Be a morning person. How to end insomnia for free.
1. Sleep with the curtains open. Wake up with sunrise.
2. Immediately exercise outside. It could be anything, walking, running, swimming, biking, calestetics, just as long as its outside.
3. At sundown, turn off all electronics. Using pencil, paper, and a 40 watt bulb, refactor your code, do design work and the next day's plans. If you feel like you haven't gotten enough work done on your computer before sundown, then spend less time screwing around. (Then again, if you refactored and planned properly the night before, this problem begins to disappear.)
4. Go to sleep 8 hours (or whatever you require) before sunrise.
BONUS: Get a dog, cat, or child. Although these aren't free, they'll make sure you're up at sunrise.
Been doing this for years. I may not have DSPS, but this does the same thing as OP's approach for $520.99 less.
This doesn't work. I mean it works for people who are like you, but this doesn't work for the intended audience of the article.
I can do all these things and yes, I achieve 8 hours of good sleep when I do. The problem is that it requires extraordinary effort to keep up, you can't shake off the unnatural feeling that you're living on someone else's schedule and (ultimately) you are not as creative, explosive, productive and even happy as you are when you fall asleep at 3am and wake up at 11. I've done a few months of your normal routine and it sucked. Sure I felt rested and in sync with others, but everything great I've built in life had happened between 10pm and 4 in the morning.
I am firmly convinced that I am not biologically "wired" to going to sleep at 11pm like a robot, simply because someone turned of the lights. I get this intense long-lasting spike of energy when the sun goes down. Every time I switch to a regular people schedule I start missing that feeling and my productivity suffers a big deal.
Here is what I do: I enjoy my lifestyle. It feels great to be awake when the time slows down and the city finally comes to a stop, I've tried waking up really early (someone said it feels the same) but not - not even close. This precious time offers me relief, relief from the pressures of modern life, our rat race of schedules, mortgage payments, poor sales and shrinking savings. It's so much easier to concentrate on a problem at hand.
Yeah, I agree with the "it works for you, but not me" because I am sure I have this too. I only realized it when I thought it was normal to take over an hour to fall asleep...when its clearly not.
Unfortunately, waking up at 11 is not an option, have a normal nine-fiver'er, and what I usually do is catch up on the weekend. I used to feel like a bum, waking up past noon during the weekends, but I have come to realize that is the only way I function. If I don't get my beauty sleep in the weekend, I get extremely tired the week after and I still can't fall asleep! So I am tired during the day and restless at night...its paintful, like an itch that won't go away and doesn't get relived by scratching.
I'm the same way.... the only problem is that there are clear health-risks associated with the reduced melatonin levels you get from sleeping during the day (unless you can REALLY effectively darken your room).
Worse, as a company founder it can be very difficult living on that schedule. A frightening amount of life occurs before 9AM for most people.
I don't really have an answer... I struggle with my sleeping habits every day. I do know that I'd really like to be on a sun centric schedule, however.
If you want a dark room, nail a thick blanket in front of your window, then put some nails above those to latch the bottoms of the blankets to when you want sun. It gets REALLY dark, about as dark as 10pm in the winter.
The problem with sunrise is that it changes with the seasons and DST; here in Seattle it's 5 AM in the summer and 8 AM in the winter. Unfortunately my other obligations don't change with it.
...not to mention the fact that "sunrise" sometimes doesn't happen at all in Seattle, especially during the winter. You can wake up in the morning, go to work, come home in the evening and go to bed without really experiencing any exposure to sunlight during the day.
I had the worst problem with getting up in the morning while living in Seattle. Since I moved to San Francisco, the problem has largely abated. I'm still most productive during the evening, but at least here I can control my schedule.
I live in the "Sun City." The sun shines an average of 302 days a year, but I still have trouble keeping a normal schedule. It seems the only way for me to get up early regularly is to have something that requires me to be up early (school/work).
It wasn't a serious problem for me. Yeah, it's a little tougher, but if you got into the habit of waking up at 6:00 AM in the summer, so long as you continue to do the "shut off all electronics and use a low-watt bulb (or a candle)" in the evening, eat breakfast at the same time every morning, and get enough exercise during the day then the strategy works in a similar way.
The big difference is that the original author refuses to shut off his TV, computer, and phone at night.
Maybe you live on the equator, but your technique would be impossible during the winter in most of Europe and much of North America. For example, in December in London, sunrise is around 8:30 and sets before 4pm.
With your plan I would wake up at 9 in the mornings during the winter and since nights are way less than 8 hours during summer I wouldn't get any sleep at all...
This works for me, and I don't even need to exercise first thing. The most difficult thing is other people in your life who don't understand and don't cooperate.
This doesn't work if you're on the west coast, working on east coast time. Financial markets open roughly around 9 EST, which means I have to be awake by 5 PST and at work by 6. The sun won't rise for another hour. People have different schedules, so it does help to have an artificial mechanism to make it work.
I can assure that you both pets and children work on the waking early bit. The trick is actually getting to be on time the night before and falling asleep quickly. But, if you've walked the dog and entertained the child, you'll be tired and fall asleep quickly.
I used to have a lot of problems going to sleep but since children it's a thing of the past. I still struggle with getting to bed on time (he says, posting at HN when should be going to bed)
2:30am here. Equally bad during winter. I've thought about making a contraption that opens the blinds when it's time to wake up, since neither waking up in darkness nor going to sleep in daylight is desirable.
1. Sleep with the curtains open. Wake up with sunrise.
2. Immediately exercise outside. It could be anything, walking, running, swimming, biking, calestetics, just as long as its outside.
3. At sundown, turn off all electronics. Using pencil, paper, and a 40 watt bulb, refactor your code, do design work and the next day's plans. If you feel like you haven't gotten enough work done on your computer before sundown, then spend less time screwing around. (Then again, if you refactored and planned properly the night before, this problem begins to disappear.)
4. Go to sleep 8 hours (or whatever you require) before sunrise.
BONUS: Get a dog, cat, or child. Although these aren't free, they'll make sure you're up at sunrise.
Been doing this for years. I may not have DSPS, but this does the same thing as OP's approach for $520.99 less.