

Sleepyti.me - michaelkscott
http://sleepyti.me/

======
david_shaw
Hey, fancy seeing this here! :)

A while ago, I submitted a request for feedback on a weekend project I had,
designed to help you wake up more refreshed. I called it sleepyti.me [
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781423> ].

I didn't expect too much to come of it, since I created it originally to learn
jQuery and for my own personal use. Through the feedback and improvements
suggested from my HN post (and later a reddit post), I launched and became
mildly popular on Reddit and StumbleUpon.

These days, I'm ramen profitable--a small webapp isn't a startup, but the
supplemental income from the occasional banner click is nice. I serve
approximately 30,000 hits per day according to Google Analytics, and I've been
covered by several news outlets and blogs (LifeHacker, MSNBC, The Toronto
Star, TheNextWeb, CNet and more). I even had a brief affiliate agreement with
a YC company, but unfortunately the terms didn't serve either side as well as
I would have liked--we parted amicably.

It seems that sleepyti.me has come full circle - HN was the first community to
ever see the site in action. Without the encouragement of the few comments I
received here and on reddit, as well as the inspiration of all the awesome
projects HN members created, this never would have happened.

I'd be happy to answer any questions you guys have, or listen to any
suggestions - I'm thinking about putting an FAQ on the site for common issues,
but haven't gotten around to it yet.

~~~
johns
Charge for SMS reminders. Or add an SMS interface. (yes I'm biased, see
profile, but I would use it)

~~~
david_shaw
I had thought about this a while ago, so I'm very interested that you brought
it up again! Thanks for the feedback :)

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srean
The following is only peripherally related, but would appreciate nuggets of
knowledge.

These days stimulants get a lot of press, from adderall to ritalin to
modafinil etc., not to mention plain old caffeine. Caffeine, at least, I know
work by blocking those receptors that signal the feeling of sleepiness. I am
curious to know about the opposite: chemicals, or enzymes if you will, that
catalyzes the important reactions that takes place when we sleep. I am sure
there will be a lot of benefit to speeding those reactions up. You would be
more refreshed for the same amount of sleep, or need less.

Rather than smothering fatigue signals with a stimulant I would like to make
my body more efficient at sleeping.

Sure this is a very complicated problem, even cataloging what all those
reactions are is a huge task. But would be a rapt audience to anyone who can
share any information along these lines.

For me, the 14 minute rule just does not work. Sometimes I wish I had someone
to knock me out cold with a baseball bat, or that inner voice that keeps
talking and planning and refuses to STFU.

~~~
cheald
Two things that work for me:

I use L-Theanine[1] capsules in combination with caffeine to sharpen my
thinking; it works great, but if taken without caffeine, it can be a bit of a
relaxant/depressant, which can make it easier to sleep. The jury's still out
on its effects on serotonin, but anecdotally, it seems to help me sleep easier
and more deeply.

The second thing is a falling-asleep routine that I think is probably closer
to self-hypnosis than simple relaxation. I consciously slow my breathing and
hold after each breath in or out for a 3-count. At the same time, I sort of
visualize a wave moving slowly down my body from the top of my head, and where
ever it touches, I relax those muscles. I'm usually asleep before it hits the
legs. If it fails, I restart the exercise, with a 4-count on the breaths, and
so on. Most nights, I'm asleep in just a couple of minutes; my wife frequently
remarks on how fast I go from alert to dead asleep.

The effort of concentrating on both exercises tends to silence the "inner
voice", and consciously relaxing muscles tends to remove blocks to sleeping
that I didn't know were there; the nights that you can't sleep, you're
probably laying there in bed clenching some set of muscles without realizing
it.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theanine>

~~~
skore
Instead of capsules, you could also go for green tea - the better brands (go
at least with proper loose leaves or matcha etc.) have Theanine cranked to 11.

~~~
cheald
Definitely. I first learned about theanine in the context of green tea. I'm a
coffee drinker, though, and wanted the benefits without changing my drink. :)

~~~
skore
Yeah, I thought it would be something like that. The other option might be
green tea extracts, but I have no experience with these and you may end up
with a higher caffeine dose, even though green tea is usually far lower on the
caffeine than coffee.

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wiradikusuma
Hasn't this submitted some time ago?

[http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=Sle...](http://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=Sleepyti.me&start=0)

~~~
braco_alva
Yeah, I noticed that too, weird, it's not everday that we see comebacks like
this one on HN.

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kurtvarner
Cool little hack, however, I'm not convinced of its accuracy. There are a lot
of assumptions at play here. The biggest being that you need to be able to
control exactly when you fall asleep.

I have no idea how long it normally takes me to actually fall asleep, and I
think the average 14 minutes you refer to will highly vary among people.
Basically the entire calculation is ruined if it takes a little longer than I
expect to fall asleep. Plus, if I knew that I was being timed, that small
sense of urgency would keep me awake.

~~~
alecperkins
Something like this, to give you a good starting point, combined with
something like the SleepCycle iOS app, to get the wake-up timing more precise,
seem like a great combination.

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jpdoctor
It's amazing: This site can predict the best sleep cycle for all 7 billion on
the planet.

