Sleep Cycle 🔁

🥱 Core Sleep: Supercharge Your Focus
💤 REM Cycle: How To Get Better At Sleeping (feat. Andrew Huberman)

I look at life in three buckets: Planning, action, and recovery.

Everything you do (should) fall into one of those. And all should be in balance.

Though we’re programmed to believe action and production should be our only domains, that notion couldn’t be further from the truth.

To effectively plan and take action, you need focus.

In order to properly focus, you need good sleep.

So what happens when you perfect your sleep, increase your focus and pursue your goals?

You win everything.

Incredible Sleep in 5 Steps 😴

Your ability to sleep and focus (yes, it’s a skill) can be developed, just like speaking a language or getting better at pickle ball.

I use sleep and focus interchangeably because they are quite similar brain-states.

Mastering sleep and focus can be tricky, because they often work against each other.

When you’re trying to sleep, a wheelbarrow of thoughts can roll through your head without any warning.

You’re laser-focused on your goals and aspirations for the next five years with no issue. The vision couldn’t be clearer.

Sleep, on the other hand, (the reason why you went to bed…) feels even further.

And then, during daytime, when it’s clearly time to focus, dreamland floats toward you through the clouds.

Go figure.

Everyone remembers those drowsy school days, when algebra faded into obscurity and napping took precedent.

Both sleeping and focus are states of consciousness that can’t just be switched on.

To get there, your actions must be carefully curated and nurtured with an environment of calm, stillness and mindful presence.

Let’s explore a few ways to cultivate that.

Attention ⚠️

There is a lot of competition for your attention. 

The entire economy is effectively bolstered by what humans are paying attention to and believing in.

What you choose to pay attention to, and focus on, is very powerful. It determines your reality in a direct way.

That’s the big point I want you to take away from this issue — what you pay attention to is EVERYTHING.

It is the ONLY thing. How else can I emphasize this … Just remember that, okay?

Your reality is entirely moldable, like a ball of clay. 

It’s what you make of it, and more specifically, what you’re paying attention to.

Social media use and exposure to short-form content have trained our brains to lose focus after just 8 seconds.

Quite frankly, many interactions seem to be cooked after four seconds.

Fried attention spans the reason why so many people are so spaced out and zombified — they just can’t pay attention to anything outside of their addictive, algorithm-driven feeds.

It’s the reason corporations and mainstream media are easily manipulating what we feel, consume and believe, but that’s a story for another time …

1. Wear a hoodie 🥷🏽
When I’m reading, writing or studying, I wear a hoodie to literally narrow my focus.

2. Box Breathing 😮‍💨

A breathing technique that clears your mind, soothes your body, and increases your focus.

Follow along a Box Breathing session for a few minutes whenever you want to focus or chill out.

3. Parkinson’s Law ⏰

Set yourself a deadline on a given task.

Tell a colleague or partner to hold you accountable for that deadline.

“Hey, I’ve been dreading this paperwork, but I told myself I’d complete it by next Monday. Could you check in with me about it then?”

I bet you won’t want to let them down.

4. The Pomodoro Method 🍅

This is a time-management technique using 25-minute stretches of focused work, broken by five minute breaks. 

Start a timer for 25 minutes when you’re ready to do focused work.

When the timer goes off, get up and take a five minute break. I sometimes do 10.

🌟Bonus: Try a Box Breathing session while on your break.

How to Get Better At Sleep (feat. Andrew Huberman) 👨‍🔬

Sleep is THE foundation of our mental and physical health and performance in all endeavors.

No one is perfect about sleep, but it’s one of those things you want to strive for perfection with. 

Reach for the stars, and you’ll land on the moon.

Physically, sleep allows the body to repair itself.

Muscle growth, tissue repair, and hormone regulation all happens during sleep.

Dreams help regulate emotions.

Your weight and blood sugar are managed during deep sleep

Mentally, sleep is just as vital. It supports neurological functions such as memory consolidation, cognitive abilities, and emotional regulation.

Big brain stuff.

Without sleep, everything suffers and falls apart.

It’s like the glue holding our bodies, emotions and brain function together.

Did you get that? Sleep is good for pretty much everything.

I’ve devised a blueprint for sleep Inspired by Andrew Huberman, a popular neuroscientist and podcaster.

His breakdown is sure to … put you to sleep. 

Let’s dive in.

Red & Andrew Huberman’s Guide to Great Sleep 🛌

🔄 Regularity is key! Wake up at the same time each day and go to sleep when you first start to feel sleepy. Pushing through the sleepy late evening feeling and going to sleep too late is one reason people wake at 3 am and can’t fall back asleep.

☕️ Avoid caffeine within 8-10 hours of bedtime. Some experts say 12-14 hours. I’ve noticed caffeine totally disrupts my sleep, so I avoid it entirely.

⏰ Limit daytime naps to LESS THAN 90 min, or don’t nap at all. Naps are like the little cousins of sleep. Like Scrappy Doo to Scooby.

I highly encourage them, but as any experienced napper will tell you, they can be unpredictable. There’s no telling if you’ll wake up in a funk (or totally disoriented and psychotic) from sleeping too long.

🌞 Within 30-60 minutes of waking up, go outside and view sunlight. Do that again in the late afternoon, prior to sunset. This will set your circadian clock correctly, and release the appropriate wakefulness and sleep hormones at the times you want them.

☁️On bright, cloudless days: view morning and afternoon sun for 10 min; on cloudy days: 20 min; very overcast days 30-60 min. You need more sun and outdoor time when there’s less sun. If you live someplace with very minimal light, consider an artificial daytime simulator source. I use this SAD lamp.

😎Don’t wear sunglasses for this practice. Contact lenses and eyeglasses are fine.

☀️No, you don’t have to look directly at the sun, and never look at ANY light so bright it is painful to view!

That said, you can’t wear a brimmed hat, sunglasses and remain in the shade and expect to “wake up” your circadian clock. Bask in those rays!

🧘🏾‍♀️ If you have sleep disturbances, insomnia, or anxiety about sleep, try doing Yoga Nidra or NSDR protocols.

🌠 If you wake up in the middle of the night (which is normal to do once or so each night) but you can’t fall back asleep, consider doing an NSDR protocol when you wake up.

🚨 Avoid viewing bright lights between 10 pm and 4 am. Dim the lights in your home! Viewing bright lights of all colors are a problem for your circadian system.

Set the mood of sleep by creating a dark environment. Blue blockers can help a bit at night, but still dim the lights. Candlelight and moonlight are fine.

😳 Expect to feel really alert ~1 hour before your natural bedtime. This is a naturally occurring spike in wakefulness that sleep researchers have observed.

Don’t freak out if it happens. It will pass!

❄️ Keep the room you sleep in cool and dark.

Your body temperature needs to drop by 1-3 degrees to fall and stay asleep effectively. Body temperature increases are one reason you wake up.

Thus, keep your room cool and remove blankets as needed.

💊 Supplements: You might consider taking these (30-60 min before bed):

• 145mg Magnesium Threonate or 200mg Magnesium Bisglycinate

• 50mg Apigenin

• 100-400mg Theanine

• (3-4 nights per week I also take 2g of Glycine and 100mg GABA.)

🥃 Alcohol messes up your sleep, as do most sleep medications.

🦉Late night scrolling and bright lights are a bad bet for falling asleep.

🌙Occasional nights out or missing sunlight here and there is not a big deal, so don’t obsess about that. However, if we drift from these and the other behaviors for too long, we start to suffer.

So whatever your life goals and schedule are, master your sleep.