Willpower, Discipline, and Improving how You Improve

Introduction:

In order to improve any aspect to your life you must make changes to how you approach and deal with it. Willpower and Discipline are essential concepts to understand when trying to improve your life because they are the characteristics that determine how effectively you can make these changes.

Defining Willpower and Discipline:

In normal parlance, willpower and discipline are used interchangeably to refer to the ability to do what you ought to do rather than what you immediately want to do, such as resisting self destructive behaviors or unhealthy habits. For the purpose of this post I will be defining willpower as the mental fortitude required to consciously change behavior in a way you wouldn’t be able to without applying effort, and discipline as the application of knowledge to create rules and restrictions on behavior. If you are having trouble understanding the distinction consider a person moving heavy object from one place to another. When someone lifts and carries the object the factors which determine how well they do so are their raw physical strength and the form they use to carry the object. By form I am referring to things such as where they decide to grip the object, whether they carry the object on their shoulder or let it hang in front of them etc. Using my definitions, willpower would be analogous to the person’s raw physical strength while discipline would be analogous to the person’s form.

Research on Willpower and Discipline:

One of the most key studies on willpower done was the study on ego depletion by researchers at Case Western University. In the study researchers showed participants a plate of radishes and a plate of chocolates. The participants were split into three groups: one that would be instructed to eat the radishes, one group that would be instructed to eat the radishes and avoid the chocolate, one group that would be instructed to eat the chocolate and avoid the radishes, and a control group which was not shown the food. After initial instruction the participants were tasked with solving a problem that was actually impossible to solve. The results were that the group that was instructed to eat the radishes worked significantly longer on the problem than both the control group and the group that ate the chocolates with the control group working the longest. This showed that expending effort to resist temptation had a quantifiable cost in the form of being less inclined to work on a problem. This means that the study showed evidence that willpower is a finite characteristic that can be depleted when employed much like how a muscle becomes fatigued when used. More studies were done with different things for the participants to resist to confirm this idea.

Another significant finding in these studies is the participants in control groups (ie the ones not shown two options and instructed to choose a certain) consistently outperformed the other two groups in these experiments. This shows that not being exposed to temptation at all depletes less willpower than either resisting or giving into temptation.

Research on “Wants”, “Needs”, and Satisfaction:

Another important concept for this post is determining where to apply willpower and discipline to gain the most improvement in life. There are many different theories for determining what people want most in their life. The two that I found most useful were Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and by Manfred Max-Neef’s fundamental humans.

Maslow’s hierarchy of needs is displayed as a pyramid with basic physiological needs at the bottom and more abstract needs such as esteem and self actualization at the top. The things lower down on the pyramid are prioritized more than things at the top. This essentially means that when people are lacking in something like food or shelter they will have less motivation for striving for improved self esteem or becoming the best version of themselves. This model is useful because how someone will be more motivated to work on certain aspects of their life compared to others. For example a person who is hungry will be more motivated to get food than they will to work on a project. However this model is limited as is doesn’t provide specific criteria for when a need is met or satisfied. For example a person might have enough food to survive but still feel hungry and thus still more motivated to get food than do other things even though that need should be satisfied according to the hierarchy.

Manfred Max-Neef’s Fundamental Human Needs is a classification of nine needs that are fundamental to human existence. These needs are subsistence, protection, affection, understanding, participation, leisure, creation, identity, and freedom. In this model the needs are fulfilled by satisfiers. There are different kinds of satisfiers such as pseudo satisfiers which appear to be satisfying a need but in actuality are not doing anything to satisfy the need, inhibiting satisfiers which over-satisfy a given need thus inhibiting the possibility of satisfaction of other needs, synergistic satisfiers which satisfy multiple needs simultaneously, and singular satisfiers which satisfy a specific need without affecting any other needs. This model is useful because it shows how satisfaction of a need can be determined. However this model is limited in that it doesn’t give criteria for why people prioritize certain needs over others.

Applying this Knowledge:

The information on willpower, discipline, and needs, shows that willpower and discipline are finite resources to used in making changes in life. The purpose is to discuss the most efficient way to allocate willpower in discipline.