Hmmmmm.

~~~
tikhonj
Ah, but it _doesn't_ have to predict the best cycle! I am fairly sure that
even a rough approximation is better than nothing. And, depending on the
distribution of optimal sleep-cycle times, their guesses could actually be
pretty good for most people.

To be useful, something just has to be _better_ than other options as long as
you factor any costs in as well. Since this site does not have any significant
costs, it just has to be even little better than nothing to be useful.

Finally, even if the actual calculations aren't useful, it did get me to think
about working out better sleep patterns, which is likely to be healthy in and
of itself. (Who am I kidding, I'm probably going to forget... but it's a nice
thought :P.)

~~~
jpdoctor
> _I am fairly sure that even a rough approximation is better than nothing._

Still very impressive. All 7 billion people on earth are better off with this
rough approximation than nothing.

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ambiate
I just tested this application by going to sleep on the first choice. I asked
my wife to wake me up at the specified time. I heard her coming upstairs to
wake me up.

I was completely in shock. I sleep through 2-3 alarms every morning. Also, I
had a dream in which I could recall every detail. This only happens once every
year or two for me.

This has prompted me to research my sleeping habits and possibly do a sleep
study to seek better habits.

------
wenbert
I use this site daily. I used this last night. I see you have updated the site
a bit ;)

I also recommend this to almost everyone! Also, I suggest that you have a .com
domain name to redirect to sleepti.me? This is because I spend a great deal of
time and effort explaining the domain name - sleepyti.me :| Instead of having
something like: "sleepytime.com". Sleepyti.me works great when typed but not
when spoken (word-of-mouth). Just my 2 cents.

~~~
quietness
I'm interested to know if you have you been having consistent results using
it? I tested it last night, and just woke up several minutes ago in fact,
feeling refreshed and ready to go. I've been having trouble waking up even
with an alarm, and I usually wake up feeling not so good. With this, I woke up
at the very instant of my alarm, choosing the 3rd option. Then again, it could
be because I was too excited to try out something new, although I was
initially skeptical about it.

~~~
wenbert
I think the results are very good for me. When I wake up using Sleepytime, I
usually feel refreshed and able to do push-ups and some stretching early in
the morning.

1) Just right before sleeping, check sleepytime 2) Set alarm 3) I wake up
refreshed

Note: I have a very flex schedule, so this works for me.

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INTPenis
Will this really work though? I've been taught that sleep cycles are very
individual and you should measure your own by doing the following.

Next evening, stay up late, when you start to get tired start a timer and
force yourself to be up until you're a little less tired (sleep cycle), then
use the timer somehow to calculate your sleep cycle. Sorry for trailing off
there but I don't really remember the specifics but I remember I calculated my
own sleep cycle to be 1.5 hours back then.

So far all I've done with this information is that if my alarm is set to
06:10, and I wake up at 05:45, I get up instead of trying to go back to sleep.

I'd only seriously try to go back to sleep if I woke up at around 04:30-04:45.

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skore
Through some studying of my sleeping habits (polyphasic sleeping for more than
two months now etc.), I can say that the 90 minute rule breaks down around the
2 cycle mark - it is usually preferable to sleep 3.5 hours and not 3,
particularly when you want to sustain a schedule that sticks to a main sleep
that short.

This may not sound like a big deal, but for me, the difference has been night
and day, where adding that half hour made the schedule sustainable in the
first place.

[http://trypolyphasic.com/forum/topic/992/ultimate-
adaptation...](http://trypolyphasic.com/forum/topic/992/ultimate-adaptation-
sticky/)

------
eli
Cute idea, but my understanding is that each individual's sleep cycle can vary
a fair bit from that average. I know for sure that the amount of time it takes
me to fall asleep varies widely.

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molsongolden
I've been using this website on my phone then setting my alarm based on the
output and it has been great. I can't say if it's a placebo effect or if the
science is correct but I feel less sluggish when I wake up and get going more
easily so I'll keep using it!

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pragone
Interesting thought. Pretty useless for people like me - it takes me 2-4 hours
to fall asleep usually. It would be helpful if you could include an option for
setting how long it usually takes one to fall asleep, and adjust the
calculations accordingly.

~~~
gbaygon
You can choose when you are going to fall asleep here
<http://sleepyti.me/wake/>

~~~
pragone
neato! thanks

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Zirro
I can't have been the only one to look at the source code of the page and feel
slightly disappointed, considering that the page itself looks pretty nice. I'm
looking forward to seeing if following 90-minute sleep-cycles would work out
for me, though.

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will_lam
A novel first dip into the waters of sleep optimization for first timers, but
I'm a bit wary of the blanket approach that's being taken. Much like others in
this thread, It'd be cool if they linked to some studies.

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josscrowcroft
This is excellent - I'd recommend supplementing it with links to supporting
information (why 90 minutes == 1 sleep cycle) and also information on caffeine
intake/half-life.

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lurkinggrue
You could just actually track your sleep cycles:

<http://www.myzeo.com/sleep/>

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ranza
It should have a 24hour version as well for the europeans :)

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AznHisoka
Thanks for recommending various times.. I was afraid your app would tell me to
sleep at an early time, but now I got room to spare!

