Maybe it's anxiety or something related, and sometimes it's worried thoughts, but often it's just running through scenarios. Video games, media plots, what I need to do next week. My brain is far more active after 10pm, and I am personally more motivated. I get a burst of energy but it's not really the right time to clean the house so lying in bed has it all go to my head.
I've come to the conclusion I can't sleep with an active train of thought going on. It sounds like meditation should help but I haven't had much luck there. Maybe I just need to try more often until it becomes second nature.
One thing that definitely helps me is to have a routine for bedtime. A hot shower, bed preheated in winter (heated underblanket), keeping the room cold and reading a book while lying in bed. I typically pick technical material as it's less likely to keep me up all night with an engrossing story. At some point, I notice that the mind is tired and I am able to gather words from the page but not comprehend the material. I then set the book aside, turn off the bedlamp and try to sleep. Usually, this is sufficient and I fall asleep in no time. Some people just fall asleep while reading. For me, it's reading. For a friend of mine, it's watching a TV show. He has something playing on the computer or TV and falls asleep while watching it.
The idea is to get the body relaxed (hot shower in my case) and then do something (devoid of stress) that keeps ones mind off the hustle and bustle of one's day.
Also, going to bed and rising at (roughly) the same time everyday will also get the body and the mind trained to be sleepy at that time and it'll get easier to fall asleep.
EDIT: I naturally tend to drift to a nocturnal routine if left to my own inclinations. The hardest part of what I wrote above is just pulling myself away from the day to go to bed at what most would consider a reasonable hour. If you can not convince yourself that sleep is important and commit to maintaining discipline in your sleep/wake routine, no "technique", "advice" or "substance" will be effective on the long run.
From time to time I also add a 5-minute meditation to the routine and it works quite well for me.
Then after closing my eyes I go through the stuff I just read (to avoid getting stressed out over real-life stuff), and after a while will have one or more thoughts that make no sense.
That’s the sign that falling asleep will happen very soon. From there on I don’t know what happens next.
Usually I'm awake in my bed for at least an hour. Sometimes two. I just really can't stop thinking. It's not anxiety in my case.
Any people here who were in a similar situation and were able to get rid of it, or make significant improvement?
The biggest one for me was physical exercise. Working out hard for 1-3 hours after work (most people can't put in 3 hours, I know) left me sufficiently physically exhausted that whatever mentally engaging activities I got into later, I was crashing by midnight no matter what. Doing this after work was also critical as it helped create a clean break from work (where many stressful or technically engaging thoughts come from for me). Exercising in the morning did not have the same effect.
Some examples include:
- If I found myself stranded on an island, what kinds of challenges would I have to overcome and how?
- If I could improve the magic system of Harry Potter, what changes would I introduce?
- If I were given a device that I could use to turn back the time to 6 am once everyday, how could I use it to my best advantage while avoiding any pitfalls?
- If I were given a small 12x12x12 room with an unlimited budget to create a living space for me to be confined in, how would I use that space?
These would be the kinds of things that I could think about for a while before finding myself fast asleep. Not sure if this would work for anyone else, but maybe you can give it a try?
Because I've already seen the episodes, they don't stimulate any thinking. They're comedy, so all happy and lighthearted. Well written comedy is funny on multiple-goarounds, but other than some chuckles the point is mostly to help me fall asleep happy. On a bad night I'll listen to two episodes, but mostly I'm asleep halfway through the first episode.
My go to shows fwiw are It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and The Office. Parks and Recreation also works. It's OK to have plot, as long as you already know the plot / have seen the show enough, so you aren't trying to watch the episode.
Since some of these shows moved off Netflix I've had to buy them on Google Play store. FWIW Google Play's player is better than amazon video's for mobile (it's basically youtube's player).
The wireless earbuds I use are these: $35, https://www.amazon.com/Soundcore-Bluetooth-Headphones-Waterp... and they're connected by a cord so you don't lose one of the buds when you sleep (used to happen to me). I have two sets of earbuds now, because I really struggle to sleep without it now that it's part of my routine and I can't risk them not being charged.
