“Am I actually awake? Did I even sleep?”

For like the 10th day in a row now, I’ve been waking up in this weird state, asking myself both of these questions.

I’m able to fall asleep fairly easily (I’ll share 3 of my personal go-to tips at the end of this email) and I wake up early without an alarm, but I have no energy to get out of bed because I still feel tired... yet I’m unable to fall back into dreamland.

I end up laying around in this haze, with a slow brain and lazy body, and the only thing I can do is grab my phone and spiral down an Instagram scroll binge until I shake off enough brain fog to start my day.

But by then my entire morning routine is shot to pieces and it takes a ton of effort to get back on track.

Know the feeling?

It totally sucks.

For the average person, this might not be so bad…

But for someone with a lot of responsibilities, this is an absolute disaster to deal with.

When I check my Oura ring, it shows that I did in fact sleep, but not restfully.

I have micro-wake ups that I don’t even remember and I get barely any deep sleep.

(My REM seems to be fine — more on that in a future email).

It literally tells me, “Restless sleep is less restorative than uninterrupted sleep, and it’s usually the cause of daytime sleepiness….[it] can have a big impact on your sleep quality and daytime cognitive performance.”

When I look back on the last few days, I know what the problem is.

It’s been a combination of my failure to avoid a few Sleep Destroyers (mainly eating too close to bed and working out too late in the day).

I’ve also been under a lot of extra stress from taking care of my dad after a recent surgery and going back and forth to ER to deal with complications (he’s finally back home and recovering well now).

AND it’s been WAY. TOO. HOT.

If you didn’t already know, temperature plays a YUUUUUUGE role in your ability to fall asleep and stay asleep.

I’ll be covering stress, anxiety, and temperature in the Sleep Destroyer emails, so keep an eye out for those.

Now, let me show you something from my Oura ring’s report:

See that section highlighted in green called "latency?"

That's how long it takes me to fall asleep.

In this case, 4 minutes.

No matter how sh*tty my sleep is, the one thing I no longer struggle with is falling asleep.

That’s because there are a few habits I’ve discovered that work pretty darn good for me, so I’ll share those with you like I promised.

1. Reading fiction at night
2. To decompress and turn off my analytical, problem-solving “business brain” at night, I read fiction, which is an idea I got from Tim Ferriss. Whether I read a physical book with the lights on or on my Kindle Paperwhite, I make sure to wear my blue-light blocking glasses* so I can avoid the negative effects of artificial light. I’m currently reading 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami. 
3. I listen to the song “Weightless” by Marconi Union on repeat. This song was engineered with the input from scientists to activate a certain frequency in the brain to reduce anxiety, and it has the side benefit of helping me fall asleep. Check it out. 
4. If A and B don’t work for me, I’ll do something I consider to be my secret sleep weapon: I'll play 10 minutes of the video game Tetris (wearing blue light blocking glasses*, of course). Playing Tetris helps create visual overwriting, a concept I learned from Jane McGonigal, PhD, which crowds out anything replaying or looping in your mind that could inhibit sleep. I play the free version on my phone.

I’ve also experimented with sleep podcasts, sleep music, and breathwork, which I’ll be covering in the future, but these 3 are pretty much all I need now.

Try them out and let me know what you think!

Got any of your own “fall asleep quickly” tips, ? Send them my way.

Ready...set...sleep😴

— Michael, Chief SleepHacker

PS — If you’re wondering what happened to the next Sleep Destroyer email, it’ll be landing in your inbox soon.

PPS — I'd like to shout out Swanwick Sleep. They make the coolest looking, most effective blue-light blocking glasses backed by science and have great customer service. Click here to check them out. (*This is an affiliate link and I may get compensated for any purchase you make. If you aren’t cool with that, just Google “Swanwick Sleep”).