Ask HN: How do you sleep on time?

SLYP for deep sleep:

- S *Shape Tomorrow:* Make a mental note of 1-3 major things to do tomorrow during work hours.

- L *Love & Gratitude:* 5 minutes on bed: acknowledge one positive thing from today about d2d life, family, and work & feel love and gratitude, and be thankful for this day.

- Y *Your Daily Movie:* Recall everything throughout your day, EVERYTHING, recall as many details as you can remember (audio, video, emotions, feelings). Play the daily movie forward & backward, slow or in a flash.

- P *Prayer & Sleep:* Pray for peace & have a deep sleep (by the time you reach this step you're already flat asleep.)

I wanted to have better sleep and created the SLYP steps and followed them ritually for about a year but nowadays I am flat as soon as I reach my bed.

As people have pointed out, your work schedule is a problem.

More importantly I think the key to managing sleep is managing the night before. It's WAY too easy to be randomly distracted by Netflix, Insta, TikTok, dating apps, messenger, whatever else that keep your mind racing until the point where you're expected to put your device down and just fall asleep.

You gotta get proactive about managing this. For me, I go to bed at 9:30 to fall asleep at 10:30. I use an app called Jomo that bans me from using any apps that could distract me unless I enter a long random code, which is enough to dissuade me in 90% of cases. I also have room mates who stay up late and watch TV, so I set an alarm at 9:30 that acts as a circuit breaker otherwise I stay up chatting to them all night.

After I go to bed and read a few pages, I do a mindfull excercise where I focus on every single muscle from my toes to my hands for about five seconds. This helps me get to sleep faster.

How do you usually structure your day to get to bed earlier, I can't answer that one.

Why do you get off work so late? And also need to get up early (and thus sleep early)?

Fixing my sleep schedule is a still a WIP but some things that have helped so far: - an app/site blocker on all devices with scheduling that is non-trivial to bypass (I block literally everything including my IDE so I don't get sucked into a side project instead of sleeping) - placing my phone/charger in another room - refraining from caffeine 6 hrs before bed and screens 1 hr before - black out blinds and electrical tape over any lights

But like others have mentioned, your work schedule makes this problem particularly tough.

If you're working until 9 pm either 1. You need to sleep in and start work around 12:00. Now staying up until 1 doesn't matter 2. Stop working until 9pm

Is there some reason you are working at that time? Are you on a shift or working with a different timezone. The obvious solution is to finish work by 5-6pm and be in bed by 9-10pm.

I simply don't... :/

I find that energy drinks help me sleep better. If I have some strong in the morning despite not at all needing one, I'll be more tired and ready to sleep that evening.

It probably has not-healthy side effects so I'd not recommend this day-to-day for anyone, try to avoid this myself as well.

Set your alarm clock for an earlier time so that you want to go to bed earlier in the evening. And avoid putting off your evening sleep with random entertainment. Plan your time around work (both morning and evening), make sure your sleep hygiene is good (cold and dark room).

Related: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38332364

Especially when it includes a meal, two hours of chilling after work and before bed is something that you should ideally have

Find time to exercise. Kick caffeine easy to say, harder to do but totally worth it.

1. Don't overthink this

2. Focus on sleep quality not only the duration

3. Do power naps during the day

Don't work so late.

Everyone needs time after work to process the day and wind down.

Melatonin works best for me when necessary

When do you eat dinner?

tire your body and mind.

more intellectual stuff, more physical stuff.

pray to morpheus

Uh…don't go on rabbit holes or the internet? I don't know, it's 11:45 PM here. Also, be able to tell when you're tired.