Huh, lucky one. Some stay awake until morning.
I know that some people find it strange or even perverted, but try listening to ASMR. First find an artist and a specific 1-2h long video that calms your mind at day while you work or read, and then use it for going to sleep (use comfortable earbuds). They have special videos for sleep, but you may use any of them. You’ll skip a handful of artists and asmr types before you find that one, so be patient. Also try languages you don’t speak (french, chinese). Top, “general purpose” artists is a good start.
Also use browser youtube version and adblock that surely blocks youtube ads, or they will jumpscare you, and turn off autoplay.
Be engaged during the day. Use that mental energy. Whatever that means, but challenge yourself and exhaust yourself.
Exercise which is just generally really good for your mental and physical state. Do note that working out later at night can make the problem worse since exercises also causes stress chemicals in your brain and it takes a few hours for those to clear.
Melatonin[1] an hour before bed. It's safe, non-habit forming, dirt cheap, very mild and surprisingly effective in my experience. I take it as needed instead of every night, but I know a few folks take it every night.
[1] - https://slatestarcodex.com/2018/07/10/melatonin-much-more-th...
I have to be completely exhausted in order to get to sleep reasonably quickly after going to bed. I might try meditation at some point... but yes my mind as well suddenly turns on. I also seem to drift off lightly for some period of time and then I find myself unexpectedly awake again and my mind is obnoxiously alert and ready to grind through thoughts.
The next day is usually not enjoyable.
I also drift off and notice it and jerk wide awake. Sometimes with hypnagogia, shadows take the form of bad people or I see spiders hovering or running across my vision. It's a bit disturbing and definitely doesn't help when I get an adrenaline response. I seem far more prone to it when I'm very tired and parts of my brain are shutting down but this one stubborn conscious area keeps me up.
I've tried exercise both during the day and the evening in case it's a physical thing, but it either doesn't help or makes it worse. Sometimes my active brain state amplifies physical aches and pains and itches and it just runs away from me and is very distracting.
I think what might really be missing is a sense of closure or achievement. A lot of things in life can give gratification without meaning, but the days I do something like finish fixing the shower or putting up shelves, it does seem a bit easier to switch off at night. Cooking is the closest I get most days.
Don't be discouraged if it's not working right away. It has to work but you may need months of training before it starts to work well.
The hardest challenge is to be completely cold to the thoughts, no matter how important they may seem, ignore them and return to counting the breaths.
I've tried counting back from 5000 slowly on each breath. I got very far before stopping. Going backwards with large numbers is meant to take a bit more mental energy I think.
I've done the 1-10 then reset, we did that in Yoga at the gym. I've also done the box breathing where you breathe in and out slowly but at different rates.
I think mostly it will come down to practice like anything else. I get upset if it doesn't work but I enjoy ruminating so it's hard to let go. In many of these techniques I was very relaxed but still had an attentive core stopping the sleep from happening.
"Me and ADHD"
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25992390
I'm not diagnosing you or anything but that thread put me on to the fact I might have that type of wiring too ... it would explain a lot ( for me ) and possibly some of that ^ ?
[ EDIT ] Anxiety is hands down my primary problem, but sometimes some issues can obfuscate others, and cause deductive fallacies by encouraging you to explain everything away under the umbrella of that first cause.
My mum also had insomnia for years. She did get some sleeping pills as a twice a week "reset" and I think a lot of mental issues are exacerbated by poor sleep leading to weak willpower so that could help. But she said the ADHD meds helped a lot with her sleep too.
This is like someone who doesn't have depression telling someone with depression to 'read a good book' ;)
Meditation is effectively what the article is talking about. Not following those thought avenue's.
Reducing artificial light after sundown and cutting out caffeine and listening to slow placed instrumental music (key being that there are no vocals/lyrics for the brain to attach to) has fixed my "awake brain" issue. Try to also avoid screen time before and in bed as each "new" thing you see (lets say, hackernews post titles) will activate your brain for a few minutes and keep it awake long after it has seen them. I use a single tea candle and switch off all other sources of light - it emits more than enough light! Basically you want to try to limit any inputs and have a consistent winding down ritual.
