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Excerpt from Shut Up Colin! - Out this summer.
"Your future depends on your dreams, so go to sleep."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The New York rapper Nasty Nas, famously declared, “I never sleep, coz sleep is the cousin of death.”
While sleep’s familial relationship to death may well be a philosophical truism and the line itself works as a stone-cold bar in Nas’s song, 'New York State of Mind'. Unfortunately, the reality is we all need sleep.
Good regular sleep will keep your immune system functioning properly, allow the brain to replenish and clean itself, promote muscle growth, and good digestion, the list of benefits from getting a good night’s sleep, night after night, is exhaustive.
But here’s the thing, Colin’s influence over you increases vastly when you are sleep-deprived, so it could be argued that Colin doesn’t need, or even want you to have a good nourishing sleep every night. Megan on the other hand, loves the stuff. You can look at sleep as one of those fees you have to pay to Megan because, without sleep, Colin can easily bully her into submission. Then it’s just you and Colin.
Although you don’t need scientific research to tell you, that getting quality sleep is vital to your well-being, you have experienced before the ill effects of not getting enough sleep. You already know being too tired in the daytime is a recipe for a cranky and unfocused day; it is so much easier to justify a day off when you should be working, after a poor night’s sleep. This is why Colin uses sleep - or rather lack of it - as a weapon against you and your ongoing quest.
Colin can wield this weapon anytime he wants and often does, Colin can make it seem like a good idea to stay up playing a computer game till three in the morning, rather than just going to bed. Or if you have beaten computer game addiction, he’ll make you think you’re being productive by suggesting you work on your Hard Task till the small hours of the morning.
He doesn’t even have to get you to stay up past your bedtime, after work he might suggest watching that action movie you’ve been saving, thus in your overstimulated state, you’ll find it harder to fall asleep at your regular time.
The way to stop Colin from using sleep against you wraps right back around to our discussion about Colin and rewards. For example, let’s imagine a scenario which has played out for many people, including, I’m sure, yourself.
“Man you’ve worked hard today, you can’t go straight to bed, you need to unwind.”
“Hmm, I do feel a bit wired.”
“Exactly, just do some mindless messing about on Twitter, or how about some YouTube?”
Whatever excuse Colin uses on you, it will inevitably lead you to stay up past the point you should, which puts you in a situation the next morning whereby you don’t feel like getting out of bed. Perhaps you force yourself to just get on with it, maybe you even manage your morning routine, but at some point, you hear Colin’s voice.
“Phew! You’re really struggling this morning.”
“I am.”
“Maybe you should go back to bed for a little bit. Just an hour’s power nap.”
“No, I can’t, I’ll be fine after a coffee.”
You ignore Colin for now, get some caffeine inside you and soldier on, but either the coffee doesn’t really help, or the boost it gives is all too fleeting and now you’ve crashed back down to a place lower than when you woke up.
“I can see you’re experiencing a lot of brain fog.”
“I just can’t think today.”
“Look, you’ve been working hard lately. You’ve been super disciplined about your cold plunges, your exercise and meditation. You’re not a monk, relax for one day, take the day off.”
“Okay, back on it tomorrow though.”
“Sure thing buddy, back with a vengeance!”
The problem with this scenario, is by the time you get around to your bedtime if you listened to Colin and took a nap for an hour or two, you don’t feel as tired as you should.
“Watch that movie on Netflix, that will put you to sleep.”
Sound familiar?
This scenario plays out time and time again in the lives of procrastinators and self-saboteurs, the excuses sometimes vary, sometimes not; however, the result is always the same.
There is no escaping it, if you are responsible for your motivation, especially if you haven’t got the structure of a regular nine-to-five supplementing your creative endeavours, you must without fail, get a good night’s sleep every weeknight and most weekends. If you do not, you are weakening Megan and allowing Colin to later use that lack of sleep against you.
But stuff happens on the weekend and I need a social life!
Indeed you do and I’m not asking you to join the order of Franciscan Monks and give up all activities not relating to sustaining yourself and engaging in your Hard Task. However, you must realise the large and important role sleep plays in your general performance.
Okay, so how do I find that balance?
The only way is to engage in a regular sleep plan, whilst using a couple of simple tools to help you implement and stick to it.
The first thing you need to do is to signal to Colin the message that you’ll be asleep soon. You can do this in a variety of ways, but if you are the sort of person who spends time on your computer and/or smartphone before bedtime, you need to start using the night light feature on your phone and computer.
