# The cornerstone habit of sleep
I've learned that both quality Sleep and a consistent Sleep schedule are cornerstones of a productive and fulfilling life. Quality Sleep improved my thinking, stabilized the hormone production that regulates my mood and other biological cues like hunger and desire, and combined with a consistent Sleep schedule gave me a chance to control my day. I can make plans without as much thought because my day has a natural start and end time and a natural cadence. I can schedule my workouts and deep work sessions more efficiently because I usually feel like working out and working at a consistent time each day. This is a hugely beneficial feedback loop. It's also surprising how many draining decisions revolve around "When to get up?', "When to do X?", etc. Having a set time to wake and to Sleep adds structure to the day and eliminates a lot of those micro decisions that suck away will power, allowing you to focus on bigger problems.
Our life is made up of what we do each day, so mastering Sleep was the first step towards gaining control of my life. If all I manage to accomplish this year in the realm of self improvement is to nail down my Sleep pattern I think I'll be in an excellent position to accomplish 2x as much next year, 4x as much in 2 years, 8x as much in 3, ..., and 1024x as much in 10 years. That sounds silly but I think compounding exists outside of banking. Good habits and their benefits compound. And good Sleep is a cornerstone habit.
I'm writing this to remind my future self what I did this year. I hope it helps me back onto my path if I begin to slip and reminds me of how optimistic I feel about my future right now.
## Waking up and going to bed
#### Practical Basics:
- Pick a wake up time. Take the freedom to pick a time that suits you. Getting up 5:00am for a single week is useless. The goal is to do it for a year. If you don't think 5:00am is sustainable then don't pick it. 11:00am is just as good as 5:00am for this purpose. Err on the side of caution and you'll experience fewer restarts.
- Wake up at that time each weekday. Wake up at that time + 1 hour max on weekends.
- Get out of bed at that time each weekday. Get out of bed at that time + 1 hour max on weekends. Waking up is no good if you stay in bed. It doesn't matter where you go, just get out of bed.
- This is the most critical piece. It doesn't matter if you slept poorly, went to bed late, or got no Sleep whatsoever. Wake up and get up. If the rest of the day sucks or if you do nothing but watch Netflix that day it'll be ok because you made progress towards forming this cornerstone habit. Protect this habit even at the expense of homework, work, other plans or goals. This is a long-term play. Think in decades.
- Your body will adapt to the schedule. You will begin to feel well rested. Consistency will get you there. Inconsistency will help you feel rested for a single day, but ruin the rest of your life.
- Take your chosen wake up time and subtract 8 hours, 9 hours max. That's your bed time.
- 30 minutes before _that_, drop everything and start getting ready for bed. Nothing that you're working on is as important as starting tomorrow off on a good note. Sleep is a weapon.
- Be in bed at that time every weekday. Be in bed at that time + 1 hour max on weekends.
- Sleep hygiene is a real thing and it takes some time to implement. It means a comfortable bed, pillow, clothes, a dark room at the right temperature, ear plugs or white noise. It is worth making your room the right place to Sleep.
- Sometimes you won't be able to Sleep when in bed. It sucks but as long as you get up on time the next morning you'll be fine. Tired, but fine. You'll Sleep well that following night and be back to 100% after that.
- Realize it'll take some sacrifice in other areas of life. Bed time rolls around but you're not finished with homework? Too bad. That's just how good a student you are right now. Eventually your wake time and bed time begin structuring your day so that you become more efficient with your time. But you have to stick to the schedule first. You have to build the foundational constraints first.
#### The following are finer grain points about how you reduced friction while forming this habit. Forming habits is hard. So any small nudge or mental automation you can make to increase the odds of success is worthwhile.
- Place your alarm out of reach to force yourself to get out of bed.
- Turn the thermostat up a couple of degrees so that you're not cold and so that bed doesn't seem as comfortable.
