

Sleep Better: Be Uncomfortable. - lukeqsee
http://www.lifehack.org/articles/lifehack/sleep-hack-a-simple-strategy-for-better-rest-in-less-time.html

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tptacek
The entire idea behind this "hack" is that if you make your bed super
uncomfortable, you will get out of bed in the morning and not be up all night
because you slept late.

In other words, you can exchange not liking alarm clocks for being
uncomfortable _all night long_ so that when you wake up you'll want to get out
of your uncomfortable bed.

A modest proposal for an enhancement: scorpions.

I'm sticking with the alarm clock.

~~~
drewcrawford
I'm wondering if there might be some way to start out being comfortable but
setting some process in motion that would cause you to be uncomfortable 8
hours later.

How hard would it be to design a bed that, say, slowly inclines to vertical?

~~~
carbocation
Perhaps, instead of an inclining bed, one could posit a light. This light
turns on around 5:30AM and slowly gets brighter and brighter until it hits a
maximum intensity; then, it slowly dims until it sets... err, "turns off"...
at around 7:30pm?

~~~
drewcrawford
Personally, I tend to use a sleepmask. Maybe I could build a sleepmask with a
light...

~~~
carbocation
Actually, I do the same, so my plan wouldn't work for me, either. Foiled! But
I will purchase your sleepmask+light if it is cozy enough.

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JustinSeriously
I did this once, to try to control my oversleeping (10+ hours a day). I put my
mattress into a closet and slept on the floor for a year.

Eventually I just got used to the floor. It became pretty comfortable. I even
returned to sleeping on my side after a few months.

I've since found a found some _far_ better ways to control my sleeping habits:

\- Eat more.

\- Get a job where you must wake up at 5:30, combined with a lifetime habit of
not going to bed before 11.

\- Sleep under windows facing the sunrise, and don't close the blinds all the
way.

I can't going to generalize these for everyone, but I can say it worked for
me. Sleeping uncomfortably just didn't work over the long term.

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noelchurchill
If this guy tries dating a woman he'll probably get new bedding.

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brettbender
I have a hard time believing sleeping like this will be the same quality of
rest as sleeping comfortably.

~~~
malnourish
In my opinion, sleeping uncomfortably is not a good idea. I will take some of
his advice and discard my large comforters and soft pillows.

In the morning I usually end up quickly turning my first round of alarms off
and then crawling right back in under those warm and secure covers.

On a somewhat related note, I am going to start Uberman this summer. Does
anyone have any experience with that?

~~~
PieSquared
I tried Everyman-3 last summer. It was a very weird experience. Highly
unusual.

After a few times of failing to wake up on time, I became a bit alarm-
paranoid. I once woke up on my own early, and jumped out of bed thinking two
hours had passed (instead of 30 minutes). Turned out only 8 minutes had passed
since I looked at my watch before going to sleep.

This reflects one of the cooler aspects of polyphasic sleep - you learn to
fall asleep regularly in under 3 minutes. I slept on a bed, on a floor, on a
lawn. You just learn how to relax and drift off immediately.

Also, once you've slept for 30 minutes, you don't want to sleep anymore. Your
consciousness just regains control of your body and poof - you're awake.

It's not something I would do for years on end, because it can be difficult to
accommodate having work and a social life, but it's very fun to do for a few
months at a time. You gain a lot of time.

~~~
dmm
> This reflects one of the cooler aspects of polyphasic sleep

That "aspect" is called sleep deprivation.

~~~
PieSquared
Eh, maybe. I haven't studied polyphasic sleep and I'm not a scientist, so
understand that my opinion comes from someone who has slept monophasically,
experienced quite a bit of sleep deprivation, and also slept polyphasically.

That said... what I was talking about is not at all like sleep deprivation.
Sleep deprivation causes tiredness, lethargy, lack of energy. You wake up
feeling tired and maybe your eyes or your head hurts. What I experienced with
everyman-3 was _nothing_ like that. It wasn't you falling asleep because you
were unusually tired; it was you falling asleep because you willed yourself
and your entire body to relax and let go of consciousness, almost like a sort
of meditation. You wake up feeling absolutely refreshed and ready to go. In
any case, it _feels_ completely different from going to sleep tired or waking
up sleep deprived; I don't know about the specific mental mechanism, as I am
not a neuroscientist, as cool as I think it would be to be one.

Anyway, I would recommend giving polyphasic sleep a few tries. I only managed
it after trying and failing twice (once because I kept oversleeping, once
because social things got in the way). Also, I would not recommend doing
polyphasic sleep for many months on end. At least, I wouldn't feel comfortable
doing it, as who knows why it's possible. Maybe I'm depriving my body of very
necessary sleep and preventing long-term learning or something - until it's
more well researched, I wouldn't want to sleep polyphasically for more than a
month or two.

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Dysiode
Based on my own experience I would suggest that you can sleep fine in an
uncomfortable situation until you're in a light enough sleep that you'll wake
up.

The rested feeling is simply not waking up in the middle of a deep sleep cycle
when your body is flooded with melatonin. Alarms simply don't way us up
optimally. They blare at us with no regard for how deep we're sleeping.

I don't think either extreme, sleeping uncomfortably or fighting with an
alarm, is the answer. There's an interesting alarm app on Android phones that
will ring quietly x amount of time before the real alarm is set to ring to see
if you're more awake then. I'd like to see more attempts at hybridization like
that.

~~~
Splines
Two existing alarms that also work on this premise:

\- One has a light that brightens over the course of an hour to simulate the
sun rising. Supposedly the natural progression of brightness in your room will
help set your internal clock (or something like that) [1]

\- Some sort of monitor that you wear that monitors what phase of sleep you're
in. You set the alarm to a certain time, and the alarm picks the right time to
wake you up, depending on your sleep cycle. [2]

[1] [http://www.amazon.com/EZ-Wake-Digital-SunRise-
Alarm/dp/B0002...](http://www.amazon.com/EZ-Wake-Digital-SunRise-
Alarm/dp/B0002VAHXW)

[2] [http://www.amazon.com/aXbo-Sleep-Phase-Alarm-
Clock/dp/B0014R...](http://www.amazon.com/aXbo-Sleep-Phase-Alarm-
Clock/dp/B0014RDSSY)

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AngryParsley
Three birds with one stone: Build a bed with a shower above it. Hook the
shower up to a timer. You'll get woken up in the morning, you'll get clean,
and you won't want to get back in your (now soaking wet) bed. :)

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lukeqsee
I think the theory is more, sleep with _as little comfort as possible_. That
way you feel rested in the morning, while at the same time you don't want to
lay around because it feels so good.

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justlearning
from experience: the style mentioned causes a terrible hangover from lack of
sleep. I felt sluggish through out the day.

imho, it is far better quality of sleep if you have 4 hours of 'comfortable'
sleep vs 10 hours of 'uncomfortable'(as per the author)

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chipsy
This does work in that you'll never oversleep, but you also don't feel very
awake for the first hour or two in the morning.

~~~
TheSOB88
Speaking from experience here?

I'm not sure I can agree with you - I don't think humans had a selective
pressure to get better rest in soft, coccoon-like circumstances.

Why should we be predisposed to do that?

~~~
a-priori
Our ancestors also didn't have automobiles and airplanes. That doesn't mean
that it's not faster to travel that way than on foot.

