I try it: Better sleep
Can better sleep help with burnout? What makes for "better" sleep? Is it a temperature or a specific number of hours, the time you go to bed, or "sleep hygiene" (whatever that is?). I knew I was tired all the time and that had contributed to my burnout. I also knew I'd tried a lot of things to to improve my sleep in the past that didn’t help. But what if I tried something different? This is the sleep experiment.
Tl;Dr
The What
Better sleep - aiming for 7 - 8 hours or waking up rested
The How
Sleep by 11 - 11:30
Keep blackout curtains open to wake up to natural light
How long
July 2022 - Ongoing
Will I keep doing it?
Yes, absolutely.
The Details
Here's everything you need to know about what I did and how I did it.
Why did I do this experiment?
I had to start taking my sleep more seriously after a major surgery.
I've never had a great sleep schedule. Some weird combination of nature and nurture and a bizarre public school schedule locked me into going to bed at 2 AM or later for 25 years.
My sleep quality itself is bad. It takes me more than 40 minutes to fall asleep once the lights are out. I wake up somewhere between 12 - 15 times a night. I "lose" an hour of sleep to these disturbances. For most of my life, I was content to operate this way.
Until said surgery.
April 2021: As my sixth surgery related to a childhood accident, I wanted it to be my final one. I wanted to heal. But by June, I wasn't getting restful sleep. My body felt exhausted. Most days I cried. Some days my body felt "dizzy" in my muscles. Worst of all, I was in pain.
Add to this the stress of regular air travel during COVID, and I found myself in a disaster situation.
I started to experience some complications to healing.
This prompted me to purchase a fitness/sleep tracker. What it told me scared me. I got about four hours of "quality" sleep a night. My REM and deep sleep stages lacked. I had a low heart rate variability (an indicator I've learned is a good predicter of how groggy I'll feel the next day).
So I decided to improve my sleep. I set the goal to go to sleep by 11 pm every night. I did it, and I did it well. But ... but ...
I didn't notice a difference in how I felt or my fancy fitness/sleep stats.
By mid July, my exhaustion and post-surgery complications prompted me to take medical leave from my job in August 2021.
Going to bed at a "decent hour" didn't work for me. It didn't help with my energy levels or pain. It didn't help my persistent grogginess. (Since learning more about my sleep, I've learned that my grogginess was severe.)
In 30 days, I didn't notice a difference, so I stopped doing it.
The next 7 months were the most anxious and painful of my life.
...
And then I had another surgery. This time in August 2022 related to the aforementioned pain made worse by my poor sleep.
This time, I thought I knew what to expect and wanted to be more prepared. I wanted to actually figure out my sleep. So I could actually heal.
How did I do it?
1. I tricked my body. I spent all of June in North Carolina, 2 hours ahead of my home timezone. While there, I went to bed at 1 AM instead of 2 AM. When I returned home in July, I went to bed at 11 pm. Thanks to the magic of time zones, my body felt like it kept the same schedule when I was actually going to bed two hours earlier.
2. I opened my blackout curtains to let in natural morning light.
These two things combined made a huge difference in my sleep. Where before I'd simply tried going to bed earlier, this time I used my environment to prime my body for the sleep. And I didn't need an elaborate "sleep hygiene" ritual.
The light in the morning made me bright-eyed for the first time in my life. No more thudding grogginess pulling me back into bed.
I'd used blackout curtains for years. Every "sleep hygiene" list recommends keeping the room as dark as possible, with no ambient light.
But it's also recommended to get light as soon after waking up as possible. In fact, it's recommended to go outside for 15 minutes when you first wake up as the light sends signals to the body to wake up. I don't know about you, but I don't really have the privacy to stand outside in my pajamas for 15 minutes every morning.
Instead, I opened one of the pair of blackout curtains I have (I have two windows in my room). And that light woke me up every morning. A full 40 minutes before my usual alarm.
After only a few days of these two things, I woke up naturally around 6:30 am. And I felt rested.
I am certain both going to bed earlier and getting natural light _together_ made this successful for me.
If I'd gone to sleep really late, I probably still would have woken up with the light. But I probably wouldn't have felt rested. And if I hadn't used the light, my body might have struggled to wake up beause it missed the light that helps regulate circadian rhythm.
Postmortem
Will I keep doing this?
Yes ... but ...
Challenges
This has been difficult for me to continue because I still struggle to go to bed before midnight. At least I've stopped going to bed at 2 AM.
Some things that keep me up include
daily responsibilities and commitments I leave until the last minute
Revenge Bedtime Procrastination (TM)
anxiety, usually scrolling or working on a task
When I tried this "experiment", I set myself a challenge for 30 days. Once the 30 days ended, and the challenge with it, I didn't have the same motivation to go to bed earlier.
In order to continue this schedule, I'll need to figure out a way to avoid the aforementioned habits that push back my bedtime.
Rewards
The rewards of this were huge for me.
Decreased anxiety through my whole day
More time and energy for my ideal morning routine instead of jumping right into work
Time and energy in the morning to workout
Increased mindfulness and rest in evening to ensure I went to bed on time
Decreased brain fog and muscular pain through whole day, especially in AM
Though these are just five things, I can't overstate the influence they had on my day. This sleep experiment really kicked off a domino effect in my day.
I started to have my ideal day. I started to do the things I had always wanted to do but didn't quite have the energy to do.
For example, my morning routine looked like waking up at 6:30, getting a 20 - 30 minute workout in, showing, walking my dog, and having breakfast all before 8:30.
These were all things I used to struggle to get into my day, much less my morning.
My brain was more clear in the morning. I thought I would _never_ overcome my grogginess. I used to feel like my head was full of clouds in the morning. Sometimes that feeling would last until the afternoon. Even when I tried my first sleep experiment in 2021, I was still groggy.
Something about this special combination helped me get over that though. I felt _fresh_.
Best of all, I had energy for the one thing I thought I'd never have the energy or stamina for in the morning: running.
Thanks to my sleep experiment, I started running in the morning with my dog. While I don't think there's anything inherently superior about running in the morning, my dog LOVED it. It made her day and my day go so much better to go out together and do something we enjoyed together at the start of our day.
There are just some things that when you take care of them early in the morning, your day goes better.
During the rest of my day, I had enough energy to add a treadmill under my desk (another experiement I'll document here).
I still struggled to focus before noon, but now it was due to Slack notifications and not grogginess.
In the evening, I would start to wind down around 9:30 to ensure I could get to bed on time. This was so lovely. I'd wash my face and do whatever little things I still had to do before crawling into bed feeling sufficiently tired. Some days I would also watch something with my partner or read. I felt too tired and relaxed to scroll! I count that as a huge win.
Conclusion?
Improving my sleep via going to bed earlier and opening my curtains for morning natural light significantly improved my anxiety levels, energy, and overall flow of my day.
I'm making every effort to keep it up.