- Place a change of clothes near your alarm. Even if it's just a different pair of sweats and a different t shirt, changing clothes signals to your brain that a new phase of the day is starting. Small Pavlovian ceremonies like this help your brain register that association.
- Having an easy and enjoyable task to look forward to will help sustain and cement the habit. Start making coffee immediately. Even if all you do for the next hour is sit on the couch and enjoy your coffee while browsing Reddit it'll be a win because you didn't get back into bed.
- If you wake up before the alarm goes off _and_ you feel rested and alert (this happens more often the more you perfect your Sleep habit) then just get up. That's a guaranteed free win for the day. If you stay in bed just because it's not time to get up yet you take the risk of failing when the alarm finally does go off.
- Form a routine that tells your brain to start settling down. For you this included shutting blinds, dimming lights, changing, brushing your teeth, turning down the thermostat to make bed seem more comfortable.
- Daydreaming before bed is a bad habit. Imagining hypothetical scenarios usually triggers a lot of emotion. Emotion causes real physiological effects, including stress or adrenaline hormone production. Combat the urge for cathartic day dreaming before bed.
- Instead, spend some time being thankful for the good things in your day and playing up good things about tomorrow. It sounds cheesy but it puts you in a calm that can easily transition into Sleep.
- If you feel some anxiety or general bad energy as you approach bed time find a proxy relief. For you it was tidying up - washing dishes, making a to-do list for tomorrow - or anything that made you feel productive and in control. The aim is to end the day on a good note even if it's small. This will be enough for your brain if you let it be and it will ease your mood.
- Going to bed an hour or so early was never a bad idea. Going to bed way earlier than that ruined plans.
#### The following are some mental mantras or ideas that helped you stick with the process when you weren't feeling motivated:
- Don't ask yourself what you want to do. Your brain will _always_ take the path of least resistance. Its job is to help your body conserve energy, so it won't ever want to do work. If you start thinking about the task you will find a way to make not doing it make sense. We're excellent at rationalizing. You made a plan. Just listen to yourself. Just do it. Don't think about it.
- Special occasions are rare. A day off from work is not special. A Friday is not a special day. Most days don't merit exceptions from your habit.
- You won't rise to the level of your goals, motivation, or will power. You will fall to the level of your systems.
- Sleep is not a bank of time from which you can borrow to finish other less important tasks. Sleep is a weapon.
- 4 quality hours of work with a brain that's firing on all cylinders has been significantly better for your productivity than 8+ hours with a foggy, fuzzy, tired brain.
---
Building this habit takes time and effort for non-obvious reasons too. For example, getting to bed on time means being done with all your other to-dos by bed time minus 30 minutes. That's how a consistent Sleep pattern forces structure into your day. Also, after a few days you realize that you need to expend a lot of energy in order to be _able_ to fall aSleep on time. That means putting in an honest day's worth of mental and physical effort. _That_ forces more structure into your day by rewarding a good day of work and working out with a good night's rest. These positive feedback loops seem to spring up everywhere once you start paying attention. To help with that you grabbed a notebook and did 10-15 minutes of reflection on that morning and the previous night - what's working, what could be helpful, what doesn't work at all. That journaling exercise is how you helped yourself understand and refine the system you built.
9 months into the habit and it's less of a habit now and more of a tool to wield at will. You start feeling tired around my bed time without any additional effort into those Pavlovian ceremonies. You wake up fairly naturally usually a few minutes before your alarm. You feel good. More importantly, You feel the same each morning and that makes it easy to build even more systems. It also helps with staying on track. When you do go out and stay up late you end up waking up on time anyway without much effort. When you do Sleep in it doesn't disrupt you habit building completely. It's just a small blip.
