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- Hacker News
- I started tracking my sleep quality (measured by a smart watch) and caffeine consumption a few months ago. Turns out caffeine didn't make much of a difference for me. Other things that correlated much better with good sleep were avoiding alcohol, exercising and cold showers and reading before going to bed.
As the saying goes, measure first, optimize later.
- better coffee, better everything. but definitly and with ferocious certainty, not more coffee. more coffee is held in reserve for a power run, backed by protien loading, extra hydration and whatever else can help cushion the load, and is followed by some lazy down time to recover, hopefully squinting bleary eyed at a cheque and new number in my bank account and the sleep of the rightiously tired.by metalman
- I want to get better sleep but can not maintain a proper schedule due to university, 2 days a week it's waking up at 8 AM and otherwise 10 AM/11 AM.
I usually have coffee at Morning and a light coffee at 5 PM, it generally helps to do more work because I feel like I want to sit and work. Otherwise I'd dopamine max or play a sport.
Any tips on improving sleep? (It's simply not possible to follow a strict schedule due to multiple deadlines of so many things)
by mostlyk - Wake up at the same time every day.by satvikpendem
- As the others have commented, wake up at the same time every day. It's really important. It will help. It will take weeks or months to help, don't decide it's not working after a few days.by Schiendelman
- Why does it have to be 10 AM otherwise? (i.e. why can't it be 8 AM every day?)
I also get up at 6 AM every day because I have to on some days.
by steve1977 - >Normally I’d drink 4, sometimes 5 large cups of coffee throughout the day (I say cups but it’s literal tea mugs), and it wasn’t until the third I really could get going. Didn’t feel jittery or anything like that, mostly different shades of tired.
This behavioral pattern describes a nontrivial caffeine dependence, not the effects of standard daily coffee consumption.
by scoofy - I'm sure it's different for everyone, but I can only tolerate a tiny amount of coffee now. Like brewing 6-10 grams of beans, once per morning. But even then, after a month or so, it definitely results in generally low energy, worse sleep etc... And I really don't like how it's the first thing that I MUST do when I wake up.
I ultimately have to detox, which I find takes few weeks. And then I'll feel great for a few months "sober".
But I really do love cofeee - I even roast it myself in small batches. So, I inevitably end up drinking it again and the cycle continues.
Life is definitely better without it.
by nchmy - Interesting coincidence - I’ve been drinking only one cup of coffee in the morning for the past month or so.
Used to drink one in the morning and one immediately after lunch. Couldn’t really tell the difference in sleep quality and to be fair I’m waking up more frequently in the past 2 weeks, but I guess that has to do more with heat than anything else.
Listened to many podcasts trying to learn more about this and they all seem to argue that it’s actually more important when you drink coffee. If you get your last coffee right after lunch your body will have almost no caffeine circulating in the system by the end of the day and that will make you sleep better.
by mattrighetti - Well I think the key point is that caffeine has a half life of 6 or 7 hours in adults. So 4 coffees before 10am is worse than one coffee at 2pm. That's how I look at it anyway. Regardless, I limit myself to 2 cups before 8am. Now I notice even a late afternoon green tea wrecking my sleep. Can't believe I spent all those years drinking 5 cups well into the afternoon...by shoobiedoo
- Whenever I stop drinking coffee for a few days or even months, I find that it becomes harder to wake up. I seem to sleep a lot heavier, but in the morning it's difficult to open my eyes as they feel heavy.
It doesn't matter if I have 1 cup in the morning or drink coffee all day. As long as I have it in my system from the previous day, it's very easy to wake up the next day.
by CapsAdmin - Could be catching up on long term sleep deficiencyby ShinyLeftPad
- Do you track exactly how much sleep you actually get? Like with a device, not with a journal. That sounds like you may be aren't getting enough sleep, consistently.by Schiendelman
- For many people this might make a massive difference. But people are not equally sensitive to caffeine.by majorbugger
- Fully agree. I can drink coffee until 6pm and soft drinks until 9pm without impact to my sleep. There's little point in me moderating my caffeine intake.
Light, sleep time regularity, and exercise make a much more noticeable difference. That's where I should spend effort if I want to improve my sleep.
by voxgen - Recently cut out cannabis, cbd, coffee and all alcohol and its shocking how different your sleep becomes. There needs to be more research done on stimulant free brains and my theory of how better our brains are at "taking the trash out" at night when not pumped full of quick/easy dopamine.by Mwntalhwalth
- > Recently cut out cannabis
I've found if I cease cannabis use by 5pm each day that it doesn't impact my sleep (or ability to dream and remember them).