After a while the brain will accept this new ritual and will immediately get into a relaxed state if the lights go down and it hears a certain pace of music. For me, hang drum + flute music is the best, followed by calm asian instruments. When you listen to the same calm playlist over and over at bedtime, eventually you will know them. When you get to this stage, the brain will get bored with them at first - then you can double down and hum with the song (if you live alone of coarse). Try not to "talk" to yourself internally during your winding down ritual as it will keep the brain awake (don't try to convince the brain it is time to sleep, it will resist and fight back with more awareness).
Do this for 2 weeks and see if your night ritual improves. Obviously adjust it for your circumstances. Make it your special me-time. Choose the music to be unique and don't play those songs at other times. If you brain really wants to have a chat, ask it how it's been, tell it you are thankful for it and you will see it again in the morning! Make it your friend, don't fight it. I mean it. Be gentle and caring towards it, like you are it's father/mother, accept it for what it is.
The whole ritual last from 20 to 60 minutes, depending on how tired you are and how much conflict you accumulated during the day (conflicts being work frustrations, traffic frustrations, sexual frustration, doing things against your ideal solution, politics/news). These things all put pressure on the internal state and most people relieve those pressures either by sexual release, exercise or drugs/alcohol/food before bed. Having a self care ritual is another option. Sleep will do most of the work for us, but sleep is so much better if is not forced but rather gently simmered in. Fresh bed sheets & hot shower can also affect how comfortable the bed feels. A good mattress also helps. Natural smells also helps, so a drop of rose geranium, rubbed on your skin. Again, if you pick a specific flavour/smell to make part of your ritual, use it only during your winding time ritual and not during the day. You want to let the brain associate the music and smells and other environmental factors with "time to relax mode". Be consistent.
The thing that disturbs my peace the easiest is caffeine, even a single cup in the morning can effect my night time ritual.
Anyway. The above kind of what works for me, it's not medical/scientific based, hope it helps. Self care goes a long way!
For the rest - every time I read something like this I think about my wife, for two reasons.
One - any ritual will force her to do the same and play along but that might be asking a lot if its against her natural inclinations. She tends to want to stay up late (like me) and gets some of her best work done then. If I go to bed alone, then if she is still in the house (so I know she is coming along later) that anticipation alone is usually enough to keep me awake.
Two - she doesn't need any of that. Why can she fall asleep in 5 minutes after reading her phone in bed and breaking every single rule people give me? It always bothers me and I get very jealous :)
I think a nice collective analogue to this is Alfred Whitehead's observation that 'civilisation advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them'. Progress is being made by holistically integrating knowledge in a way that makes it sort of ambient.
It also reminds me of a slightly snarky article why all the people in the rationalist cult never seem to actually be successful at anything other than rationalism. It's precisely because consciously thinking is easy, it's the integration of knowledge into the whole is what's difficult but actually necessary.
When your mind is going hither and thither, discrimination will never be brought to a conclusion. With an intense, fresh and undelaying spirit, one will make his judgments within the space of seven breaths. It is a matter of being determined and having the spirit to break right through to the other side.”
Initially from ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hagakure
But taken from a site [0] I just found in the process that apparently has nothing to do with the OS and informs us that ;
"Ubuntu is a concept that we have in our Bantu languages at home. Ubuntu is the essence of being a person. It means that we are people through other people. We cannot be fully human alone. We are made for interdependence, we are made for family. When you have ubuntu, you embrace others. You are generous, compassionate. If the world had more ubuntu, we would not have war. We would not have this huge gap between the rich and the poor. You are rich so that you can make up what is lacking for others. You are powerful so that you can help the weak, just as a mother or father helps their children. This is God's dream.”
- Ubuntu, as explained by Bishop Desmond Tutu
[0] https://ubuntutheory.blogspot.com/2008/08/7-breaths.html
That is also why the logo of Ubuntu the operating system is three people holding hands, which kind of blew my mind when I first heard about it. Prior to that I thought the logo was just some lines and circles in a pretty pattern with no specific meaning.
