Hacking Sleep – What Works For Me

The Problem

For a long while I have struggled with the amount a quality of sleep I get so I decided to address this. For years I was using a FitBit Ultra and this allowed me to track the quality and duration of my sleeping. I have made a number of changes to slowly address this problem.

I knew I had a problem when my really loud buzzy alarm clock and the TWO alarms set on my mobile phone failed to get me to wake in the morning.

The “Solution”

Going To Bed

There are a variety of studies showing that too much “blue” light after sundown causes too much stimulation and can cause a problem with falling asleep. To address this I have added f.lux to my PC and Twilight to my Android phone. Both of these adjust the colour temperature of the display to warm it up (replace the blue with red). I just need to find a solution that will do this for my chromebook and I’m completely sorted.

Waking

I have upgraded my fit bit ultra to a FitBit One Wireless Activity and Sleep Tracker – Black. The main reason for this was the addition of a vibrating alarm. (You wear the tracker on a wristband overnight).

I also received a Lumie Bodyclock STARTER 30 Wake-Up Light Alarm Clock with Sunrise and Sunset Features as a Christmas gift, this gradually increases the brightness of the bulb over the 30 minutes prior to the actual alarm time. At this point the clock does resort to an audible buzzing alarm.

I have the clock alarm set to 5 minutes after the fitbit alarm and it is maybe once every two weeks that I have fallen back asleep and been wakened by the audible alarm.