Identifying Deficiencies in Your Life:

Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Manfred Max-Neef’s Fundamental Human Needs together give a wealth of information on makes someone’s life more or less satisfying. Reading more about these two models can help establish what you need to change in your life to improve it the most. If after reading more about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Manfred Max-Neef’s Fundamental Human Needs you still feel unsure about what you most want to change in life one strategy you can employ is to keep a diary and record what you felt best and worst about each day. This way after about a month you will be able to look back and see what you are most often happy about and frustrated about. Thus you have a way of establishing what you want to change most in your life.

Allocating Willpower and Discipline:

As shown in the studies, there is a finite amount of willpower that a person can expend in a given time frame. What this means is that there a limit to how much you can change your life in a given time frame. So given this information, you should focus on changing a small number of things at a time. This will allow you to dedicate the necessary willpower without overburdening yourself and thus failing. Over time the changes you make will seem automatic and require less willpower to maintain thus allowing you to move onto changing other aspects of your life for the better. Another thing to keep in mind is that never being exposed to temptation depletes less willpower than resisting temptation. In order to prevent exposure to temptation in first place will required the use of discipline meaning you should create rules or restrictions which prevent you from encountering temptation. For example if you are trying to lose weight and find yourself passing by your favorite restaurant on the way home from work each day you may apply discipline to take an alternate route home after work thus avoiding the temptation entirely.

A Brief Update

As you can probably tell (assuming you've seen this blog before I posted this) I've changed the general layout and design of the blog. I am not sure if this design is what I will stick with forever but it will work for now.

I have also created a twitter account. I will generally be using it to share articles or posts from other blogs I find interesting.

I have three more blog posts planned right now and I will try to get at least two of them out before the end of December.

Optimizing Sleep for Self Improvement Part 2: Reacting to the Data

This post is part 2 of what is now a Optimizing Sleep for Self Improvement series.

Review:

Goal:

As discussed in part 1, sleep is a fundamental part of a person’s life. Despite its importance, many people still have a difficult time getting adequate sleep. Sleep can be characterized by sleep and wake time as well as efficiency (time asleep divided by total time in bed). In improving sleep the most important thing is to increase sleep efficiency. This will will mean falling asleep sooner after going to bed and getting out of bed to start the day sooner after waking up. The next most important aspect of sleep is the total amount of time asleep. The amount of sleep necessary for optimal well being can vary a lot between individuals. However aiming to get within the recommended range of 7-9 hours is a good rule of thumb.

Method:

In order to improve sleep you have to be aware of the factors that are most negatively affecting you. In order to do this you should be keeping a sleep log which at minimum records the time you go to bed, how long you take to fall asleep, when you wake up, and how long it takes you to fall asleep. You can also record how many times you wake up during the night/how long it takes you to fall back asleep if that is common occurrence for you. After doing this for a few weeks you should have a good idea of what factor is most preventing you from having the best sleep.

Response:

Now that you have a record of your sleeping habits you should have a good idea of where you can employ your effort towards improving your sleep the most. This section gives some advice for dealing with these different factors.

Not Falling Asleep Quickly at Night:

Being unable able to fall asleep at night while lying in bed is insanely frustrating. Inability to fall asleep easily is very difficult to relieve because as you lie in bed awake your mind associates being in bed with being awake and thus feels more and more awake while in bed at night. Thus  significant part of being able to relieve inability to sleep easily is to disassociate lying in bed with being awake. This means if you find yourself not falling asleep within half an hour you should get out of bed until you feel you can fall asleep quickly after returning. This will be frustrating but ultimately necessary to being able to sleep easily. When employing this strategy you should have a low alertness activity to do if you get out of bed that you enjoy such as reading, writing, or drawing. The purpose of this is to allow you to be comfortable getting out of bed even though you might be anxious to get to sleep as quickly as possible.