Most Android phones have one by default these days, if not you can download one, Microsoft have one built into their operating system and I’m sure Apple does too; you can set your screen to slightly dim and change colour to a warmer yellow at a certain time of the evening.
The reason we do this is because our body clocks still function anciently, when it is light we are awake, when it is night, we are asleep. The light emitted from your phone and computer devices is close in colour temperature to daylight, hence we are confusing our body clocks by using them at night.
This is why shift work plays havoc with our bodies and most companies that require night-shift work, will not usually allow it for more than one or two weeks at a time.
The next step if you’re a phone/computer user before bed, is to stop using it right up to the moment you decide to go to bed.
Ideally, you don’t use any electronics for at least an hour before bed, but chances are you’ll have to build up to that if you’re an addict (or if your work urgently - and I really do mean urgently - requires you to be online late at night).
The best way to minimise the time you spend browsing, is to swap it for good old-fashioned reading, remembering to adjust the light settings on your reading device if you’re not using a paper book - which I highly recommend you do.
So each night at, or around (within twenty minutes of) the same time, you will say to yourself, “I’m winding down for bed now.”
Once you’ve completed your minimum ten minutes of reading, say, “Time for sleep, I’m going to bed now.”
Now you’re in bed and seemingly can’t sleep, the key is to accept it and relax using the box breathing techniques we touched upon in Colin & Breathing.
First make sure you’re breathing in and out through your nose, allow yourself to settle into a comfortable breathing pattern, then gently transition to box breathing, whereby you periodically inhale, hold, exhale, hold. If you’re not used to this type of breathing, keep your breaths and holds to a minimum of three seconds or so. If you find yourself getting short of breath, inhale deeply and resume a normal breathing pattern.
Another trick to falling asleep easily is to relax your facial muscles.
By the time I get into bed, my face is naturally relaxed anyway.
You’d be surprised how much natural tension you hold in your facial muscles. If you find it difficult to just relax, then tighten the muscles by raising your eyebrows as high as they can go and grimacing. Do this for five seconds or so then relax and feel the tension ebbing away from your facial muscles. I often find this is enough to easily put me to sleep without any box breathing.
Notice I said easily and not quickly, sometimes they mean the same thing and other times, you might not be fully asleep within a few minutes; however, your face and body aren’t holding excess tension, and your breathing (preferably through your nose) is even and whilst you may turn over once or twice, you are not fidgeting.
So remind me again why we’re talking about sleep.
Because to put it bluntly, depriving yourself of sleep is a form of self-sabotage and to make it worse, it’s one you can’t even see. If procrastination is like a self-sabotage hand grenade, then sleep deprivation is like a few molecules of poison delivered on a train, via the tip of a spy’s umbrella.
We can get by on minimal sleep if we have to, so much so it is easy to fall into a pattern of going to bed way after midnight, getting up before seven the next morning, and just getting on with our day.
The problem is, if you fall into such patterns your performance gets a little worse each day. At first, you don’t notice anything and you marvel at your ability to achieve so much on so little sleep.
Eventually, your lack of sleep catches up with you in the form of feelings of lack of motivation and frustration. Your Hard Task becomes harder and before long you abandon it and later still, you wonder how you managed to sabotage yourself once again.
What about if I go to bed late but just wake up later?
Studies have shown that if you go to bed at a regular time each night, the various nourishing stages of sleep also happen at the same time. So for the first hour, your brain is repairing minute damage and is flushing out potentially harmful chemicals which build up over the course of a day, this is also the point at which muscle growth is triggered thus maximising muscle gains from your workout that day. After this period you slip into deep sleep, followed by REM sleep and lastly back to deep sleep.
Unfortunately for you and the rest of the human race, this cycle does not shift to the right with you. So if you're usual bedtime is eleven O'clock, if you go to bed at twelve thirty, then you have missed that first 'cleansing' hour and you can't get it till the next day. This sheds a whole new light on the term 'Catching up on some sleep', you really are only catching up when you go to bed the next night at your normal time. Or you make sure after a heavy weekend, that you go to bed at your regular time for a minimum of the first three nights of the week. If you don't do this, you are slowly self-sabotaging and at some point it will effect your performance and behaviour.
Sleep may indeed be the cousin of death, but it’s the nice friendly cousin who invites you to stay over and nap on the couch; he then feeds you a hearty meal before sending you on your way much energised.
