my caffeine consumption worries me too. It’s gotten to a point where I can’t just drift through sleep management as an after-thought. It now has to be a lot more intentional and planned.

Case in point: we switched off the night lamp in the room for the past two nights, and my wife and I were surprised at how much better sleep we had. Which makes perfect sense because light regulates our circadian rhythms and interferes with deep sleep. We had the lamp switched on previously to facilitate easier baby feeding at night, but turned out we could manage without by now. We could have had months of better sleep! I felt so dumb. But the dumber it felt, the deeper the learning, I guess. What’s really needed now is a sleep audit and intentional sleep management. Some habits to pin down:

• Wind down by 9-10pm. Shut down laptop, no more mindless scrolling on the phone. From my past sleep hacking, I remembered that this was the first-mover event that ensured everything down the line went well. If I wind down early, I shower earlier, sleep earlier, get more sleep, and feel more refreshed. Everything falls on this keystone event. So winding down at the right hour is mission-critical.

• Cold showers vs warm. I learned from Dave Asprey that cold showers help lower body temperature and might aid in better sleep. I used to do it for the weight loss and fat burning benefits (cold thermogenesis). But I found that cold showers tend to wake/activate my body in ways that affect my sleep. I tend to get hungry in the night or morning when I cold shower the night before. So I might have to put a bit of a cap on cold showers. Warm showers if I feel sleep-deprived. Cold if the day was super warm and I had good rest.

• Limit water after 9pm. I tend to forget to drink water in the day, and start to feel thirsty at the end of the day just before bed. Bad idea, because that means I got to wake up to go to the bathroom at least once during the night. So best is to top up on water throughout the day, and after dinner, and just sip water just as I start winding down.

• Sleep by 10-11pm, wake by 6am. 7h sleep seems the minimum. Some days I work too long and late on the computer and sleep at midnight – baaad idea. I’m usually worse off the next day. Sleeping earlier also ensures that not too long has lapsed since dinner, and I won’t start feeling hungry just before bed (due to second wind). Going to sleep hungry tends to disrupt deep sleep for me.

• Switch off all lights. No more night lamps, blinds shut tight, tiny glow light for bathroom, try eye covers. As dark as possible, since light interferes with sleep.

• Track sleep quality. I heard lots of good things from @keni and @therealbrandonwilson here about using the Oura ring to track sleep. I don’t have one (yet) but I can try using an old iPhone with the sleep app to track my sleep. More data hopefully means I’ll be better informed about my sleep quality and patterns.

• No more coffee/tea after 4pm. I usually have 2 coffees in a day – one in the morning and one post-lunch. Usually caffeine intake stops altogether by 3pm latest. But occasionally I do take a tea past 4pm. So have to be mindful, buy alternatives and leave them in the fridge or around the house so that I won’t feel tempted to drink tea/coffee too late.

• Power nap during the day. The benefit of WFH is that I can nap anytime, so instead of wanting to work all the time, I should just try to power nap during the day. If all else fails and I get bad sleep anyway, at least I can catch up on that during the day. Just 10-15min of power nap is pretty sufficient, from my experience.

• Plan for disruption. We know when the baby growth leaps are, so perhaps there’s an opportunity there to plan around. I can plan to sleep in and nap more during the leap window, and add more buffer for projects during that time. That also allows me to also be more present, less cranky.

So what else can I do?