After last week’s episode on toolkits, I got a request to do another episode like it, but specifically on sleep tools.
Now before I jump in on the episode I want to talk for a minute about why I typically haven’t been doing so many episodes on specific tools. What it comes down to is that often the specific tools aren’t what’s important - what tends to be more important are the strategies and reasons behind the tools.
I kind of think of like if someone told me that they needed help fixing their bike and I handed them a wrench but they actually had a flat tire. Sure a wrench is great for fixing a bike when it needs something tightened, but without the understanding of what’s actually going on behind the scenes that tool may actually be useless.
A specific tool can make all the difference when implementing strategy, we just need to know the why behind it.
So, for this episode, we’ll be skipping many of the basics of sleep - I’ll do another episode specifically about all that. What we’re going to be focusing on in this episode is our sleep hygiene, which is just a fancy way of talking about all the good habits we have related to our sleep. And so we will get into the why behind what we’re doing, but in each section, we’ll spend some time talking about the specific tools - and I’m going to try and include links to everything I talk about in the show notes - and none of these are going to be affiliate links, just either things I use or have used and probably a few other things just as options - so if you want to follow along with the show notes you can find them below.
Before we get into anything else let’s start with the four pillars of good sleep, which are duration, quality, regularity and timing.
Duration is our easiest pillar to measure, how much sleep did we get? Depending on a number of factors (including the other pillars) you are going to need about 7-9 hours of sleep a night, with some recent studies pointing to women needing to be on the high range of that than men do.
Our next pillar is quality, which is also tends to be fairly easy to understand - when we did sleep how refreshing was it? Now of course, this is also something that is going to be highly subjective and harder to gauge. While there are sleep trackers out there that can shed some light on this information the best indicator is actually just how you feel in the morning (given that we’re hitting our other pillars).
Next up we’ve got regularity and this just has to do with if we’re regularly getting enough sleep and if we’re sticking to a sleep schedule. Are we chronically denying ourselves the amount of sleep we need? That’s going to add up. And due to our circadian rhythm we want to be going to bed and waking up at generally the same time every day - I know, boo, sleep routines.
Finally we have timing - which I know sounds a lot like regularity, but instead here we’re looking at our chronotype - are we a night owl or are we a morning lark or perhaps something in between? If we’re not sleeping according to our chronobiology it’s going to have a big effect on the quality of our sleep.
So with those pillars in mind let’s talk about how we’re going to get a good night sleep, and that’s going to start at figuring out when we want to be going to bed.
Our first step here is going to be looking at if we’re giving ourselves a big enough sleep opportunity, which basically just means, from the time we go to bed to the time we’re getting up, is there enough time built in that slot to get those 7-9 hours. Now I want to be clear here, I say 7-9 hours, but most people are not going to be on the 7 hours of things and especially not if that is what they are trying to get on average. So if you’re saying that you get in bed at 11pm so that you can wake up at 6am - that is not enough time in bed. There is going to be some amount of time in bed that you aren’t asleep - typically we’re expecting it to take 15-20 minutes for us to fall asleep once we’re in bed. While some people will naturally fall asleep faster, that usually is an indication of insufficient sleep - usually at a chronic level.
So what we’re looking to do here is figure out how much sleep we want to be getting and then giving ourselves some padding so that we have the opportunity to get that amount of sleep. The way I typically look at it is that if I want to wake up at 7am, that means I should be aiming to get into bed at 10:30pm the night before. That gives me an 8 and 1/2 hour window to get my sleep in. I like doing it this way because I typically able to wake up without the need of my alarm clock in the morning which makes the whole morning routine go a lot easier. But everyone is going to have their own limitations and individual preferences.
Now, unfortunately, getting into bed also takes time, and because we want to be ready to fall asleep when we get in bed, there are a few things we want to consider when we’re looking at when we want to get ready for bed. We’re all going to have our own preferences when it comes to our bedtime routine, so I’d suggest making a list of all the things that we want to have happen when we’re getting ready for bed. For me it starts with taking my dogs out one last time, plugging in my phone downstairs, making sure the doors are locked and turning off all the lights in the house before I head upstairs. Once there, I’m going to want to be doing all those things that signal it’s time for me to get into bed - taking a shower, brushing my teeth, getting in pajamas, going to the bathroom one last time, and maybe doing a little light stretching. I’ve been dealing with a little plantar fasciitis recently and so working on my calves before bed really helps in the morning - but also just doing the work of stretching can help relax your body into getting ready for sleep. Also if you’re doing anything else to get ready for tomorrow morning, like laying out your clothes or packing a lunch, make sure to include those on your list here.
If you take melatonin or any other supplements to help with sleep this is also the time to do so - and just a quick note about melatonin, I’m not going to specifically recommend taking it, but if you do it is recommended that you are taking it about 30 minutes before you try and go to sleep.