"Your future depends on your dreams, so go to sleep."
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
The New York rapper Nasty Nas, famously declared, “I never sleep, coz sleep is the cousin of death.”
While sleep’s familial relationship to death may well be a philosophical truism and the line itself works as a stone-cold bar in Nas’s song, 'New York State of Mind'. Unfortunately, the reality is we all need sleep.
Good regular sleep will keep your immune system functioning properly, allow the brain to replenish and clean itself, promote muscle growth, and good digestion, the list of benefits from getting a good night’s sleep, night after night, is exhaustive.
But here’s the thing, Colin’s influence over you increases vastly when you are sleep-deprived, so it could be argued that Colin doesn’t need, or even want you to have a good nourishing sleep every night. Megan on the other hand, loves the stuff. You can look at sleep as one of those fees you have to pay to Megan because, without sleep, Colin can easily bully her into submission. Then it’s just you and Colin.
Although you don’t need scientific research to tell you, that getting quality sleep is vital to your well-being, you have experienced before the ill effects of not getting enough sleep. You already know being too tired in the daytime is a recipe for a cranky and unfocused day; it is so much easier to justify a day off when you should be working, after a poor night’s sleep. This is why Colin uses sleep - or rather lack of it - as a weapon against you and your ongoing quest.
Colin can wield this weapon anytime he wants and often does, Colin can make it seem like a good idea to stay up playing a computer game till three in the morning, rather than just going to bed. Or if you have beaten computer game addiction, he’ll make you think you’re being productive by suggesting you work on your Hard Task till the small hours of the morning.
He doesn’t even have to get you to stay up past your bedtime, after work he might suggest watching that action movie you’ve been saving, thus in your overstimulated state, you’ll find it harder to fall asleep at your regular time.
The way to stop Colin from using sleep against you wraps right back around to our discussion about Colin and rewards. For example, let’s imagine a scenario which has played out for many people, including, I’m sure, yourself.
“Man you’ve worked hard today, you can’t go straight to bed, you need to unwind.”
“Hmm, I do feel a bit wired.”
“Exactly, just do some mindless messing about on Twitter, or how about some YouTube?”
Whatever excuse Colin uses on you, it will inevitably lead you to stay up past the point you should, which puts you in a situation the next morning whereby you don’t feel like getting out of bed. Perhaps you force yourself to just get on with it, maybe you even manage your morning routine, but at some point, you hear Colin’s voice.
“Phew! You’re really struggling this morning.”
“I am.”
“Maybe you should go back to bed for a little bit. Just an hour’s power nap.”
“No, I can’t, I’ll be fine after a coffee.”
You ignore Colin for now, get some caffeine inside you and soldier on, but either the coffee doesn’t really help, or the boost it gives is all too fleeting and now you’ve crashed back down to a place lower than when you woke up.
“I can see you’re experiencing a lot of brain fog.”
“I just can’t think today.”
“Look, you’ve been working hard lately. You’ve been super disciplined about your cold plunges, your exercise and meditation. You’re not a monk, relax for one day, take the day off.”
“Okay, back on it tomorrow though.”
“Sure thing buddy, back with a vengeance!”
The problem with this scenario, is by the time you get around to your bedtime if you listened to Colin and took a nap for an hour or two, you don’t feel as tired as you should.
“Watch that movie on Netflix, that will put you to sleep.”
Sound familiar?
This scenario plays out time and time again in the lives of procrastinators and self-saboteurs, the excuses sometimes vary, sometimes not; however, the result is always the same.
There is no escaping it, if you are responsible for your motivation, especially if you haven’t got the structure of a regular nine-to-five supplementing your creative endeavours, you must without fail, get a good night’s sleep every weeknight and most weekends. If you do not, you are weakening Megan and allowing Colin to later use that lack of sleep against you.
But stuff happens on the weekend and I need a social life!
Indeed you do and I’m not asking you to join the order of Franciscan Monks and give up all activities not relating to sustaining yourself and engaging in your Hard Task. However, you must realise the large and important role sleep plays in your general performance.
Okay, so how do I find that balance?
The only way is to engage in a regular sleep plan, whilst using a couple of simple tools to help you implement and stick to it.
The first thing you need to do is to signal to Colin the message that you’ll be asleep soon. You can do this in a variety of ways, but if you are the sort of person who spends time on your computer and/or smartphone before bedtime, you need to start using the night light feature on your phone and computer.
