I've listened to spoken word stuff (podcasts, audiobooks) for a few years now and found it cured my insomnia 100%. I realized I'm a verbal thinker who struggles to think properly when other people are speaking and listening to speech sends me to sleep fast. I don't even need boring stuff though, I work my way through audiobooks about 5-10 minutes a night :-)
Yeah, I would definitely recommend people to try more interesting or even active stuff first. My most effective sleeping aid is a Spanish language learning audio course that's just a little below my level. I get 15 minutes of solid learning/review out of it, and then doze off.
There's plenty of great music that can be used for this purpose as well. Put on The Pearl by Harold Budd and Brian Eno. You can thank me when you wake up.
I'm a big fan of Aphex Twin, but I've never been able to listen his Selected Ambient Works II without falling to sleep. It's amazingly beautiful music, but I always just fall asleep and don't remember what kind of music the album has after the fourth track. Maybe this was Richard's original idea...
The article somewhat misses the point about the Sleep with Me podcast: it's not boring content; it is boring by design.
Drew Ackerman has a keen understanding of cadence, stream of consciousness, and knowing his audience that allows him to craft an efficient insomnia assassin. You want to follow him down the rabbit hole and see where he goes with it, and by the time your brain realizes it hasn't been thinking about that big presentation you have tomorrow, you're already asleep. If you happen to jolt awake, you struggle to figure out how long it has been...and you are out like a light again.
Boring content simply gets tuned out quickly, and you are back to your racing thoughts. Boring content doesn't entice you to try and stay with it, and that is why this hasn't worked before.
Sleep with Me is an absolute gem and I feel like it's just beginning to scratch the surface of how technology can help us rest instead of distracting us from sleep like it has done so much up to this point.
"The article somewhat misses the point about the Sleep with Me podcast: it's not boring content; it is boring by design."
I have not yet tried the Sleep with Me podcast, but based on what I've read, it is its "by design" part that got me more interested in trying the author's methods.
I could instantly relate when I read that "I need to convince myself that I’m doing something meaningful in order to finally disengage". Many people go to bed with a feeling of not deserving their rest, of having a debt to themselves because they missed opportunities or procrastinated heavily during the day, a debt that can be repaid by using their last minutes of the day to do something meaningful to compensate for the wasted time. Presidential speeches, old radio shows, financial crisis analysis, all these create the illusion that you take full advantage of your time, keeping your brain active and broadening your knowledge. Them being boring is an added bonus.
On the other hand, actively trying to get myself bored would most probably get me anxious, wondering exactly how wisely I am spending my time, which is not really what you want when trying to fall asleep.
I think the point is it has to be interesting enough to keep you preoccupied, but not interesting enough to keep you awake.
I sleep to old Simpsons episodes. I know them inside out, and at least the older ones have a fairly calm rhythm. I don't need to pay attention because I know what is happening but it still distracts me from all the kinds of thoughts you mention. I love the episodes, so I don't feel like I'm wasting my time.
I discovered a few years back that chess instructional videos knock me out immediately. I used to play competitively and am genuinely interested, but have never, not even once, survived an entire 20-30min video--usually Alex Yermolinsky and his fantastic accent in the "Every Russian Schoolboy Knows" series on the internet chess club.
I struggle with going to sleep and have tried myriad methods of falling asleep. One of the best ways was to plug in my iPhone headphones and listen to a documentary on Iplayer or TED.
However several months later a huge problem occurred. Both my ears were infected, left moreso than the right, that caused me a great deal of irritation and pain. Many months of visiting doctors, hospitals and medicine did this horrible problem get better.
Bear this in mind even though I was using dettol wipes to disinfect my headphones daily!
I just got the Trekz Titanium, put them on my head backwards for the first time last night. Works great. Nothing in the ear – wireless so no cords to get tangled up in. Super flexible so I'm not afraid of breaking them.
I recently discovered that I can easily fall asleep to two types of Youtube videos: a) videos about the lore of Warhammer 40K and b) a random episode of Jay Leno's Garage. Both will put me to sleep in 10-15 minutes even if I am extremely stressed.
My favorite YouTube channel for getting to sleep lately is "Mr. Carlson's Lab". Soothing voice, no music and long-winded explanations on electronics repair seems to work pretty well.
Only saw one other mention of this, but ASMR[0] videos are often helpful to promote sleepiness, in addition to the pleasurable feeling they give some people.
Here's a good example of one I've found that has helped me to fall asleep [1].
> In 2016 it is a normal thing to go to bed with earphones in your ears
Huh? Does anyone else find doing so completely impossible?
I start to feel kinda claustrophobic when i'm in headphones - not being able to hear the world around me leads to the "fire, burglars, plane crash, doomsday" kind of anxiety.
I'm much more terrified of rolling around during my sleep, wrapping the headphones around my neck, and suffocating myself.
I move around a lot during my sleep, mostly to roll to one side or the other and get comfortable again. I don't trust a dangling wire. I could probably do wireless earbuds, but I'm not made of money; a simple speaker would work fine.
Then again, I don't find audio to be a big issue for me, but rather light. I installed blackout curtains in my room, and immediately found that I could more consistently stay asleep for 7.5 hours without any trouble. Distracting audio is a problem, but the low drone from my air conditioner is usually more than enough to help me zone out for the day.
It was less suffocation, and more pulling off the phone along with everything else in its path on the nightstand for me. :) I also found it uncomfortable how the pillow pushes on the earbuds at times.
I usually put the phone to a very low volume instead, and place it either face down or propped up against something, to get more direct sound from the speaker at the bottom.