And real quick, let’s take a minute to talk about getting off our screens here. As I mentioned I don’t take my phone up into my bedroom. So, of course there is the recommendation that we get off our screens an hour before going to bed. For some people, that’s related to light, but the real thing for me is that I find that there really isn’t anything on there that gets me specifically ready to go sleep - although maybe you listen to podcasts or something as you are getting ready for bed or falling asleep. So it’s going to have to be something that you figure out how you want to manage if you want to have it in your bedroom. I’ve personally never read an email or found something on social media while scrolling that has made me more ready to fall asleep. I’m not saying you have to leave your phone outside the bedroom, I mean many of you are probably using it as an alarm clock, so that’s a hard ask. What I am asking is that you are mindful about how you are using it before bedtime and that you work on coming up with a plan beyond “I’m just not going to look at it,” especially at night when our executive functions are running low,, relying on willpower isn’t a real plan. Personally, I find that using app blocks can be helpful in these situations. While the built in screen time features aren’t terribly robust, there are other options. One I’ve used in the past is Freedom, which is fairly good at blocking apps at certain times of the day - additionally, there are apps like One Sec that will delay the opening of apps by 7 seconds, which gives you some time to decide if you really want to be opening Instagram at 11PM.
Now we can try and figure out how long all of this is going to take and work on figuring out not just when we want to be in bed, but how long it’ll take us to get there. So if you want to be getting into bed at 11 and it takes thirty minutes to get ready for bed, then we want to be heading up to bed at 10:30.
But all we’re talking about here is when we want to be going to bed - this is just about setting our intentions, but as we all know, we can have the best of intentions about what we’re going to do and still fail to follow through with them. Which then leads to the question, how do we get ourselves to start getting ready for bed when the time comes?
Well, if we’ve worked through that first part, then we at least have a rough idea of when we’re going to want to start getting ready for bed, which means we can set an alarm for when we want to start getting ready for bed - maybe even an alarm for when it’s time to start wrapping up whatever we’re doing in the evening so that when it’s time to stop we’re actually ready to stop. Because I know if I’m in the middle of watching a show or playing a game and that alarm goes off I’m going to wait for the end or at least a good stopping point. So it’s important that I’m aware of how my future self is going to try and sabotage myself.
And here’s the thing, if you’re an adult, no one is going to be making you go to bed. That’s on you and so we have to decide how we want to enforce that for ourselves. Personally I know that it’s better for me to stick to my bedtime because if I don’t I’m just going to keep putting it off until I can’t keep my eyes open. And I also know that it’s way easier to manage my ADHD the more sleep I get - and so that means even if I’m not going to get a perfect night’s sleep it’s still worth it to not keep putting off my bedtime.
All right, now let’s talk a little about our sleep environment because that’s going to have a big impact on the quality of our sleep. We want to make where we sleep as comfortable as possible for us to get into sleep. And we also want to make it so that basically the only thing we’re doing in bed is sleeping or at least getting ready to sleep. The reason for this is that our brain likes to make associations and if we associate getting in bed with something like doing work because we’re always working on our laptop in bed that can make it harder for us to fall asleep. Now I mentioned that second part about getting ready for sleep because there are things that can help you get to sleep that are well, not sleeping. For example, I tend to read myself to sleep, but because it’s what I do to help get myself to sleep, it is a fine in-bed activity. Now I should note that for this pre-bed reading I’m typically only reading fiction and stuff that isn’t going to be revving up my brain into planning mode. However, I know people who find reading fiction too engaging and that itself can keep them up, so it’s important to figure out what work for you and creates that balance of engaging enough so your brain can relax into sleep, but not so engaging that it keeps you up.
Now to start making our room as optimized for sleep as we can get it, we’re going to start by getting things dark. Like real dark. No darker.
In an optimal set up for sleeping we want our rooms to be pitch black - no light at all. Easier said than done with the amount of artificial light we have in our lives now. It used to be that we only had to deal with moon light or a fire keeping us up at night, but uh, that hasn’t been the case for, let me check my watch, a long time. Also if you’ll bear with me for a moment, something that just absolutely blows my mind when I think about it, is the fact that moon light is really just sun light, it’s just that the sun is so bright it’s reflecting light off the moon and still lighting things up. I don’t know why that boggles my mind, but there you go.
Now let’s get back on track with getting our rooms dark. And the best way to do this is through blackout curtains. As I said, ideally we are making your room pitch black, even when the sun it out, however, most curtain rods tend to hang the curtains in ways that give a lot of light leak around the sides. You can have the best blackout curtains, but if they are loose against the wall you can actually still end up with a fairly bright bedroom. My personal preference here is for blackout roller shades that have a side seam - they tend to be really tight to the wall and are great at covering up those gaps that create the light leak. Now for me this is something that I am personally very sensitive to, just a little bit of light tends to wake me up. With the shift to brighter mornings I’ve also started using draft blockers on my doors to cut down on light seeping in under the door.
Along these lines we also need to consider other light sources in our bedroom - namely all those tiny little LED lights from our gadgets. But I’m sure many of you are asking, do you really need to cover up all the LEDs in your room - and the answer is, well it depends. The biggest factor being how well you can actually see them. The only way light is going to be effecting our sleep is when it goes into our eyes so if you are waking up and those little lights are lighting up your room than that’s a sign they need to be taken care of. But if you don’t even notice them, then they probably aren’t really a problem. As for the best way to take of the lights - remove the ones you can and for the ones you can’t, for say something like a smoke detector, I have little anti-light stickers that are great, but duct tape is also another option.
