It’s funny how, when you sleep normally, you have no idea about how pervasive sleep problems are in our society. Then, when you have a sleep problem show up, it seems that half the people you know struggle with some sleep issue as well. But nobody talks about it.

When I press friends and relations on what they know about their issue, I’m shocked as to how unimportant it has become in their lives. We spend a third of our life in bed – so how is that unimportant? It seems most people seem to feel “this is how it is” and move on – believing poor sleep is now their fate.

I’m obsessed with how to get better sleep, and I’ve only had this insomnia affliction for a couple of years. I’m convinced there’s a solution to this problem, and I’m determined to find out what it is.

How To Get Better Sleep – By Understanding It

If there was only one tip I could offer about sleeplessness and insomnia, it would be “knowledge is power” – so get to know your opponent (sleep). And the way to get to know your sleep is to start logging, analyzing and experimenting with that sleep.

It sounds much more impressive than it is:

• In order to log your sleep, start with a basic spreadsheet, and populate it every morning with how you felt you slept and what the day’s variables were (did I have coffee late in the day, did I go for a bike ride, did I go to bed earlier than usual, did I watch TV until late, etc.).
• Analyzing is where the spreadsheet beats a piece of paper or a handwritten journal – graph the sleep! Take the date as your X axis, the quality of your sleep as the Y axis, and graph whatever variable you want as the Z axis. If there’s a trend, you’ll see it. Pivot tables work well for this.
• Experiment with sleep is the next step. Start running mini experiments with yourself. If I do this intentionally, how does it affect my sleep. If it has an ill effect, or no affect at all, get rid of it and try something else.

Because I’m lazy and fascinated with all things hi tech, I’ve taken the data gathering and “what if” scenarios and found them combined all together in the Zeo Sleep Manager system ($100). It has online tools that let you graph most everything, and provides you with a much more accurate measurement of your actual sleep than you could ever measure yourself. Highly recommended.

In the end, using this log-analyze-experiment-repeat process, I have made some conclusions about my sleep that sufferers near to me haven’t even come close to – and they’ve had insomnia years longer than me.

Seems a waste…..

Posted by Doug at BuildBetterSleep.com

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