Before going to bed you should minimize the amount of factors that can interfere with your sleep. For example mind altering substances like alcohol, caffeine, and nicotine can interfere with your ability to sleep. Thus consumption of these substances should be prohibited in an amount of time before bed proportional to how long it takes for them to be metabolized. For reference one drink of alcohol takes about 2 hours, 8 hours for caffeine, and 4 hours for nicotine (these values represent 2 half lives for blood concentration of the substance after consumption). Another factor that can interfere with sleep is poor nutrition. Lack of magnesium, calcium, b vitamins, or copper can interfere with sleep. If you find your diet deficient in one these you should consider getting a supplement for it. Artificial light also interferes with sleep. So be sure to turn off all electronics and bright lights at least 30 minutes before going to bed.Stress and anxiety can also be very effective at interfering with sleep. One strategy for dealing with stress is to set out a certain amount of time before bed as a “worry period”. During this time you should write down things that are causing negative feelings that you fear will interfere with sleep alongside a written plan for how you will deal with it. For example if you are stressed about a project you are working on you can write down a list of things you need to research in the morning to make sure your project works out as well as possible. This way you can go to bed content that you have made at least a little progress on dealing with the issues you are having.

Not Getting out of Bed Quickly in the Morning:

Not being able to quickly get out of bed in the morning is another frustrating quality. Feeling stuck in bed in the morning feels bad since time that should be spent preparing for the rest of the day. However getting out of bed seems really difficult since the state of mind you are in right after waking up is completely different to the state of mind you are normally in during the day. So in order to get out of bed effectively you need to be stimulated enough so that you get into the mindset of wanting to be out of bed. However a conventional alarm clock usually isn’t stimulating enough to do this since you can just hit snooze and get back to bed quickly. One way to make your alarm clock work more effectively is to put it far out of reach of your bed so you actually have to get up to get to it. Another thing to do with an alarm clock is set it to something you will be able to enjoy like a favorite song. This will allow you to feel comfortable waking up and thus more likely to not go back into bed. Lastly when getting up you should have something scheduled to do in the morning so you can be motivated to do something other than go back to bed.

If you still find yourself not being able to get up immediately in the morning there are some more extreme methods you can use. For example for phone alarm clocks there are apps that force you to solve a puzzle. Personally I have had some success with “Alarmy from Delight Room” for android which allows you to set a variety of puzzles to turn it off. Another extreme method is chain multiple scheduled alarms together one after the other to make it difficult to get back in bed since doing so will only grant a sliver of time before the next one goes off. Ideally these strategies will not need to be permanent and you will eventually be able to naturally wake up a few seconds before the alarm even goes off.

Waking Up Often During the Night:

Waking up during the night is another factor which creates an inefficient sleeping pattern. Usually waking up during the night is due to an external factor which is interfering with your sleep. One thing that could be waking you up at night is the need to use the bathroom. This can be remedied easily by limiting food and drink before bed and spending some time before bed on the toilet even if you don’t immediately feel like you need to. Another factor that could be leading to you waking up in the middle of the night is the environment in your room. Too much heat, cold, light can also interfere with sleep so being aware of and dealing with these environmental factors can allow you to decrease your wakefulness during the night.

If dealing with all of these factors doesn’t relieve sleep interference, one possible factor may be sleep apnea. Sleep apnea is a disorder wherein a person pauses or softens their breathing during sleep due to obstruction. This pausing of breath can cause you to wake up during the night feeling short of breath. If you have this symptom you should see a doctor to get a proper diagnosis and treatment.

Thoughts that Keep Me Up at Night

I started this blog in a fit of inspiration after seeing significant improvement in my sleep. Part of improving my sleep involved recording and understanding the anxious or depressing thoughts which were preventing me from sleeping and try to come up with coping techniques for these thoughts. Most of my anxious thoughts have been typical have been easy to deal with while others have been difficult to overcome. The purpose of this post will be to discuss these more difficult to deal with anxious thoughts. This post won’t be very structured or organized since organizing anxious and depressing thoughts is generally difficult.

Context

In order for what I talk about to make sense I should provide some context as to why it is significant to me.

