Waging war with sleep is very tiring business and I've been doing it pretty much as long as I can remember. My daily 750words are littered with battle reports, my twitter stream gets constantly barraged with updates from the war effort and I think it's pretty safe to say that I may have tried more different things than most people to stave off the foe.
Some things I've tried so far:
- drinking tea like it was water
- eating caffeine pills before going to bed
- drinking energy drinks by the gallon
- phone alarms
- computer alarms that force me to get out of bed to turn them off
- cluster alarms - even five in 20 minute intervals
- meditation (polyphasic sleep of sorts?)
- going to bed early
Nothing works.
No matter how hard I try to sync my circadian rhythms with something even remotely appropriate by society's standards I will eventually always slip back into my habit of going to bed at 3am and waking up at 9am at the earliest.
Sometimes it drifts even farther and it becomes practically impossible to wake up before 11am ... and no, going to bed early doesn't help; I just don't fall asleep and why waste the time just lying in bed like that?
But! I think I may finally have found a solution - an iPhone app that's a bit smart about handling sleep.
Sleep Cycle
Sleep Cycle is the best alarm clock I have ever used. Not only do I get to snuggle with my iphone when I'm sleeping, it also tracks my movements over night to figure out when is the best time to give waking me up a shot.
Plus there are statistics of how I'm sleeping. Scoar!
And it actually works even for heavy sleeprs living in their own timezone like myself. Even going to bed at 5am and trying to be up by 6am works. Ever tried waking up after an hour of sleep? It's practically impossible.
Some might think it a bit strange to sleep with an iphone in their bed, but I've been doing that forever anyway - otherwise there's no chance of hearing the alarm.
But not all is perfect.
What often ends up happening is that I will wake up when the alarm sounds (it's a veyr polite alarm too, all it takes to snooze is smacking it a bit), then be unable to crawl out of bed and eventually I just fall back asleep for another hour or two.
But I'm sure I'll figure that one out eventually ... trying really really hard to actually go to bed at sensible hours might work. Of course there is a website for that called sleepyti.me.
That is, _if _I can get myself to even fall asleep before 2am.
Continue reading about Sleep hacking
Semantically similar articles hand-picked by GPT-4
- The best 70 cents I have ever spent on the iStore
- Circadian rhythm meltdown
- Waking up early - the best way to waste the day
- Why programmers work at night
- This is why I hate mornings
Learned something new?
Read more Software Engineering Lessons from Production
I write articles with real insight into the career and skills of a modern software engineer. "Raw and honest from the heart!" as one reader described them. Fueled by lessons learned over 20 years of building production code for side-projects, small businesses, and hyper growth startups. Both successful and not.
Subscribe below 👇
Software Engineering Lessons from Production
Join Swizec's Newsletter and get insightful emails 💌 on mindsets, tactics, and technical skills for your career. Real lessons from building production software. No bullshit.
"Man, love your simple writing! Yours is the only newsletter I open and only blog that I give a fuck to read & scroll till the end. And wow always take away lessons with me. Inspiring! And very relatable. 👌"
Have a burning question that you think I can answer? Hit me up on twitter and I'll do my best.
Who am I and who do I help? I'm Swizec Teller and I turn coders into engineers with "Raw and honest from the heart!" writing. No bullshit. Real insights into the career and skills of a modern software engineer.
Want to become a true senior engineer? Take ownership, have autonomy, and be a force multiplier on your team. The Senior Engineer Mindset ebook can help 👉 swizec.com/senior-mindset. These are the shifts in mindset that unlocked my career.
Curious about Serverless and the modern backend? Check out Serverless Handbook, for frontend engineers 👉 ServerlessHandbook.dev
Want to Stop copy pasting D3 examples and create data visualizations of your own? Learn how to build scalable dataviz React components your whole team can understand with React for Data Visualization
Want to get my best emails on JavaScript, React, Serverless, Fullstack Web, or Indie Hacking? Check out swizec.com/collections
Did someone amazing share this letter with you? Wonderful! You can sign up for my weekly letters for software engineers on their path to greatness, here: swizec.com/blog
Want to brush up on your modern JavaScript syntax? Check out my interactive cheatsheet: es6cheatsheet.com
By the way, just in case no one has told you it yet today: I love and appreciate you for who you are ❤️