Good night of shut-eye proving elusive? Forget wearables – the sound of silence is what you chiefly need.
When I try to explain my insomnia to the blissfully unaffected, my first port of call is invariably the old adage ‘what you focus on expands’.
Imagine the scene: you’ve not had caffeine since 4 pm. You set your phone to airplane mode an hour ago – and limited your screen time beforehand because of that heavily-documented blue light thing – plus you’re certainly tired, both physically and mentally. Every preparation has been made for a good night’s sleep!
A gloriously restful night awaits for sure. This whole shut-eye thing is going to be a doddle. Only, it’s not. As you toss and turn under your carefully chosen sleep-inducing weighted blanket, cogs keep turning.
Dropping off to the land of Nod is a pipe dream. Thoughts resurface. I must remember to buy food for the weekend tomorrow. Am I actually composing the difficult email I put off earlier, now?! Well, I may as well mentally run through that challenging piece of choreography then. Yes, if I do it like that it’ll be awesome – not overthinking is key. Wait, did I remember to file that review for the weekend? And what did my upstairs neighbor mean when they said I wouldn’t have to wait long to see the changes happening around here? I should sleep! I need sleep. Everyone needs sleep! Who else do I know who can’t do this most basic thing?! Even if I get to sleep right now that’s only… not enough. Tomorrow I’ll feel awful once again, with only myself to blame.
Sound familiar? I sympathize – and I think I can help. As a tech journalist, I have readily and eagerly turned to various products claiming to train me into achieving better sleep, including the Sleep Cycle app, the Google Nest Hub (2nd Generation) tablet, and the Whoop 4.0 wearable. Now, I don’t want to disparage any of these products – all are designed to be very helpful; maybe they will help you. But they didn’t work for me. However, after trying a selection of the best sleep earplugs and best sleep trackers, I might have found a solution to my restless nights.
My Whoop wearable told me so much about the sleep I wasn’t getting. I now know, for example, that I was waking up 2.6 times per hour, on average. I also know that this is far from optimal and that because of it, most of the sleep I did get was not the good stuff, a.