That said, most people are probably "experts"--in the sense that their intuitions can often outdo their conscious trains of thought--in more than a few things. I'll bet that drivers in their 40's make better decisions with instinct than conscious thought. The same probably goes for middle aged home cooks. But teenagers should go over their driving lessons in their heads, and stick to the recipes.
Reminds me a bit of a quote I heard recently: "Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back."
"Tradition is a set of solutions for problems that don't exist anymore".
An example of the latter that immediately springs to mind is circumcision.
Of course, sometimes the underlying problem has gone away entirely or been dealt with by a different solution. Then you run into traditionalists defending ridiculous things with arguments that make no sense.
Interesting take. My first thought was that this relates to societal trust, a cornerstone of civilization. I can buy food from someone I've never met, and keep myself fed, 'without thinking'.
Related:
Pure trustlessness indeed has a massive computational and mental overhead. Some compromise (like the Lightning network, or even a central trusted banking institution) is essential to get anything done. (Even with Bitcoin, you’re trusting open source software, often an actual intermediary like Coinbase, etc... Try to do it without any crypto libraries whatsoever—writing it really from scratch—and it is an enormous project. How many people teach themselves Finite Field theory before doing Bitcoin because they take the trustlessness seriously?)
But then thinking about it, this is exactly the wrong way to train your brain. It's job isn't to evaluate every single position, but rather to train it in the form of a "neural network" to institutionally recognize good vs. bad positions, and to expand on that.
Looking at some high ranked players online, this seems to be the way they recognize positions and possibilities.
Similar concept is applied to programming, we call that concept abstraction.
do you have a link? would love to read this, and it probably applies to me :)
I wonder if this is due to errors happening and getting mixed into the search. Computers pretty monotonously improve with thinking time, and the algorithm is pretty simple once you have good intuition to guide it. However, a single memory error down a line will turn the whole thing to mush.
Many interview processes seem to favor how well a candidate can enumerate edge cases and problem spaces over effective risk assessment and cost management. They're both important to evaluate but often in practice the dumb solution is what my team ends up using because can be more maintainable, cheaper to build, easier to reason about, etc. Today my aim is to get my requirements, write as few lines of quality code in as short of a time as possible, test it, ship it and be done.
Narrow focus and the ability to scope things down to what exactly what matters helps a lot. I defeat over-analysis by meditation, intentional dumbness/willful ignorance, and flow state.
I don't think over-engineering is the only problem: shiny-new. Shiny-new syndrome wherein the typically junior programmer cannot help but jump from one new thing to the next, advocating that some new system must use the new tech that they recently discovered. While the enthusiasm is ok, working with people like this can be a drag.
Another problem: we are facebook too! In the sense that small companies heartily believe that they actually have problems at the scale of a company like facebook (or will ever get to that level). Again, hearing someone say, "We should do xyz because Netflix does it!" makes me want to give up on this profession.
A coarse rule of thumb from a few decades of my own experience in software development is that version 1 will be quick, dirty and (in retrospect) naive. Version 2 will improve it with what you learned the first time around. And version 3 tends to be the clean, solid, polished winner. I've learned to expect and encourage refactoring to arrive at this point.
In my experience, you often start with a somewhat over engineered solution. Then you take the (long) process of really understanding it and slowly distill it down. This is true for a new feature and also the whole codebase.
There are other coping mechanisms you can use, although some of them are arguably worse than procrastination (eg overengineering).
This is based on the assumption that more thinking == better understanding.
We have this one technical coding challenge. Most of the submissions are 1000+ LOC and quite heavily engineered. One submission though was 300 LOC, runs 3x as quick as everyone elses and is the only one to get 100% in our acceptance tests. The author was very self-deprecating about it - describing it as a quickly cobbled together submission.
I'm nearly 40 and find I over analyze the design of everything. Which is great when I'm architecting a high level software feature, but when I get to coding I'm almost at analysis paralysis over every, damn detail. I miss that sense of flow.
Now you probably shouldn‘t code golf either, but KISS works as an operating principle for a reason.