Of course, another option for making things dark is to just use an eye mask; I mean, why try and cover everything up when you can just cover your eyes? Personally this isn’t my first go to since I find sleep masks don’t stay on me very well at night since I tend to move around a fair amount while I’m sleeping. But they can be great for when I’m traveling and don’t have great options, like when I was at the ADHD conference last year and my hotel room had giant wall to wall windows with zero curtains. There was just no chance that I was going to be able to make that room dark, so it was great that I was traveling with my sleep mask. My personal preference is one call the Manta Sleep Mask which has little cups so that it doesn’t put any pressure on your eyes and still keeps things remarkable dark. I also have one that I like that is a soft silk material and instead of an elastic strap it is just the nice soft material in a big strip all the way around and secures with velcro (kind of like this, although I can’t find the one I got, probably since I got it over 10years ago).
Now on that note for traveling, while this wouldn’t have worked at this place because of the size of the windows, there are options for travel blackout curtains that just stick on your windows with little suction cups. Now we all know that in general suction cups are a bit finicky so when I’m traveling with those I also bring little clips so I just attach them to the existing curtains if I need to. Also another great option here is to just use some of those big yard waste trash bags and duct tape - yeah, it might look like your setting up your hotel room like a Dexter kill room , but you’ll probably get better sleep.
Okay, so once we’ve gotten our room dark we also want it at the right temperature. And here we’re going to want things a bit on the cooler side, although if it’s too cold that’s also going to impede sleep. Most sleep research suggests a temperate of 65 to 68 degrees Fahrenheit (15.6 to 20 degrees Celsius), but really whatever most comfortable for you. I know my wife can’t fall asleep when she’s too cold - especially her feet.
There are also a lot of options here that you can look at now for cooling your mattress to help get yourself to the right temperature. You’ve probably heard ads on other podcasts for 8Sleep and their podcover that allows you to control your bed temperature - that’s actually what I have an it is mostly great. I’m not a fan of the fact that it is entirely controlled via an app on my phone since I don’t keep my phone next to the bed, which means if I want to adjust anything, I have to get out of bed. Also the temperature is controlled with water that is pumped through tubes in the pod cover and while I don’t have a complaint about the tubes, we have had a leak before and that was a pain (although their customer service was great and sent us a replacement right away). Also just worth mentioning that 8Sleep isn’t a sponsor of this show, although, hey maybe I should look into that now that I’m thinking about.
Also worth considering that a mattress cover like that is quite pricey. I actually used a similar product for a number of years before my 8Sleep called a Chilipad. It worked on a similar concept but was just like a mattress pad that I stuck on the bed. And just a quick look on Amazon is showing me that there are lot of these types of products on the market now that are a lot more economical. While I can’t speak to any of the products I haven’t used, I will say that whenever I travel I do miss the ability to control my bed temp, especially in the summer.
Now, while we’re on this topic, it’s also worth talking about how comfortable our bed is because that’s also something that we’re going to want to consider. And my advice here is to just do what’s comfortable for you. There isn’t a lot of good data on what the best type of mattress is so do what you like. Some people are going to want something really soft, while others will want foam, while others will insist that sleeping directly on the floor is what’s best.
And the same goes for your pillow - I use one called a pillow cube because the shape fits me great but everyone is going to have their own preferences here so you’re probably going to have to a little experimenting.
For other bedding, I’m a big fan of weighted blankets, which work in a way that's similar to an occupational therapy technique called deep touch pressure therapy (DPT). The idea behind deep touch pressure is that it can stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system and effectively putting your body into a “rest mode.” I’ve gone through a lot of different iterations of weighted blankets because it can be difficult to find ones that re ally give that deep touch pressure. The way a lot of blankets are designed they have a bunch of little pockets in which there are weighted beads. Depending on how densely these pockets are filled you can have a very uneven effect of weight. So the weighted blanket that I found that works best for me is actually just super heavy because of the amount of material it uses - it is a chunky knit blanket from bearaby.com - oh and a note on blanket weight, the suggested weight for them is for them to be about 10% of your body weight, so if you’re 150 lbs, then get a 15 lb blanket, but your individual needs will probably vary and it’s important to note that heavier isn’t always better.
Other options for deep touch pressure are things like the sleep pod from Hug Sleep, which is basically just a really tight sleeping bag - or there are also things like sensory compression sheets that will wrap around the bed and give a nice tight sheet you can crawl under.
All right, I think that’s a great stopping point for this episode because there is a lot more to dive in on in this topic, so I’m going to be splitting this into two episodes.
This Episode's Top Tips
The four pillars of good sleep include duration, quality, regularity and timing.
Create a bedtime routine tailored to your preferences and needs to signal your body it's time to wind down. You can limit screen time before bed by utilizing app blocks or screen time features to minimize exposure to overly stimulating content.
Optimize your sleep environment by ensuring darkness, maintaining a comfortable temperature, and investing in bedding that promotes relaxation, such as weighted blankets or sensory compression blankets.