I also need to be done exercising (strength or cardio) by late morning to not have an impact on sleep.
Finally, supplementing magnesium with dinner has probably made the biggest impact on increasing restful sleep, in agreement with this recent discussion:
by swed420 - Cutting coffee to just the morning definitely helped me.
My problem now is that if I think of anything vaguely interesting in the evening then my brain refuses to stop thinking about it. That and restless legs.
Evening if my main time for hobby projects so having them lead to disrupted sleep is really annoying. Any tips?
by foft - > That and restless legs.
Magnesium glycinate
by esseph - magnesium glycinate (and/or a liquid IV or equivalent before bed) helped my restless legsby chadd
- Wake up early and work on hobby projects in the morning. That's what I personally do sometimes.by mightyham
- I always aim to stop doing anything with high cognitive load at least half an hour before getting ready for bed.
Not necessarily no screen time, but coding stops, and the remaining time is spent gaming or watching TV, or I go to bed early and read.
by chedabob - I don't have any severe sleep problems, but I can relate to this issue. I find reading fiction helps. It's kind of difficult to dream about an interesting problem or a project, so the way I perceive the problem is that my brain doesn't slip into a narrative free-associative state. But if I can get myself to think about something "dreamable" then it's a different story. A book works b/c you already need to engage your imagination quite a bit as you read anywayby geokon
- > Cutting coffee to just the morning definitely helped me.
I drink half a mug (~200 ml) at ~2PM. I drink black tea rest of the day. Used to drink 2L/day at some point (it was a controlled period which required that).
> My problem now is that if I think of anything vaguely interesting in the evening then my brain refuses to stop thinking about it.
Use a notebook to take notes or ooze it out from your brain and try to learn meditation maybe? I do both, and both helps a lot to me.
Also, if doing exercise is not a very good option, try yoga. Looks serene but makes your body work.
by bayindirh - Magnesium, L-Theanine, and vitamin d. Make a regular bed time for yourself, and stop looking at screens 30 minutes before that time. Regular is more importantly than early, I.e. 11:30 is passable but only if it's always 11:30.by gentooflux
- Daily sports is the way, purges the body, rests the mind.by pilooch
- One of the unexpected impacts I experienced when going to zero cups per-day was that I suddenly started dreaming more often and more vividly. It was like how I remember sleep as a child, with nights full of weird and wonderful dreams, rather than only remembering one or two dreams a week as an adult.
I only had this effect when going completely zero caffeine, not when I cut down to one cup a day.
Unfortunately coffee is a vicious cycle, where I end up picking the habit back up on work trips. Before I know it I'm drinking a cup of coffee while writing a reply on HN about how great it was when I gave it up.
by kitbrennan - Oh, interesting, and I can relate!
Incidentally, after being a heavy coffee drinker (5-10 cups per day for many years), I cut my coffee intake to zero. This happened around 3 years ago. At the same time, I started using earplugs every night. Pretty much since I started doing that, I dream several times a week. Previously I had dreams maybe once per month. I suspected that this dreaming was the effect of using earplugs, but now I wonder if it might be the caused by me not drinking coffee (for the curious, I replaced coffee with green tea).
by baal80spam - I’ve always struggled with sleep. A few things that helped me (in order of importance)
- go to bed and get up at the same time every day. Getting up is more important than going to bed.
- no phone in bed, and limit stimulating activities (intense video games, programming, planning the vacation etc) to 90 minutes before bed. I read during that time but TV, cleaning, music, whatever works.
- a bad nights sleep will happen, often a few nights in a row. Be ok with that (easier said than done, I did CBT for this). Instead of lying in bed restless get up and watch TV, or read.
- leave the house for 30 minutes every day.
- journal as often as possible. Ideally daily, but a few times a eeek. Don’t ever read it back but just write down your feelings and the things on your mind. Do good and bad.
- exercise every other day.
- no coffee after lunch, and never more than 3 in a morning.
It’s a marathon, not a sprint and overall I have way less bad nights than I did before, and I don’t beat myself up as much for the bad nights.
by maccard - Huh, this'll probably do more than just improve sleep.by tigerlily