What I want to do with my Life

I have grown up with one of my parents having a minor disability. Due to this they have had to quit their original career and start a new one at home in order to continue to be supportive of the family. So throughout my life I have seen how disability affects both individual affected by the disability and people around. Seeing this has motivated me towards pursuing a career in medical device development. Currently I working toward a degree in biomedical engineering in order to pursue this goal. My hope is to be part of team who develops something that makes a big difference in the healthcare world and improves the lives of many people.

Modern Society

At first glance modern society seems to be progressing well. Many new technologies have allowed to do things that someone 100 years ago could not even comprehend. The most disruptive of these technologies is probably the internet. With it we can communicate to anyone almost anywhere and the way people live their lives has changed dramatically. With the internet nearly everyone has access to an immense amount of information about anything. From this pool of information they can gain knowledge about the world, what skills are in demand, and how to improve themselves. There are also many advances in healthcare and disease prevention. By all means people’s lives should be improving.

Anxious Thoughts

The previous section probably sounded somewhat hopeful. So much so that you might have forgotten that this post was about anxious thoughts I was having. However the previous section only takes one glance at how things are and only shows the surface of what is happening in both my life and society.

Social Decline

You would think with all this technology people would be making better decisions, be healthier, and be happier. Nothing could be further from the truth. Over the last few decades obesity rates, depression rates, and a lot of other negative things have increased. This is in spite of all the technology we have today. Think about that for a second. With access to more information and more utilities, people today are doing worse than people who had less access to information and less utility. This makes as much sense as a someone with a calculator doing worse at math than someone without a calculator. In order for that to happen the person with the calculator would have to have immensely less ability than the other person. Applying that same concept to society at large shows that people today are less able than people in the past and increasingly so as time goes on. Not only is society becoming weaker, it is becoming weaker at a rate greater than the rate of technological growth.

Hopelessness

This idea of society declining faster than the progress of technology relates back to what I want to do with my life. Ideally I would work with a team and design a medical device that would improve many lives. However even if I am able to do this the amount of good I do could not possibly outweigh the natural state of decline that is already prevalent. What really scares me about this is that I feel everyone around me is oblivious to this concept. I might talk to someone about how std prevalence is higher in a time where we have access to condoms than it was in  a time before condoms even existed and people will just kind of laugh it off without really seeing why that is scary. Overall I am still going to try my best to improve myself and the world around me. Though I still have not really come to terms with the fact that I am almost certainly not going to make a difference in the grand scheme of things.

Learning as Effectively as Possible

Learning is the process by which someone acquires new knowledge, skills, or behaviors. Learning  occurs as part of education, training or personal development and occurs over time procedurally. There are many different types of learning such as conditioning/association, rote memorization, and Learning is a crucial part of self improvement because it is ultimately the process by which someone changes themselves. This post will mostly discuss learning in terms of the acquirement of knowledge.

Learning Process

Memory

Memory is the most essential component of an individual learning something. Memory involves encoding, storing, and retrieving information in the brain. Memory is split into categories based on how quickly these processes are carried out. Working memory involves carrying out encoding, storage and retrieval very quickly such as remembering the last sentence and how it relates to the current one you are reading. Things that are part of working memory do not last very long without rehearsal. Short term memory involves retrieving information that you recently had access to but don’t currently have. An example of this would be reciting a phone number you heard a minute ago. Short term memory usually requires you to rehearse the information a few times in succession. Long term memory involves being able to retrieve information from a long time ago. This usually requires rehearsal of that information over multiple time periods.

Association

Association is a part of learning where things are connected to one another. One example of association occurs in classical conditioning where a visual or auditory stimulus is paired with an unconditioned response to another stimulus. This is shown in Pavlov’s experiments where the delivery of food to a dog was accompanied by a ringing bell. The dog would salivate as an unconditioned response to the food but after some time would begin to salivate as conditioned response if the bell was rung without the delivery of food. Over time though the conditioned salivating from the bell would stop if food was no longer delivered in tandem with the bell. Association also happens when trying to remember something. For example remembering the last time you went to a store will lead you to remembering what you bought, how much you spent etc. So through association remembering one piece of information can lead to the retrieval of much more information.