In the last few years, I started shifting my focus from what variety of cases to handle with an elaborate solution, to what possible cases I might be blocking with a simple solution. Gratuitous YAGNI was an important intermediate step in that process. It might not be very FAANG-friendly (or it might not scale to four-digits-engineers regardless of brand), but both in terms of real life performance and peer feedback, it's yielded very good results.
While the first is prone to becoming a bottomless pit of SWE-self-pleasuring; the latter is actually very useful in coming up with something that's cheap, easy and maintainable, but still flexible enough -- which doesn't necessarily mean extensible! Ease-of-refactoring is another flavor of flexibility, and that's where I found this kind of thinking beating YAGNI alone.
One actual drawback I see is that it makes DRY difficult to achieve, but the more people I work with, the more I'm becoming disillusioned with that anyway. It's such an overly adaptable dogma to generate work that is often pointless, and becomes harmful so easily. I think we found so much comfort in "don't type the same thing twice" (though I still try to keep it to 3) that we don't stop to think about "don't maintain the same information twice" anymore. But this is 3AM rambling, so I'll stop here.
You've already seen how to be a better SWE than most.
Now you just have to execute.
It's not obvious to me that it's psychological at all, and it seems to me that it's only reported as such because it makes a good news story.
the "mental toughness" argument cuts both ways. pulling out a win after two match points in a grand slam speaks as much to djokovic's own mental fortitude as it does to federer's lack thereof.
I would only have to choose among all the other match points he has won through the 20 grand slams he has won. Only considering Federer vs Djoko, Federer won 46% of the matches. There a lot of match points won there. Also, considering only Grand Slams, Federer won 6 out of 17. Not a great record, but still no negligible number of wins. And I would attribute that bad performance more to Djoko skills, and maybe also Djoko physical peak coinciding with Federer older age, than to any thing psychological.
But the stronger reason to stop reading is that, in the most generous interpretation, the author started to argue the benefits of “not thinking too much” by using a unfalsifiable claim about a very subjective interpretation of a fact, attributing causality to an anedocte that is far too complex to be resumed into a simplistic reason based on the author’s assumption. This seemed ridiculous to me.
It was obvious to me that the author didn’t have much of a science-informed take (my impression form the title) and was just doing unsubstantiated storytelling
EDIT: Actually the article is from 2012, so I assume its because many of Federer's best years were still ahead of him.
You think with your subconscious mind too. But this can do multiple things at the same time, way faster than the logical mind.
The harder you focus on a single thing, the more you ignore the entire system and the slower you perform.
It is not just instinct as the article say, a tennis player does not play by instinct because nobody knows how to play tennis when he is born.
It is by training that you develop intuition. If you train well you can perform well without thinking consciously. Training well is hard work and takes a lot of time too.
If you follow your instincts you are predictable and an easy prey. I can hunt or fish animals because they follow their instincts too well.
The hardest way to do something is complete conscious control of every step, the easiest way is something you can do perfectly on autopilot.
"Flow" is about being able to do something very well with almost minimal conscious control. (I would expand flow to being more than this, but it is at least a defining characteristic)
It can also be used to describe mental tasks and ways of thinking. An engineer has tacit knowledge that shapes their natural way of thinking and intuition. A novelist, a nurse, or a tailor, in contrast, will have very different mental structures.
Thinking about it, wouldn't the word "habit" cover it in English? It makes me smile to realize that our habits are so ingrained, we don't even realize we have a word for it :)
Sure, it's great if we could use Type 1 thinking for everything, but the problem is when things are counterintuitive. So what you really need is a good rule to follow to know when to engage in Type 2 thinking.
My current programming team is doing way too much Type 1 thinking.
However, enjoyment in a high-stake situation is too hard to achieve. For people like actors, athletes and musicians, confidence generated through enough practice seems to be the cure. Enjoyment is an aftereffect. For situations for which you have no way to practice, enjoyment just seems hard.
In my personal experience, both with musical performance and public speaking, the #1 thing that makes a difference in terms of how nervous I am during the performance is how well I know the material. The more I can "shut off my brain" and let rote memory handle the basics (correctness), the more room I have to take it further with nuance, dramatic arc, etc.