Lately, I've been listening to a lot of audiobooks, mainly at bedtime. I've found that using a 30 minute sleep timer is ideal to fall asleep. It doesn't require that the audiobook be boring. The advantage of this is that I'm not wasting the time listening to waves, white noise, a droning voice or whatever. I'm catching up on works of fiction that I don't have time to read otherwise, but wish I did.
The only downside is that out of those 30 minutes, I might remember 30, 10, or nothing. It all depends. So I spend a lot of time seeking backwards trying to figure out if I remember hearing that bit, made more difficult by trying to avoid accidental spoilers.
I just finished Crime and Punishment using the 30 minute method. I ended up having to back up 20-25 minute each time - took a long time to finish the book! (I listened to the last few chapters during the day to make sure I heard the entire conclusion.)
Drone Zone by Somafm is a great radio station for this. Good to save some for offline listening though so you're not sucking their bandwidth unnecessarily
There are some brilliant ideas here (many made me smile), and I don't struggle with insomnia per se. But I have found meditation before sleep really gives a lot back in quality of sleep, and quality of life.
I'm a complete novice at meditation, so I simply follow along with instructions specific for sleeping from apps like Buddhify.
Of course this is nothing revolutionary, but I highly recommend trying it for anyone going to sleep with a lump of stress in their chest or stomach at night. :)
44 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 103 ms ] threadI've listened to spoken word stuff (podcasts, audiobooks) for a few years now and found it cured my insomnia 100%. I realized I'm a verbal thinker who struggles to think properly when other people are speaking and listening to speech sends me to sleep fast. I don't even need boring stuff though, I work my way through audiobooks about 5-10 minutes a night :-)
Teaching Company audio courses are great too.
Drew Ackerman has a keen understanding of cadence, stream of consciousness, and knowing his audience that allows him to craft an efficient insomnia assassin. You want to follow him down the rabbit hole and see where he goes with it, and by the time your brain realizes it hasn't been thinking about that big presentation you have tomorrow, you're already asleep. If you happen to jolt awake, you struggle to figure out how long it has been...and you are out like a light again.
Boring content simply gets tuned out quickly, and you are back to your racing thoughts. Boring content doesn't entice you to try and stay with it, and that is why this hasn't worked before.
Sleep with Me is an absolute gem and I feel like it's just beginning to scratch the surface of how technology can help us rest instead of distracting us from sleep like it has done so much up to this point.
I could instantly relate when I read that "I need to convince myself that I’m doing something meaningful in order to finally disengage". Many people go to bed with a feeling of not deserving their rest, of having a debt to themselves because they missed opportunities or procrastinated heavily during the day, a debt that can be repaid by using their last minutes of the day to do something meaningful to compensate for the wasted time. Presidential speeches, old radio shows, financial crisis analysis, all these create the illusion that you take full advantage of your time, keeping your brain active and broadening your knowledge. Them being boring is an added bonus.
On the other hand, actively trying to get myself bored would most probably get me anxious, wondering exactly how wisely I am spending my time, which is not really what you want when trying to fall asleep.
I sleep to old Simpsons episodes. I know them inside out, and at least the older ones have a fairly calm rhythm. I don't need to pay attention because I know what is happening but it still distracts me from all the kinds of thoughts you mention. I love the episodes, so I don't feel like I'm wasting my time.
However several months later a huge problem occurred. Both my ears were infected, left moreso than the right, that caused me a great deal of irritation and pain. Many months of visiting doctors, hospitals and medicine did this horrible problem get better.
Bear this in mind even though I was using dettol wipes to disinfect my headphones daily!
http://www.deutschegrammophon.com/en/cat/4795267
Here's a good example of one I've found that has helped me to fall asleep [1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autonomous_sensory_meridian_re...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRcdrgPA5wI
https://www.reddit.com/r/asmr/comments/26mqkp/meta_the_100_m...
There is a newer version of this list, but I can't find it.
Huh? Does anyone else find doing so completely impossible?
I start to feel kinda claustrophobic when i'm in headphones - not being able to hear the world around me leads to the "fire, burglars, plane crash, doomsday" kind of anxiety.
I move around a lot during my sleep, mostly to roll to one side or the other and get comfortable again. I don't trust a dangling wire. I could probably do wireless earbuds, but I'm not made of money; a simple speaker would work fine.
Then again, I don't find audio to be a big issue for me, but rather light. I installed blackout curtains in my room, and immediately found that I could more consistently stay asleep for 7.5 hours without any trouble. Distracting audio is a problem, but the low drone from my air conditioner is usually more than enough to help me zone out for the day.
I usually put the phone to a very low volume instead, and place it either face down or propped up against something, to get more direct sound from the speaker at the bottom.
The only downside is that out of those 30 minutes, I might remember 30, 10, or nothing. It all depends. So I spend a lot of time seeking backwards trying to figure out if I remember hearing that bit, made more difficult by trying to avoid accidental spoilers.
Maybe that's why people are having a hard time going to sleep in the first place. Do you have to be productive even while falling asleep?
Also, do you have dreams from the audiobook story? I was doing this for a while but had to stop due to nightmares.
My technique is simple. I listen only to things I have already listened to in a fully waking context. No surprises, no excitement.
Spoken word only. Nothing with music or sound effects.
I hope to take a year off sometime and kick this habit.
I think it usually follows "Book at Bedtime" [2], but that's less soporific.
[1] Example: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b07gct6w (works for me outside the UK). As an additional treat, if you listen to the end and through the national anthem, you'll hear the "time pips" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwich_Time_Signal
[2] http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qtlx
Of course this is nothing revolutionary, but I highly recommend trying it for anyone going to sleep with a lump of stress in their chest or stomach at night. :)