Methods for Learning Knowledge Effectively

Spacing Effect

The spacing effect is a phenomenon observed in humans where humans are more easily able to remember something when they study it in multiple short sessions in comparison to one long session. This means that if someone dedicates three hours to trying to learn something they will more effectively learn it if they study in three single hour sessions as opposed to a single three hour study session. This is mainly due to the serial position effect where people remember the items closer to the beginning or end of a study session leaving things in the middle of the session more likely to be forgotten. So if a study session is shorter than everything studied will be closer to the beginning or end of the study session since there is less “middle time”. As a general rule 45 minutes to an hour is the longest a study session should last and anything that requires more than that amount of time should be split into multiple sessions separated by at least 15 minutes.

Forgetting Curve

The forgetting curve refers to the decline of memory retention of something over time when there is no active attempt to retain memory. After rehearsing the decline in memory retention slows down allowing the person to retain the information for a longer period of time. This shows that after each rehearsal information is retained for a longer period so rehearsal is required after longer periods of time. Exploitation of this process is called “spaced repetition”. There is a lot of spaced repetition software on the internet. The software I have found best for myself is “Anki”.

Testing Effect

The testing effect is where memory is retained more for something when you test to see if you can retrieve it as opposed to just relearning it. For example if you were to answer a question regarding the information you were trying to remember, you would retain that information longer than if you had simply reread the information. In practice this means question/answer type flash cards are more effective way to study than reading over notes.

Association

As discussed in the previous section, using association you can retrieve a lot of information by only needing to retain a smaller amount. One way to use association to be able to retrieve larger amounts of information while retaining smaller amounts is with mnemonics. Mnemonics can come in many forms such as through music (ABC song), or sentences (“Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally” for the arithmetic order of operations Parentheses, Exponents, Multiplication, Division, addition, subtraction). However one disadvantage of using mnemonics is that retrieving information takes more time to do since you must first retrieve the mnemonic before retrieving the information.

External Factors that Affect Learning

In addition to the techniques described in the previous section there are many factors not related to how you learn that nonetheless affect quality of your learning.

Physical Factors

One of the biggest factors affecting how well you learn is if you are getting good sleep. Sleep is an important for adequate brain function so improving your sleep can benefit learning ability. Another important factor is fitness since good health also positively affects brain function. Diet also plays a role in how well you learn with hydration and omega-3 fatty acids being especially effective.

Mental Factors

One of the biggest mental factors affecting how well you learn is motivation. The most consistent way to motivate yourself to learn is to figure how what you are going to learn is useful or necessary. Another important mental factor is metacognition which is the process of understanding how you understand something. For example if you find something new you learn makes sense try to articulate specifically why it makes sense to you. How you view the environment you are learning in is also important to how well you learn. For example if you are trying to study in the same place where you casually browse the internet you will likely feel tempted to browse the internet instead.

Creating a Workable Fitness Plan

When most people think of self improvement fitness is usually one of the first things that comes to mind. This makes a lot of sense because improving fitness is the most obvious form of self improvement. The body changes in a way that is undeniable. Despite being an obvious form of improving one’s life, people still have trouble getting the recommended amount of physical activity done. This is apparent from the fact that less than a quarter of adults fail to get the expert recommended amount of physical activity. So the purpose of this post will be to give you the resources needed to take the first step towards starting and maintaining an active lifestyle. I’ll be going over the pros and cons of multiple categories of exercise in terms of health benefits, utility, and convenience. This way you can create a fitness plan based on your own individual circumstances.

Different Categories of Exercise

Weightlifting

Weightlifting is a pretty self explanatory concept. It mostly involves exercises geared towards increasing physical strength through use of weighted objects. The basic principle is to increase the weight lifted, repetitions done, sets done, or speed of repetitions over time. Weightlifting generally involves equipment such as dumbbells, barbells, or weight machines.

When starting weightlifting for the first time you should start at weight you can do a lot of repetitions of in good form. For creating a weightlifting routine there are a lot resources by people with a lot more experience than me such as this. Ultimately I would suggest searching for a routine that will work best with your specific circumstances. This is especially true if you don’t have easy access to a gym or equipment. In general you should lean towards routines that emphasize use of free weights over machines since free weights have much more advantages in comparison, and compound movements over isolation since compound movements target more muscle groups in the same amount of time. Also make sure to study on what proper form is for each exercise.