---
Your next goal is to limit information consumption. Media is programming you. It's sneaky. You feel productive watching the news, reading blogs and articles, staying up to date, etc. But it's not actually valuable or useful to your current goals. You're about to begin approaching reducing and improving media/information consumption with the same habit-building framework that has paid off for getting Sleep down.# The cornerstone habit of sleep
I've learned that both quality Sleep and a consistent Sleep schedule are cornerstones of a productive and fulfilling life. Quality Sleep improved my thinking, stabilized the hormone production that regulates my mood and other biological cues like hunger and desire, and combined with a consistent Sleep schedule gave me a chance to control my day. I can make plans without as much thought because my day has a natural start and end time and a natural cadence. I can schedule my workouts and deep work sessions more efficiently because I usually feel like working out and working at a consistent time each day. This is a hugely beneficial feedback loop. It's also surprising how many draining decisions revolve around "When to get up?', "When to do X?", etc. Having a set time to wake and to Sleep adds structure to the day and eliminates a lot of those micro decisions that suck away will power, allowing you to focus on bigger problems.
Our life is made up of what we do each day, so mastering Sleep was the first step towards gaining control of my life. If all I manage to accomplish this year in the realm of self improvement is to nail down my Sleep pattern I think I'll be in an excellent position to accomplish 2x as much next year, 4x as much in 2 years, 8x as much in 3, ..., and 1024x as much in 10 years. That sounds silly but I think compounding exists outside of banking. Good habits and their benefits compound. And good Sleep is a cornerstone habit.
I'm writing this to remind my future self what I did this year. I hope it helps me back onto my path if I begin to slip and reminds me of how optimistic I feel about my future right now.
## Waking up and going to bed
#### Practical Basics:
- Pick a wake up time. Take the freedom to pick a time that suits you. Getting up 5:00am for a single week is useless. The goal is to do it for a year. If you don't think 5:00am is sustainable then don't pick it. 11:00am is just as good as 5:00am for this purpose. Err on the side of caution and you'll experience fewer restarts.
- Wake up at that time each weekday. Wake up at that time + 1 hour max on weekends.
- Get out of bed at that time each weekday. Get out of bed at that time + 1 hour max on weekends. Waking up is no good if you stay in bed. It doesn't matter where you go, just get out of bed.
- This is the most critical piece. It doesn't matter if you slept poorly, went to bed late, or got no Sleep whatsoever. Wake up and get up. If the rest of the day sucks or if you do nothing but watch Netflix that day it'll be ok because you made progress towards forming this cornerstone habit. Protect this habit even at the expense of homework, work, other plans or goals. This is a long-term play. Think in decades.
- Your body will adapt to the schedule. You will begin to feel well rested. Consistency will get you there. Inconsistency will help you feel rested for a single day, but ruin the rest of your life.
- Take your chosen wake up time and subtract 8 hours, 9 hours max. That's your bed time.
- 30 minutes before _that_, drop everything and start getting ready for bed. Nothing that you're working on is as important as starting tomorrow off on a good note. Sleep is a weapon.
- Be in bed at that time every weekday. Be in bed at that time + 1 hour max on weekends.
- Sleep hygiene is a real thing and it takes some time to implement. It means a comfortable bed, pillow, clothes, a dark room at the right temperature, ear plugs or white noise. It is worth making your room the right place to Sleep.
- Sometimes you won't be able to Sleep when in bed. It sucks but as long as you get up on time the next morning you'll be fine. Tired, but fine. You'll Sleep well that following night and be back to 100% after that.
- Realize it'll take some sacrifice in other areas of life. Bed time rolls around but you're not finished with homework? Too bad. That's just how good a student you are right now. Eventually your wake time and bed time begin structuring your day so that you become more efficient with your time. But you have to stick to the schedule first. You have to build the foundational constraints first.
#### The following are finer grain points about how you reduced friction while forming this habit. Forming habits is hard. So any small nudge or mental automation you can make to increase the odds of success is worthwhile.
- Place your alarm out of reach to force yourself to get out of bed.
- Turn the thermostat up a couple of degrees so that you're not cold and so that bed doesn't seem as comfortable.
