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

The Purpose of this Blog

Over the last few years I have felt like my potential has stagnated. I have constantly trying to improve myself or some aspect of myself but ultimately giving in to idleness. My first year of university started off well. I was getting good grades and generally maintaining a somewhat healthy lifestyle. However as time went on my grades started to fall, I worked out and groomed myself less, and my mood decreased. I tried many things to improve myself so this wouldn’t continue. I would go to seminars teaching good study habits and would start to apply what I learned only to drop those habits. For example one thing I was told a lot was to keep a planner to organize my time. When I tried to do this I would write things down but forget to check my planner consistently and follow it. This made me frustrated with myself. Over time the frustration from failing to keep following the things I wrote in my planner outweighed any temporary benefit I got and I stopped trying at all. This process became typical for me. I would try to develop a good or productive habit and not be consistent with it leading to failure and frustration with myself which would make me lose all motivation for even trying to develop that habit. I had resigned myself to believing that I was incapable of developing any new good habits because if I was capable I would have already chosen to develop them. This kept me from putting effort into fixing any issues I had. The worst issue I had that I tried to fix was my insomnia.

I can’t remember a time I ever didn’t have insomnia. Since I was young I would spend 1 to 2 hours in bed before I would finally fall asleep. I had thought that this was just normal and everyone was awake a long time in bed before falling asleep. Eventually I learned that the average time for a person to fall asleep was 15 minutes. I was really surprised by this because it meant I was losing about 2 days worth of time every month just laying in bed doing nothing. I tried to solve insomnia just by searching the internet for solutions. I tried a lot of the general advice such as not looking at a computer screen an hour before bed and getting up at the same time each day. I didn’t notice any difference in the time it took for me to fall asleep and had a lot of trouble keeping these habits so I gave up. Eventually my insomnia interfered with my academics. I would sleep through my alarm and miss class. I decided to get an appointment with a sleep specialist. I was expecting to just end up with a prescription to something like Ambien. Instead I got advice most of which I had already heard from looking online so I was pretty disappointed. However the specialist also gave me a recommendation for a book if I wanted more information about dealing with insomnia. I decided to get the book and read through it. The book was much more technical than any of the advice I had read online and included tables to fill out involving sleep scheduling and cognitive behavioral therapy. Like before I didn’t see any improvement with my sleep. I decided to keep trying anyway until I had filled out all the tables in the book. By the time I had filled out all the tables I noticed real improvement in my sleep. This inspired me to continue by remaking the tables on a spreadsheet and continue following the advice in the book. In about a month I had gone from taking 1.5 hours on average to about 45 minutes on average to fall asleep.

This was the first time I saw an observable, long lasting improvement in my life. So I’ve decided to be more proactive and start trying to improve my life and develop good habits again. This blog is one thing I am going to do in order to motivate myself to keep going. I am going to track my attempts at self improvement and as a record for things I develop to help me.