Calisthenics

Calisthenics is a form of exercise that involves weight training using only your own body. This is in contrast to weightlifting which involves moving separate objects. Some basic calisthenic workouts are pushups, lunges, pullups, leg raises, and planks. Like with weight training there are a lot of free resources online for beginners such as this. Unlike weight training, it is more difficult to add weight to calisthenic exercises than it is to simply increase reps. In order to deal with this people who have achieved a high repetition count for a calisthenic exercise should progress to a more difficult form of that exercise (such as going from regular pushups to diamond pushups to explosive to one handed).

Cardio

Cardio are aerobic exercises that emphasize consistent moderate intensity work over a longer period. The most common types of cardio exercises are running, cycling, and swimming. Most cardio exercises are pretty simple to do. When starting a cardio routine you should go at a consistent intensity that leaves you greatly fatigued after 30 minutes. As you get more used to doing cardio adding short intervals of increased intensity during your workout. It is also good to add variety to cardio workouts by doing different types instead of just doing the same type over and over.

Yoga

Yoga is a practice that developed in India involving physical, mental, and spiritual discipline. For the purpose of this post I will discussing the physical aspects of yoga. Yoga as an exercise involves moving between different poses for the purpose of improving balance, flexibility, and breathing. A good beginner routine can found here. As you are able to perform the basic poses easily you should move on to more difficult ones in order to progress.

Comparing Types of Exercise

Each of the different types of exercises have their own benefits based on how they improve your life. By comparing the different benefits of each exercise you develop a routine that suits your specific needs.

Utility

Utility here will be defined by observable benefits of the exercise such as practical ability.

In terms of physical strength, weightlifting is most beneficial. This is evident from the fact that with weightlifting you can train all different possible movement patterns as opposed to calisthenics which are limited based on moving your own body. With weightlifting you can gain the most amount of strength for general tasks like moving furniture or carrying things.

In terms of endurance cardio grants the most benefit due to being about doing an exercise over a longer period of time with little rest. Endurance can be useful for some blue collar jobs that require long shifts but otherwise generally doesn’t have much practicality in day to day life.

Ultimately based on some simple analysis the ranking of exercise categories in terms of utility seems to be 1. Weightlifting 2. Calisthenics 3. Cardio 4. Yoga

Health

Health here will be defined by elimination or prevention of physical or mental diseases. Most health benefits are shared between each of the exercises such as reducing risk of obesity, stress, blood pressure, diabetes and heart health as well as improving self esteem. However there are some benefits that are specific to certain exercises. For example high weight bearing exercise (so weight training and calisthenics) has been shown to increase bone density thus preventing osteoporosis and susceptibility to fractures. Cardio has been shown to significantly improve immune function even in the elderly. For mental health yoga seems to have the greatest benefits as shown by being able to improve symptoms of depression, ADHD, and schizophrenia. Ultimately most health benefits are shared even though each exercise category has its own benefits and there doesn’t seem to be one with with any significant edge over the rest. However there are still some unique health benefits to each category so you can take those into account when making your routine.

Convenience

Convenience is a basic measure of how easy it is to start each type of workout. If a performing a certain workout has other costs for equipment then that will reduce convenience. From this definition it is clear that weightlifting is least convenient as it requires either a gym membership which takes money and time to commute to, or space to store equipment in your own home. The second least convenient would probably be calisthenics due to needing to get some extra equipment to do pullups and other pull based exercises despite not needing as much equipment as weightlifting. Yoga and cardio are about even since both don’t have very high equipment costs and most equipment is not entirely necessary for them.

Creating and Executing a Plan

Setting Goals

Before creating a routine you should keep in mind what you want to achieve by creating and following a fitness routine. Your short term goal should be something you feel confident you are capable of. Your long term goal should be something that is generally measureable such total amount of time you spend working out or amount of weight you can bench. Ultimately by setting specific goals you give yourself something substantial to strive for rather than just a nebulous concept of better health.