- Place a change of clothes near your alarm. Even if it's just a different pair of sweats and a different t shirt, changing clothes signals to your brain that a new phase of the day is starting. Small Pavlovian ceremonies like this help your brain register that association.
- Having an easy and enjoyable task to look forward to will help sustain and cement the habit. Start making coffee immediately. Even if all you do for the next hour is sit on the couch and enjoy your coffee while browsing Reddit it'll be a win because you didn't get back into bed.
- If you wake up before the alarm goes off _and_ you feel rested and alert (this happens more often the more you perfect your Sleep habit) then just get up. That's a guaranteed free win for the day. If you stay in bed just because it's not time to get up yet you take the risk of failing when the alarm finally does go off.
- Form a routine that tells your brain to start settling down. For you this included shutting blinds, dimming lights, changing, brushing your teeth, turning down the thermostat to make bed seem more comfortable.
- Daydreaming before bed is a bad habit. Imagining hypothetical scenarios usually triggers a lot of emotion. Emotion causes real physiological effects, including stress or adrenaline hormone production. Combat the urge for cathartic day dreaming before bed.
- Instead, spend some time being thankful for the good things in your day and playing up good things about tomorrow. It sounds cheesy but it puts you in a calm that can easily transition into Sleep.
- If you feel some anxiety or general bad energy as you approach bed time find a proxy relief. For you it was tidying up - washing dishes, making a to-do list for tomorrow - or anything that made you feel productive and in control. The aim is to end the day on a good note even if it's small. This will be enough for your brain if you let it be and it will ease your mood.
- Going to bed an hour or so early was never a bad idea. Going to bed way earlier than that ruined plans.
#### The following are some mental mantras or ideas that helped you stick with the process when you weren't feeling motivated:
- Don't ask yourself what you want to do. Your brain will _always_ take the path of least resistance. Its job is to help your body conserve energy, so it won't ever want to do work. If you start thinking about the task you will find a way to make not doing it make sense. We're excellent at rationalizing. You made a plan. Just listen to yourself. Just do it. Don't think about it.
- Special occasions are rare. A day off from work is not special. A Friday is not a special day. Most days don't merit exceptions from your habit.
- You won't rise to the level of your goals, motivation, or will power. You will fall to the level of your systems.
- Sleep is not a bank of time from which you can borrow to finish other less important tasks. Sleep is a weapon.
- 4 quality hours of work with a brain that's firing on all cylinders has been significantly better for your productivity than 8+ hours with a foggy, fuzzy, tired brain.
---
Building this habit takes time and effort for non-obvious reasons too. For example, getting to bed on time means being done with all your other to-dos by bed time minus 30 minutes. That's how a consistent Sleep pattern forces structure into your day. Also, after a few days you realize that you need to expend a lot of energy in order to be _able_ to fall aSleep on time. That means putting in an honest day's worth of mental and physical effort. _That_ forces more structure into your day by rewarding a good day of work and working out with a good night's rest. These positive feedback loops seem to spring up everywhere once you start paying attention. To help with that you grabbed a notebook and did 10-15 minutes of reflection on that morning and the previous night - what's working, what could be helpful, what doesn't work at all. That journaling exercise is how you helped yourself understand and refine the system you built.
9 months into the habit and it's less of a habit now and more of a tool to wield at will. You start feeling tired around my bed time without any additional effort into those Pavlovian ceremonies. You wake up fairly naturally usually a few minutes before your alarm. You feel good. More importantly, You feel the same each morning and that makes it easy to build even more systems. It also helps with staying on track. When you do go out and stay up late you end up waking up on time anyway without much effort. When you do Sleep in it doesn't disrupt you habit building completely. It's just a small blip.
---
Your next goal is to limit information consumption. Media is programming you. It's sneaky. You feel productive watching the news, reading blogs and articles, staying up to date, etc. But it's not actually valuable or useful to your current goals. You're about to begin approaching reducing and improving media/information consumption with the same habit-building framework that has paid off for getting Sleep down.