This is Expert Habits, a regular column in which thinkers, leaders, and other high performers talk about the habits and routines that help them live better lives.
Why do we sleep? Dr. Matthew Walker, a podcasterWrote by sleep technology entrepreneur, and professor of neuroscience and biomedical engineering at UT Dallas Best-selling pop-science book of 2017 This is the answer to that question.
Dr. Walker says, “Twenty years ago, the absurd answer was: ‘Well, you sleep to satisfy sleep,’ which is the equivalent of saying ‘Well, you eat to satisfy hunger.'” “No, you don’t eat to satisfy hunger. You eat for all kinds of physical reasons.”
He says the same applies to sleep as well. Per Walker, who has studied brain performance and sleep for the past two decades, notes that everything from our appetite to cardiovascular dynamics like blood pressure are adversely affected by a lack of proper sleep. study is showedFor example, men who consistently sleep five hours or less a night have significantly lower testosterone levels, which reduces their fertility. Even more worrying: Nearly one-third of adults in the US get less than the recommended amount of sleep (at least seven hours) each night, According to the Centers for Disease Control.
Despite his wealth of knowledge, Dr. Walker has also struggled to get adequate rest. “Just because you know a lot about sleep doesn’t mean you’re immune to the vagaries of things like insomnia,” he says. “And I’ve probably had two significant bouts of insomnia in my lifetime. Luckily, I know I have all the tools I need to get over it quickly.”
Below Dr. Walker details the importance of his nighttime mood lighting, why he always soaks his hands in warm water before bed, and why he maintains a consistent sleep schedule. “Regularity is king,” he says.
Set a “to-bed” alarm an hour before bed
“You already have an alarm that decides when you get up. Notice what’s missing: Nothing decides when you go to sleep. Waking up is guarded. Bedtime is the most unguarded boundary of your day, and everything intrudes upon it. Another email. Another episode. Another scroll. The hour you want to protect gets attached for 10 minutes at a time, until it’s over. In bed. The alarm going off is the border guard.
“But the deeper reason resides in the architecture of sleep itself. Falling asleep is not a switch you flip. It’s a descent. A plane doesn’t slide down the runway from thirty-five thousand feet a second—it starts its approach long before the wheels touch down, drops down, loses altitude in a slow, deliberate glide. Your brain does the same thing (or should do the same, but many of us in society believe that sleep is a It’s like a light switch. The warning signal your body clock has been broadcasting since the morning has finally calmed down, none of it happens on command.
“So when the alarm goes off an hour before lights out, it’s not telling you to go to sleep. It’s telling you to start descending – at the same time every night, handing you back the 60 minutes you need to descend. You can’t land a plane that has never started descending.”
Conduct a Nightly Digital Detox
“Even if it’s 30 minutes before bed, or just 15 minutes. Some kind of separation and blast radius distance between turning off your engagement with digital technology and trying to fall asleep would be better. And the greater the distance between those two things, usually the greater the efficacy. So the dosage and timing make the drug.
