Jul 1 in General ❗
How To Unfu*k Your Sleep [FULL GUIDE]
I’ve spent over 200 hours researching sleep and I’ve put everything I learned into this post.
I went from sleeping 6 hours/night and continuously waking up in the middle of the night
To consistently getting 8-9 hours of sleep, falling asleep in minutes, and rarely waking up.
This post will cover everything I’ve done to do that and EVERY science-based actionable step that helped me.
It might sound strange that I’m making a post about sleep in a group about business
But 99% of the time, you don’t have business problems.
You have personal problems manifesting in your business.
And until you solve those personal problems, they will act as a bottleneck on everything else you do.
And if you have bad sleep, no matter what your business model, offer, or tactics are, you will never grow as fast as you want to.
A quick note: This is a long post. If you have the attention span of a little kid, click off right now. This is not for you. This is only for you if you’re serious about winning and making more money.
Most people would skip right over this post and shiny-object syndrome their way to the new, ‘untapped’ business tactic instead
But let me mention just some of the benefits of good sleep
- 2 to 4X increase in energy
- Sharpened memory
- Boosted creativity
- Increased motivation
- More effort & efficiency in your work
- Accomplish tasks faster
- Higher willpower and discipline levels
- More emotionally stable and social
- Higher testosterone & more competitive
- Build more muscle and lose more fat
- Look & feel better
- Happier
- Less likely to get sick
- Live longer
Notice how all of those, in some way or another, lead you to making more money.
Can you sort of see how it is literally the highest ROI thing you can do to fix your sleep?
Yet 99% of the population is sleep-deprived. Including you.
You’re just so used to your state of sleep-deprivation that you consider it normal.
Most people just see sleep as time that can be sacrificed to do other things.
I used to be one of those people. I’d go to sleep late and wake up early to work on my business, thinking it was productive.
Until I realized that 1 hour of focused, flow-like work after a good night’s rest is worth 5 hours of sloppy, tired work after bad sleep.
So by spending more time sleeping, you actually save time.
Which is why I made this post.
I won’t be covering the science behind how sleep works or the stages of sleep and dreams.
And that’s because I don’t want to bore you to sleep (no pun intended)
Instead, this post will only serve to give you the actionable, real-time stuff you can do tonight so you can sleep like a baby and make more money
Let’s begin.
Before we can get to the tactics to improve your sleep, I have to go over the beliefs.
They’re going to sound boring and obvious. But 99% don’t follow them.
First things first - the total time you spend in bed isn’t equal to the total time you actually sleep
I know that sounds like common sense, but common sense isn’t common practice.
Most people spend 8 hours in bed and think they’re getting 8 hours of sleep.
They’re actually getting around 7.
We only sleep for about 80-90% of the time spent in bed.
So, if you want 8 hours of sleep, you need to be in bed for 8 ½ to 9 hours.
The next thing - go to bed and wake up at the same time everyday.
For me, this is 8pm - 5am.
And this also includes weekends. Weekdays and weekends = days. Treat them the same.
Your body does not care if it’s Friday night. It’ll suffer the same consequences.
Now, obviously there are going to be days when life just gets in the way and you’re forced to go to bed later than usual.
For example, two weeks ago I went to bed at 10pm because an unexpected family thing came up.
But instead of waking up later to make up for it like most people would do, I still woke up at 5am.
Because if I had woken up later, my body would adjust by pushing my bedtime later as well.
Thus, my body wouldn’t have let me fall asleep at the time I usually do because my sleep time got pushed back.
Then, it’d take a whole week to get back to my normal sleep schedule, all from one mistake.
So by choosing to wake up at the same time, even if you went to sleep late, you essentially trade a day of being tired for a week of being tired.
And it works the other way too. If you wake up early one morning, don’t go to sleep earlier.
Just accept it, keep your schedule the same, and do the work that needs to be done.
The worst mistake you can make is telling yourself that it’s okay to work less or take the day off because you got bad sleep.
That’s a cope that you need to get out of your head immediately, I don’t care how tired you are.
When those sleep-deprived days come, and they will, adopt this mindset:
“I don’t need a lot of sleep to have a great day. I’m energetic and ecstatic without sleep”
Then get back to work, even if you feel tired.
Push yourself to complete exhaustion. So that when nighttime hits, you just collapse into bed and get great sleep.
“Exhaustion is the reward, not the cost, of a hard day’s work”
The next thing - Remove from your brain the idea that you can recover sleep.
The belief that you can sleep for 4 hours tonight and 10 hours tomorrow to make up for it isn’t true.
That sleep opportunity is gone forever and you’ll feel the effects of it for a week after (even if you get good sleep on every other night)
And I don’t care what motivational video you watched or guru you heard say it
NO amount of willpower can stop you from feeling the consequences of bad sleep. Your energy and work output will reflect it.
One last false belief before we move on to the tactics - “I just need to work a bit more, then I’ll go to sleep”
Shut up. That’s instant gratification.
If you can’t keep your word on when you told yourself you’d go to sleep, you’re still a boy.
You can do that same work you try to cram in at night during the next morning on a fresh and energized brain.
This is not to say that doing the work is less important than sleeping, but you already had the entire day to do your work
So when it comes nighttime, you shouldn’t be trying to do the work you procrastinated on.
You should be sleeping and recharging for the work to come tomorrow.
Now that we’ve gotten those fundamentals out the way, we move on to the tactics.
This is where you learn how to actually improve your sleep.
I’m going to go over them all very quickly because I value your time.
These are all extremely important. If you do these, I promise it’ll change your life forever.
Chronotype
The first thing you need to do is build a routine that meets your personal sleep preferences.
The goal is to stop putting your sleep around your schedule. And start putting your schedule around your sleep.