Creating a Generalised Exercise Routine

First create a table like the one below to act as a general plan

Day of the week	Sunday	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday
Exercise type	Weightlifting	Cardio	Yoga	Weightlifting	Yoga	Cardio	Weightlifting
Time	4:30-6pm	6:30-7pm	8-9pm	5:30-7pm	8-9pm	6:30-7pm	4:30-6pm

Try to keep up with the plan you make for yourself. If you find yourself missing scheduled workout times try and update your routine by either replacing the ones you miss with more convenient options or shifting the times. This way you can respond systematically to failures to keep up with your routine.

Avoiding Potential Pitfalls

Despite following a routine it is still possible to make some mistakes that are just as bad as missing a scheduled workout. When I was first started to do some kind of workout every day I was very strict in the times I exercised. This meant I would try and complete the exercise even if I was performing poorly. After learning about the cab driver’s fallacy[9] I wondered if this behavior self defeating since better performance is known to lead to better gains from exercise. So I decided to be more lenient with my time and spend more time on my exercise if I was performing better than average and less if I was was performing worse. After a few weeks I noticed a slight increase in how much I was gaining and overall I felt much better about exercising in general.

Lastly, it is important to note that gains from fitness don’t come while exercising but during recovery. So make sure you’re sleeping well.

Optimizing Sleep for Self Improvement: Part 1

A lot of the concepts and processes in this post are based on material in the book “Quiet your mind and get to Sleep” by Colleen E. Carney and Rachel Manber. If you want more information on solving any sleep issues you have, I would recommend getting that book.

Why is Sleep Important for Self Improvement:

Benefits of Proper Sleep:

Sleep is an essential process for humans just like eating or breathing. As such, sleep plays an important role in nearly every aspect of people’s lives. This includes emotional control, memory, cognitive performance, strengthening immunity,  and reducing daytime fatigue. Lack of proper sleep can also exasperate other physical or mental problems. Given the heavy physical and mental toll bad sleep can have, anyone looking to improve their life should look towards improving their sleep. Even if you don’t have any specific sleep disorders like insomnia, there are still likely ways you can improve your sleep for mental and physical benefit.

Prevalence of Sleep Related Problems:

The modern environment has lead to an increase in sleeping problems for many people. As much as 40% of the population of the United States has some kind of sleep disorder. Despite affecting so many people there aren’t as many resources to help people with sleep as there are for other habit based health issues like obesity. Not only are there not as many resources but much of the advice people are given regarding sleep is not only wrong but can be detrimental to forming good sleep habits.

Dispelling Myths about Sleep:

Myth 1: Time Spent in Bed is what Matters

Since the time I was young I was told things like “humans are supposed to spend a third of their life sleeping” or “You should get at least 8 hours of sleep”. These statements seemed to make sense. When I had more sleep I felt and performed better, when I had less sleep I felt and performed worse. This concept made me very anxious about my sleep which in turn probably made my insomnia worse despite my attempts to improve my sleep. The reality is that in addition to quantity there is also a quality to a person’s sleep. Someone who believes they need to get a specific amount of sleep will likely try either going to bed earlier than usual or sleeping in more if they think they aren’t getting enough sleep. Unfortunately both these approaches are more likely to lead to more sleep issues. If someone tries going to bed earlier they will likely go to bed when they don’t feel sleepy and thus spend more time awake in bed until sleeping which can lead to taking longer to fall asleep after going to bed in the future. Alternatively someone who tries to sleep in longer in the morning will shift their circadian rhythm forward meaning it will take longer for them to fall asleep next night. Ultimately there isn’t a specific number of hours a person “needs” to sleep every night. How well someone sleeps is a function of more than just the time from when you fall asleep to when you wake.