"In less dramatic ways the same principle applies to all of us. A fundamental paradox of human psychology is that thinking can be bad for us. When we follow our own thoughts too closely, we can lose our bearings, as our inner chatter drowns out common sense."
"To make good decisions in a complex world, Gigerenzer says, you have to be skilled at ignoring information. He found that a portfolio of stocks picked by people he interviewed in the street did better than those chosen by experts. The pedestrians were using the “recognition heuristic”: they picked companies they’d heard of, which was a better guide to future success than any analysis of price-earning ratios."
"How do you learn to unthink? Dylan believes the creative impulse needs protecting from self-analysis: “As you get older, you get smarter, and that can hinder you…You’ve got to programme your brain not to think too much.” Flann O’Brien said we should be “calculatedly stupid” in order to write. The only reliable cure for overthinking seems to be enjoyment, something that both success and analysis can dull. Experienced athletes and artists often complain that they have lost touch with what made them love what they do in the first place. Thinking about it is a poor substitute."
I had a computer science exam where you are allowed to bring any text book/reference book you wish, and any notes you've written yourself. The exam was long and hard yes, but it was also thorough. One of the more enjoyable exams i recall taking - vs all of the other types.
I guess it has merit if cheating of that nature is a big problem.
My arsenal for this includes: Beer, wine, wine coolers, hard cider, stoli vodka, malibu, rum, champagne, cbd isolate sublingual tincture, music, Hue mood lighting, candle-like scents, soft sheets, massage, MIV, cell phones in the microwave (faraday cage), and not talking about anything current.
If involved parties aren't relaxed, it's unlikely to be that good.
But it isn't the always greatest thing for the actual sex.
"Just be yourself" essentially means "Stop thinking... about how to look confident, how to impress her, etc." Such thinking usually yields the exact opposite effect.
From fiction, I might refer to the Wheel of Time series where Rand Al'Thor uses a trick to "find the void" in a way his father taught him. When you get overwhelmed from information and emotions, finding the void allows you to regain composure and think straight again.
In other skills, physical or mental, removing pressure and practicing more permits the same kind of growth and development.
It's total bullshit. It might work with some crap like a lottery or bets on “American Idol” winners, but to solve complex tasks you need more information and more experience. All the examples in this article are to impress not-so-well-educated people, level of TV-show, not higher.
When we make quick decisions in areas out of our expertise, we use the same logic as when we make decisions based on emotions, empathy, “intuition”. It's nothing more than a lottery.
Their first example is just about a mentally burnt out person, that's all. Yes, we should give a rest to our brains, but the advice “just don't think too much” is an idiotic oversimplification.
> They found that those who placed high trust in their feelings made better predictions than those who didn't. The result only applied, however, when the participants had some prior knowledge.
Which is exactly what you're saying so I'm uncertain why you're calling the article "total bullshit" when you're restating this critical part of it in your own comment and own words.
For example, they use as evidence the experiment (on a small group of people, without a control group, without attempts to repeat it - everything to be called anti-scientific), where they separate students, based on the color of their skin. Amazing start, right? And the whole article is filled with such fairy tales, not by scientific data.
It's from (2012)
If you have already put the thought required in, then when time is short simply go with it rather than rethink it.
If you haven't put that thought in, well then thinking "on the spot" is statistically unlikely to do any worse...
The trick is recognising situations where you have that advantage when under that pressure.
I've recently theorized the single most important factor for happiness and performance is being able to control your stress levels and increase/decrease your stress levels at will. It is not novel, but it helps me if I see my primary task as identifying which mechanisms can help me lower or increase stress. So far, meditation seems to have the best effect.
> The really significant education in thinking that we’re supposed to get in a place like this isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about
(Though snarky, this is a reasoned observation/opinion after reading the article in full)
It's weird how humans are so often suffering from depression, it seems like a larger brain is more the result of an organ gaining in size for all the bad reasons: anxiety, overthinking, mental illness, etc.
--- Cue the internet saying this isn't how quantum entanglement works #TheGame
It all depends on the risks.