In order to do that, you first have to know what your sleep preferences are. Take this short test to find out.
It’ll tell you what the most optimal wake and sleep times are for you.
Then build a routine (preferably on Google Calendar) around those times.
Light. Just having the light on your ceiling turned on at night can suppress 50% of your melatonin levels, making you significantly less sleepy.
This is because your brain is tricked to think that the light is sunlight and it’s still daytime out.
So I’d recommend turning off all bright lights 1 hour before sleep time.
And that includes screens.
A study showed that kids who used iPads before bed took longer to fall asleep and lost significant amounts of deep sleep.
They also felt more tired and lazy throughout the next day.
To combat this, turn brightness down on your phone & laptop 1-2 hours before bed and turn night shift on in settings.
And while you sleep, it should pretty much be pitch black. Even the smallest amount of light can mess up your sleep.
Because even if you can’t see the light, your skin can still detect the light.
Sunlight. Try to get sunlight within an hour of waking up.
This will tell your body when it’s actually daytime and fix your circadian rhythm.
This will make it easier to fall asleep and easier to wake up.
Temperature. In order to fall asleep, your core temperature must drop by 2-3 degrees fahrenheit.
So at around 65 degrees fahrenheit, you’ll fall asleep 20% faster. Also turn on your fan when you go to sleep as well.
Another thing you can do is take a hot shower before bed. It sounds contradictory, I know.
But it’s not. By increasing your outer temperature from the shower, your core temperature compensates by making it cooler.
Environment. No TV’s, computers, phones, work, electronics in the room while you sleep.
And make sure any alarm clocks are out of sight (if you wake up in the middle of the night and check the time, it could make you anxious)
Ideally, you should never be on your bed unless you’re sleeping or having sex.
Anything else and your brain will start to associate the bed with stimulating things and you won’t be able to fall asleep.
You shouldn’t even be working in the same room that you sleep in or your mind will be too focused and still be in work-mode.
Eating. Don’t eat within 2-3 hours before bed. It’ll spike insulin and create a glucose spike.
Meaning, you won’t be able to produce melatonin effectively and you’ll wake up in the middle of the night.
Exercise. Same thing for working out. Don’t exercise 2-3 hours before bed. It could raise your core temperature. (Remember, your core temperature must drop in order to sleep)
And because of that, you’re going to be waiting for a long time to fall asleep
Stimulation. You have to stop working at least 1 hour before bed or your brain will be too worked up.
This also goes for social media, dirty websites, video games, etc. that stuff will keep you up all night.
A great way to wind down is to journal all your thoughts so your brain doesn’t feel the need to hold them all.
Tip: You can read yourself to sleep. I do this every night with my Kindle (on low brightness and night-shift to make the screen more reddish)
If you don’t have a Kindle, you can read from a regular book with a very small light, preferably a reddish light.
Naps. Naps are okay if you think you must take one. The only requirement is that it isn’t within 7 hours of bedtime.
So if you usually go to bed at 10pm, the latest you can take a nap is 3pm. Otherwise, it’ll mess up your sleep.
Awakening. If you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t fall back asleep, do a 20 minute NSDR protocol.
Just search on youtube “20 minute NSDR”. You can also use this before sleep to fall asleep and even as a break in between work blocks.
Caffeine. Adenosine is a chemical that builds up as we’re awake.
The higher your adenosine levels, the more tired you are, the more you want to sleep.
And caffeine can block the effects of adenosine, making you feel less tired.
But there’s a consequence to using it. Caffeine doesn’t eliminate the adenosine, it just temporarily blocks it while the adenosine continues to build up throughout the day.
And when the caffeine wears off, the adenosine stops being blocked and you feel a “crash”.
Now you feel even more tired than you did before.
So unless you drink even more coffee to block these stronger levels of adenosine, which would eventually create a caffeine addiction, you’re going to find it extremely hard to stay awake.
And the leftover adenosine that was blocked can carry over into the day after, on top of the adenosine that starts to build up on that day as well.
Which would make you want even more coffee the next day. And the cycle repeats.
Which is why I don’t drink coffee and don’t recommend drinking it on a regular basis.
But if you want to drink it irregularly, that’s fine. Just drink it 90-120 minutes after waking up, that way it doesn’t affect your sleep much.
(Note: Decaffeinated doesn’t mean non-caffeinated. 1 cup of decaf still has 30% of the caffeine as a regular cup)
Alcohol. CUT it out. It is one of the biggest suppressor of sleep there is.
And it also causes you to repeatedly wake up in the middle of the night.
Supplements - I don’t take any for sleep. I just follow everything in this post and my sleep is great.
Products
And these are the best sleep products there are. (none of these are affiliate links. If you have spare cash, I’d recommend the investment)
If you’re going to buy these, buy them only after you’ve done everything else.
Oura Ring - https://ouraring.com/product/heritage-silver
Drowsy Eye Mask - https://www.drowsysleepco.com/pages/mask
Eight Sleep Pod 3 Mattress - https://www.eightsleep.com/
Eight Sleep Pod 3 Cover - https://www.eightsleep.com/pod-cover/
Big Rooster White Noise Machine - https://a.co/d/aeNiY0o
Owl and Lark Weighted Blanket - https://owllark.com/shop/weighted-blanket/
Simba Hybrid Pillow - https://simbasleep.com/products/simba-hybrid-pillow
Casper Glow Light - https://casper.com/accessories/glow.html
If you need any help with anything related to productivity and reaching peak performance in your business, shoot me a dm and I’ll help you out
(No, I won’t sell you coaching or a course. It’s just what I enjoy doing)
Other than that, that’s the end of this post. I hope it can help you out bro.
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How To Unfu*k Your Sleep [FULL GUIDE]
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