Most Android phones have one by default these days, if not you can download one, Microsoft have one built into their operating system and I’m sure Apple does too; you can set your screen to slightly dim and change colour to a warmer yellow at a certain time of the evening.
The reason we do this is because our body clocks still function anciently, when it is light we are awake, when it is night, we are asleep. The light emitted from your phone and computer devices is close in colour temperature to daylight, hence we are confusing our body clocks by using them at night.
This is why shift work plays havoc with our bodies and most companies that require night-shift work, will not usually allow it for more than one or two weeks at a time.
The next step if you’re a phone/computer user before bed, is to stop using it right up to the moment you decide to go to bed.
Ideally, you don’t use any electronics for at least an hour before bed, but chances are you’ll have to build up to that if you’re an addict (or if your work urgently - and I really do mean urgently - requires you to be online late at night).
The best way to minimise the time you spend browsing, is to swap it for good old-fashioned reading, remembering to adjust the light settings on your reading device if you’re not using a paper book - which I highly recommend you do.
So each night at, or around (within twenty minutes of) the same time, you will say to yourself, “I’m winding down for bed now.”
Once you’ve completed your minimum ten minutes of reading, say, “Time for sleep, I’m going to bed now.”
Now you’re in bed and seemingly can’t sleep, the key is to accept it and relax using the box breathing techniques we touched upon in Colin & Breathing.
First make sure you’re breathing in and out through your nose, allow yourself to settle into a comfortable breathing pattern, then gently transition to box breathing, whereby you periodically inhale, hold, exhale, hold. If you’re not used to this type of breathing, keep your breaths and holds to a minimum of three seconds or so. If you find yourself getting short of breath, inhale deeply and resume a normal breathing pattern.
Another trick to falling asleep easily is to relax your facial muscles.
By the time I get into bed, my face is naturally relaxed anyway.
You’d be surprised how much natural tension you hold in your facial muscles. If you find it difficult to just relax, then tighten the muscles by raising your eyebrows as high as they can go and grimacing. Do this for five seconds or so then relax and feel the tension ebbing away from your facial muscles. I often find this is enough to easily put me to sleep without any box breathing.
Notice I said easily and not quickly, sometimes they mean the same thing and other times, you might not be fully asleep within a few minutes; however, your face and body aren’t holding excess tension, and your breathing (preferably through your nose) is even and whilst you may turn over once or twice, you are not fidgeting.
So remind me again why we’re talking about sleep.
Because to put it bluntly, depriving yourself of sleep is a form of self-sabotage and to make it worse, it’s one you can’t even see. If procrastination is like a self-sabotage hand grenade, then sleep deprivation is like a few molecules of poison delivered on a train, via the tip of a spy’s umbrella.
We can get by on minimal sleep if we have to, so much so it is easy to fall into a pattern of going to bed way after midnight, getting up before seven the next morning, and just getting on with our day.
The problem is, if you fall into such patterns your performance gets a little worse each day. At first, you don’t notice anything and you marvel at your ability to achieve so much on so little sleep.
Eventually, your lack of sleep catches up with you in the form of feelings of lack of motivation and frustration. Your Hard Task becomes harder and before long you abandon it and later still, you wonder how you managed to sabotage yourself once again.
What about if I go to bed late but just wake up later?
Studies have shown that if you go to bed at a regular time each night, the various nourishing stages of sleep also happen at the same time. So for the first hour, your brain is repairing minute damage and is flushing out potentially harmful chemicals which build up over the course of a day, this is also the point at which muscle growth is triggered thus maximising muscle gains from your workout that day. After this period you slip into deep sleep, followed by REM sleep and lastly back to deep sleep.
Unfortunately for you and the rest of the human race, this cycle does not shift to the right with you. So if you're usual bedtime is eleven O'clock, if you go to bed at twelve thirty, then you have missed that first 'cleansing' hour and you can't get it till the next day. This sheds a whole new light on the term 'Catching up on some sleep', you really are only catching up when you go to bed the next night at your normal time. Or you make sure after a heavy weekend, that you go to bed at your regular time for a minimum of the first three nights of the week. If you don't do this, you are slowly self-sabotaging and at some point it will effect your performance and behaviour.
Sleep may indeed be the cousin of death, but it’s the nice friendly cousin who invites you to stay over and nap on the couch; he then feeds you a hearty meal before sending you on your way much energised.
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