- Right. So sleep is pretty weird.
Evolutionarily, sleep is a ridiculously stupid thing
because we're out cold for eight hours
where any predator could come and kill us
while we're completely defenceless.
But for some reason,
God/evolution has decided
that these risks are totally worth it
and that the benefits of sleep far outweigh being blind
and defenceless for a third of our lives.
So clearly sleep is important,
but I'd never really given much thought
about how to sleep better and more productively,
until I read Matthew Walker's fantastic book,
"Why We Sleep".
And so in this episode of Book Club,
we're gonna talk through the key lessons
from the book, "Why We Sleep"
and if you stick around till the end of the video,
you will hear the 12 quick evidence-based tips
on how to sleep better
that you can start applying to your life immediately.
Let's go.
Section one on why we should sleep better.
So, before we talk about
how to actually sleep productively,
we need to be sold on why
sleeping better is actually important.
Firstly, one of the key points is that,
we all actually kinda need more sleep.
There is apparently this epidemic of like,
you know, people not sleeping eight hours a day
and there's all this stuff around,
oh, I'll sleep when I'm dead
and I only need six hours of sleep every night
to function perfectly fine.
But as our friend Matthew talks about in the book,
there is a tonne of evidence allegedly
that shows that if you sleep,
chronically sleep for less than eight hours a day,
you're screwing yourself in various domains of life.
Yes, apparently there are people who can sleep
for less than six hours each night
and function completely fine without any issues,
but those are less than 1% of the population.
And so if you think you're in that camp,
I certainly am not,
we are probably not in that 1%.
Secondly, even if we do feel that we're all right
when we get six hours or seven hours of sleep,
apparently, the evidence shows that we are pretty bad
at assessing our own performance and function
while we're sleep deprived.
And so, we're sleep deprived, but we think,
oh, I'm totally fine.
It's like when you're heartbroken but you think,
oh, I'm totally fine,
but you're actually not deep down.
It's the same thing with sleep.
So that's why we should sleep for eight hours a day.
But if we don't sleep for eight hours a day,
we can get all sorts of issues further down the line.
For example, Matthew says in the book that,
routinely sleeping less than six or seven hours a night,
demolish us your immune system
more than doubling your risk of cancer.
And he talks about how sleep deprivation is associated
with other very bad things including;
general higher mortality,
heart disease,
weight gain,
infection rate,
and even Alzheimer's disease.
Secondly, if we get less than
eight hours a day of sleep repeatedly,
apparently that also reduces our performance,
lowers our productivity,
our social fluidity
our rational decision-making,
memory recall,
emotional control,
and even our testosterone levels load.
In fact, he says that after 10 days
of just seven hours of sleep,
the brain is as dysfunctional as it would be
after going without sleep for 24 hours.
So imagine what it feels...
how grim it feels to not sleeping for 24 hours.
Like that is what we're like,
if we sleep seven hours,
10 days in a row.
There's also a lot of evidence
about how lack of sleep is associated
with reduced creativity in various forms.
And as an aside,
I wanna link in the video description to a blog post
written by this chap called Alexey Guzey,
which actually apparently shows that Matthew Walker's book,
"Why We Sleep" is riddled with scientific errors
and inaccuracies and stuff.
Interesting blog posts.
I'd suggest reading the book
or reading a summary of the book
and then reading the blog post.
And then you can see like what kind of issues
he's taking with all the evidence in the book.
But I mean, it's a best seller.
It's doing very well.
I feel like my life has improved,
when I follow the advice in the book, "Why We Sleep"
and so, even if some of it might not be entirely legit
according to this Alexey Guzey guy,
I still think it's pretty much worth following.
And if you're interested in finding out
what Matthew says in the book,
but you can't be bothered to actually read the book
or you've read the book and you want a quick summary,
100% I would recommend using Shortform,
shortform.com
and we've got an affiliate link in the video description.
They're not sponsoring the video,
but it's genuinely my favourite way of all time
to read summaries of books.
And so, I read this properly once
and then when I need to revisit the issues from it
or the points from it,
I just read the Shortform summary,
'cause the Shortform summary is really good.
They have a fantastic,
like one pager of basically the whole book in one page.
And then they break down each chapter
and just give you the core salient points.
And it's also kinda cool
because they cross reference it
with other books in the Shortform library
so you can see,
oh, Matthew Walker makes this point here
and that's similar to a point
that Ryan Holiday makes in this book over here
or things like that, which is all kinda cool.
If you like that kind of thing,
hit the link in the video description.
It's an affiliate link,
so I get a little bit of a kickback
but no, they're not paying me to say this.
They're not sponsoring this video.
Like genuinely, 100% solid recommendation
you should definitely check it out.
Section two,
how can we sleep better?
Let's now talk about the 12 practical things
we can do right now to make ourselves
sleep better immediately.
Rule number one, set a sleep schedule
and try and sleep and wake up
at the same time every day.
Don't sleep procrastinate.
This is something I do a lot.
I'm trying to get better at it.
And don't think that if it's a weekend,
you should be able to sleep in
because that makes it even harder
to wake up on a Monday morning.
And if you have like a job that you don't like,
it makes Monday mornings even more grim.
Secondly, don't use alarms if you can help it.
Alarms apparently caused a huge stress response when we wake
and we can all relate to that feeling of that,
annoying iPhone alarm
and like the worst sound in the world.
That apparently actually has a measurable
increase in our stress levels.
And even worse if we snooze our alarms,
we get that repeated stress trauma every single morning.
Rule three, wake up with the sun
or use very bright lights.
