The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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It's occurred to me (more than once over the past few months) that, ever since I've gotten a smartphone about 9 years ago, my smartphone has been more or less the last thing I look at before I go to sleep at night and the first thing I look at when I wake up in the morning. I use my phone as an alarm clock, so when I reach over in the morning to turn it off, the temptation to look at Instagram for a few minutes before getting out of bed is almost impossible to resist. I often wake up briefly during the night, and sometimes I even look at my phone during these brief intervals as well. I don't know precisely how exposing myself to Reddit and Instagram junk food during my hypnagogic and hypnopompic states has impacted upon my mental and physical health, but I'd hazard a guess that it hasn't been a postive impact.
I'm now making a concerted effort to break this habit and practise better sleep hygiene. I've bought an old-fashioned analogue alarm clock and put my phone on the far side of my bedroom so it's out of reach while I'm in bed (I still set an alarm on my phone to go off fifteen minutes after the alarm clock itself, as a failsafe in case I sleep through the alarm clock). Roughly 30 minutes before I go to bed, I make the conscious decision to place my phone in its designated spot on the far side of the bedroom, then read a book (an actual printed book, no eBooks or Kindles for me) for half an hour before falling asleep. I do not permit myself to look at my phone until after I've gotten out of bed, taken my retainer out of my mouth etc. To keep myself honest, I've created a spreadsheet* to track how well I'm adhering to my goal. Every day that I succeed in reading at least a few pages of a book before falling asleep, and/or not looking at my phone before getting out of bed, I mark a check against that day. The goal is to get to 21 consecutive days doing at least one (preferably both), after which I'm hoping they'll come as second nature.
*Which I access on my phone; yes, I appreciate the irony.
Great to hear! I've been doing something similar for about a year now and it helps quite a lot. You can definitely stick with it if you work on it.
A few other things that have helped me with phone addiction are putting it into grayscale, and just turning it off when I don't need it on for work. I try to have at least one chunk of 3 hours per week with my phone off. It may not seem like much, but especially if you set that time aside intentionally to really get into whatever you're doing, it feels great.
That's a great idea, I'm going to try to do that as well.
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You can do it. In fact I did this for a long time, setting my phone up on the far end of my room, and it helped my sleep quality tons.
Now I realize I put my phone charger back by my bed recently. Foolish! I'm gonna go move it back right now.
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I'm jealous of your progress. I would recommend to anyone looking to repair their sleep patterns to do what you've roughly done (I cheat and use a Kindle Paperwhite with no blue light). My only other recommendation is to cut down on caffeine intake. Exercise during the day (not too late or too strenuous) can also help regulate sleep.
I gave up caffeine for a month and slept like a baby.
I'm a hard-core caffeine addict. Headaches, irritability, general inability to focus without a cup of ambrosia of the gods (or "coffee" as some call it) in the morning. But I cut off around 11am or so. So I sleep well and don't generally feel tired, except for feeling tired due to exhausting sleep disrupting parenthood issues.
Were you an afternoon drinker? Or did cutting off morning coffee help resting?
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Right? It's a big deal. The casualisation of caffeine is a very sneaky thing. It's a drug, harder than a lot of nootropics and it should be treated as such.
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When I was in Germany briefly, drinking coffee shortly before bed seemed quite common, you’d be at a party or even a very small gathering and someone would routinely make a pot of filter coffee at midnight or 1am. It didn’t seem to impede sleep much, I found I could drink even a double espresso and fall asleep less than an hour later.
My mom falls asleep faster after having tea or coffee. It's rather funny.
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