You are not Don Draper

If it’s OK in your office to do your job slightly wasted every day, you’ve got a couch you can crash on in the afternoon, and a full-time secretary to keep people from disturbing you; Go have a scotch and have an extra measure for me. If you have to think for a living on the other hand…

How much sleep did you get last night?

Raise your hand if you got 7 hours or less of sleep last night. How about 6 or less? Keep your hand up if that’s normal for you. Those of you with your hands still raised are operating at a level equivalent to being legally drunk. This is also true if you got no sleep last night and have been up for 24 hours or more.^{1 2}

Ok, so you’re tired. How bad can it be? Feel “fine”? That’s normal too. Sleep Deprivation hits different parts of your brain harder than others. The reason might be that your decision making “Executive Functions” are hit harder by sleep deprivation than other systems like working memory, language, or motor function. “Sleep deprivation was associated with less effective executive functioning, without affecting the working memory subsystem, or psychomotor vigilance.”³ using an evaluation test designed to test people with frontal lobe brain injury. You might actually be able to do your job with a railroad spike in your head Phineas Gage style but, you’re probably not making the best decisions.

Sleep deprivation doesn’t only effect your cognitive abilities. It’s related to weight gain, heart disease, and even changes gene expression.⁴ Yes your sleep deprivation is altering you at a genetic level and not for the better.⁵ When you are sleep deprived you’re more likely to crave sugar and carbs.⁶ As I mentioned in a previous post studies have shown a taxed executive functions are going to make it far harder to resist chocolate cake and reach for the health food instead. This could be why your co-workers keep bringing doughnuts into the office and you keep eating them.

You’re not irresponsible. You have the best intentions. The rest of your office has probably gotten no more sleep than you have. 1.35 million traffic accidents are caused by sleep deprivation each year.⁷ Sleep deprivation is endemic to American society. In some sub-cultures like tech and startups sleep deprivation is seen as a badge of honor. I’ve personally heard co-workers brag about how little sleep they’ve gotten and I bet you have too.

The answer is both simple and obvious.

Get more and better sleep.

That’s all well and good but, how do you do that? The following are some tips that I have personally vetted. There are many more some are easier to use than others.

Set an alarm

Not an alarm to wake you up. Ditch that one if you can. Set an alarm to go off an hour before you go to bed. When that alarm goes off try and reduce the number of things that produce blue light. Light at or near 460nm is your enemy at this time.⁸ Sources of blue light include (unfortunately) computer, television, and phone monitors/screens as well as many compact florescent lightbulbs. Also, setting a consistent alarm automagically means a consistent bed time. I may not always get into bed exacly 1 hour after my alarm goes off but, I don’t end up in the situation where it’s 2am and I didn’t realize it because I was reading or coding or some other engrossing activity.

White noise

Your brain is trying to keep you alive. In the interests of keeping you alive your brain can pull you out of sleep if sufficent noise is detected this is the principle that smoke detectors work (and save lives) on. You can awakened or “aroused” (not like that) during the course of the night multiple times when the sound stimulus is enough to highten your awareness but not enough to warrant a full blown reaction from you. That sucks for sleep quality. Sleeping with white noise machine or even just a constant noise like a fan can raise the threshold⁹ of what wakes you up and what your brain safely ignores allowing you to get better quality sleep.

Chill out

Optimal sleep temperature will vary from person to person and largely based on what you wear to bed and how many blankets you use. This overlooked factor can have as much impact on your sleep quality as noise¹⁰. The best temperature is probably lower than you expect. If you’re going totally commando including no blankets 86° is fine but, if you’re wearing clothes or sleeping under bedding you want a temperature somewhere in the low to mid 60s. A programmable thermostat is really useful here. Jumping out of bed first thing in the morning to a room that is 60° is about as un-fun as you would expect. A programmable thermostat allows you bring the temperature up just before your wake time so that waking up and getting out of bed is more comfortable. There are even products designed to help you stay close to your ideal sleeping temperature

One other bonus tip about waking up: Fake dawn

If you’re camping or living in the paleolithic era your major signal to go to and to wake up are governed by sunset and sunrise (and your age). The previous tip effectively took care of a fake sunset. The blue light went away and that signals our brain to go to bed. To signal our brain to wake up we want to reintroduce the blue light. Simply put a lamp next to your bed with a “daylight” bulb in it and put that lamp on a timer to turn the light on around the time you need to wake up. You now control the dawn and the dusk or at least the primitive parts of your brain think so. Faking dawn can make you feel less sleepy on waking¹¹