Myth 2: If you have Sleep Debt you have to Sleep Longer to make it up

Relating to the idea of needing a specific amount of time spent sleeping is concept of sleep debt. Sleep debt is the concept that bad sleep across multiple nights accumulates into more intense problems while awake and that more good sleep proportional to the amount of bad sleep must be had to offset the effects of bad sleep. This leads people to believe that if they don’t sleep more after a night of bed sleep they will forever have symptoms of sleep deprivation. However as discussed in the previous section trying to get more sleep one night by either going to bed earlier or sleeping in later can cause more sleep problems down the road. So the best way to get rid of sleep debt is to increase the quality of sleep. Fortunately the body can do this automatically in response to sleep deprivation. This is evidenced by a study where subjects who were deprived of REM sleep one night would increase the amount of sleep time spent in REM the next night despite sleeping the same amount of time. This effectively means that losing sleep one night makes you sleep more deeply the next night. Although the study showed a 26 minutes increase in REM sleep after being deprived of 30 minutes of REM sleep implying that sleep debt won’t be paid off after a single night of deeper sleep, maintaining a consistent sleep cycle is more effective to long term improvement in sleep than paying off sleep debt as fast as possible.

Improving Sleep:

Ultimately the best way to improve sleep is to track your sleep in a sleep log and modify your habits based on what you record.

Keeping a Sleep Log:

A sleep log should be filled out as early as possible each day after waking up. A basic sleep log should include the times you go to bed, when you fall asleep, when you wake up, and when you finally get out of bed. A sleep log also works as a way to plan when you want to commit to falling asleep and wake up and seeing how well you stick to that commitment. The sleep log can either be kept in a booklet or on a digital spreadsheet using Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. In a later section there will be a sample sleep log with additional options.

Activities Before Going to Bed:

There are multiple things that people do before bed that can disrupt sleep. Before going to bed you should spend at least 30 minutes away from bright sources of light. This includes laptop or mobile phone screens. If you feel you need to do something on one of these devices you can turn down the screen brightness. A good way to tell if a screen is to shine it on yourself in front of a mirror in darkness and see if you can make out any features. If you can make out all of your facial features then the screen is probably too bright. You should also do an activity that is relaxing such as reading or meditating. You should also avoid eating or drinking anything within an hour and a half of going to bed and avoid anything containing caffeine, alcohol, or nicotine about 4 hours before bed since these substances can disturb sleep.

Activities After Waking Up:

The most important aspect of waking up is getting and staying out of bed as soon as possible. Keeping an alarm clock away from the bed so you have to get up to turn it off. After turning off the alarm clock people are usually tempted to to go back to bed. In order to prevent this you should plan out something to do right after you wake up. This should be something you want to do and is comfortable like sitting on a couch watching netflix. If you still have trouble staying out of bed after waking up you should write a reminder and put it next to your alarm clock to remind you what you planned to do after waking up.

Get Started Now:

Recording Sleep:

As you’re reading this open up a new spreadsheet using Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. Fill out the spreadsheet like the sample below.

Date	(Today’s Date)	(Tomorrow’s Date)	Etc...
Time I went to bed last night:
Estimate of how long I was in bed before falling asleep
Time I woke up:
Time I finally got out of bed::
Total Time in bed	(Row5 - Row2)
Weeklong average
Total Time asleep	(Row4 - Row3)
Weeklong average
Sleep efficiency (time asleep per time in bed)	Row6 / Row8
Weeklong average

Additional Options:

The above table is very basic and doesn’t take into account individual factors. There are some additional options if an you have additional sleep issues. For example if you wake up periodically during the night you should put a row for amount of times you woke up last night and a row for the average time it took for you to fall back asleep. If you find yourself consistently waking up earlier than you planned you should put in a row for that so you can adjust your future bedtime.

Planning:

In order for this to work you will have to continually fill out the sleep log so you can adjust your habits based on where you are having difficulty. In order to commit to filling the sleep log out you should write down a note to remind yourself and put it near your computer. You should also set your alarm for the same time every week and have something planned to do as soon as you wake up.

What to do Next:

As you fill out the sleep log you should think about how to adjust your habits to improve your sleep. For example if you find that you are spending a long time in bed before falling asleep you should start to go bed later until you fall asleep quickly after going to bed. As time goes on your habits will improve and you won’t need to take as many precautions. You will be able to wake up at the same time every day without an alarm clock and fall asleep quickly after going to bed.

Part 2