I have heard Matthew Walker talk about sleep, a lot. But I never really took him seriously. I find him preachy and his talks are always exaggerated. The first time I got really curious about sleep is when I heard this talk:

One of the silver linings of this depressing lockdown is that this has given me a lot of time to reflect and introspect, look inwards as they say. I have developed supernatural observational and organizational skills. I keep a record of almost everything these days, which is easy to do, as I’m never too far from a computer.

Thanks to growing up in india, I find it very difficult to sleep in complete silence, which is non-existent there. I fall asleep easily with a youtube video (usually an episode of QI) playing in the background. But apparently, even briefly looking at a bright screen (even in night-mode) degrades your sleep quality. I have been trying to switch to podcasts but I haven’t yet found one that I can hear while sleeping.

I have found several for my afternoon walks though. During one of the said walks, I came across this podcast where the guest is a sleep specialist. She presents a very simple experiment: do not use any alarms for a few days and make a record of your sleep schedule. I have since started documenting my going-to-bed and waking-up times. I had been using Fitbit for this but my Fitbit broke and in retrospect its data was highly inaccurate and I never analyzed it seriously.

The good news is that I don’t think that I’m a night owl. The sad news is that I’m probably extremely sleep deprived. I think I need at least 9 hours of sleep every night but I can’t remember the last time I got that much sleep on a regular basis.

Data is beautiful. Now getting enough sleep is one my top goals.