This helps set our circadian rhythm
and helps tell our body clock
or internal body clock that,
oh, it's the daytime therefore I'm gonna be awake.
Rule four, avoid all caffeine
and nicotine completely if at all possible.
But if you have to have caffeine, like I do,
like I cannot wake up in the morning without caffeine,
then we should stop having it
at least 10 hours before sleeping.
And so I have a rule for myself
that I'm not allowed to have caffeine after 2:00 PM,
because I know it's gonna affect my sleep.
Sometimes I still have it.
Sometimes I still have a diet Coke
with caffeine in it in the evenings
through the McDonald's drive-through
and I always regret it afterwards
'cause then I always struggle to get to sleep.
Rule five, exercise regularly,
because exercising regularly helps with our sleep
and this is generally good for us.
But we generally want to avoid exercising
within three hours of the time that we're gonna go to bed.
Rule six, don't nap after 3:00 PM.
Naps are pretty good for us
but if we nap after 3:00 PM,
it makes it apparently harder to sleep properly at night.
I'm not much of a napper myself,
but it's something I'm gonna start experimenting with
in the near future.
So we'll see how that goes.
Rule seven, don't drink alcohol
until it's completely metabolised
by the time you sleep.
Apparently alcohol is one of the most powerful suppressors
of REM, rapid eye movement sleep,
which is like one of the important aspects of sleep.
And if you have it any reasonable amount of time before bed,
it's definitely gonna affect your sleep.
And there's a nice quote here where he says,
the politically incorrect advice
I would of course never give is this,
go to the pub for a drink in the morning.
That way, the alcohol will be out of your system
before sleep.
And then he's like, lol, I was kind of joking/not joking.
But he says that nightly alcohol will disrupt your sleep
and the annoying advice of abstinence is the best
and most honest I can offer.
Basically what he's saying is,
don't drink alcohol at all.
I don't drink alcohol at all.
I think it's great.
It's got plenty of health reasons
for not drinking alcohol.
One of which is that it's absolutely terrible
for our asleep.
Rule number eight, avoid large meals and drinks at night.
If we eat a large meal before sleeping,
it does make us feel slightly sleep here, sleep here,
but apparently it does affect the quality of our sleep.
And so, generally the advice is that,
the biggest meal of the day should be lunch
and then dinner should be a less like denture meal
because you know, if we want our sleep to be good,
which means that suddenly my McDonald's drive through
take-aways at 12 o'clock midnight,
are probably not a good idea.
Rule number nine, reduce lights before sleep.
Blue light in particular is the most harmful.
And so what I've got is Phillips Hue light bulbs
around the living room
and I set all the lights to have this warm yellow glows
to avoid the blue light at nighttime.
I still don't do this fully properly
because I still have like blue lights
from like my devices and phone and stuff.
And I use apps like f.lux and a Night Shift,
to help reduce the blue light.
But even so,
it's not completely ideal.
And instead of using devices he says that,
a relaxing activity such as reading
or listening to music,
should be part of your bedtime ritual.
Isn't that cute?
Rule number 10,
cool your body temperature before sleeping.
The ideal temperature for sleeping is 65 degrees Fahrenheit,
which is 18.3 degrees Celsius,
which is actually pretty cold.
And so these days when I sleep,
I literally have a fan under the open window
to try and get the temperature down
to that 18 degrees number.
And whenever I'm in a hotel or something,
I always set the air conditioning
like way down to 18 degrees.
And it makes them room feel very cold,
but then when you're in bed in like pyjamas
or scrubs like I sleep in,
it's like a little blanket.
It does feel very nice
And I like anecdotally,
I find that my sleep is much better
when I'm in a cold room
than when I'm in a slightly warmer room.
And if I'm in a really warm room,
there's just no way I can sleep in those conditions.
Rule number 11, don't rely on sleeping pills.
Those are generally bad
and they don't really help with our sleep
instead they put us into a state of sedation,
which isn't the same as sleep.
And so we don't get the benefits of sleep itself
if we're using sleeping pills a lot.
And finally rule number 10 is,
don't lie in bed awake,
trying to fall asleep for more than 20 minutes.
And this is something that I used to struggle with a lot
before I started taking care of my sleep.
Well, I'd be lying awake in bed for absolutely ages
being like, oh, why am I not sleeping?
And what he says in the book is that,
when we're in that mode
of trying to talk ourselves into sleeping,
that is actually increasing our stress and anxiety levels,
which paradoxically makes it even harder to fall asleep.
Instead, he says that if you're struggling to fall asleep,
and if you haven't been able to for more than 20 minutes,
then just get up out of bed and do something,
do an activity,
or something or other until you feel sleepy.
The way I've interpreted this advice
would maybe isn't entirely legit.
As I would just read bed,
until I feel my eyes literally start to close
and then I will drop the candle onto the floor,
take off my glasses,
chuck them across the room
and then just hit the sack.
And I've never found that to not be effective in sleeping,
unless I've been reading a particularly fantastic book
by like Brandon Sanderson
or something has been keeping me up
until four o'clock in the morning
'cause it's just that good.
So that was an overview of Matthew Walker's book,
"Why We Sleep".
You should definitely check out the Shortform book summary,
along with these other books
that they've got summaries of on Shortform,
there's a really good link in the video description.
And if you wanna hear my personal take on the book
and how I incorporate the advice,
check out this video over here,
which says, Why I'm Never Tired
which has a slightly clickbaity title,
but it's actually kind of true
and people have been finding that video pretty helpful.
Thank you so much for watching.
Have a great day and I'll see you in the next video.
Bye bye.