Dewi's Sleep System
Practical interventions that fixed my sleep
We sleep for ~30% of our lives. How well we sleep has a tremendous impact on our quality of life.
For most of my life, I’ve not slept well. When I was 10, I’d stay up all night reading books under my duvet, using my alarm clock’s bright blue display as a reading light. For each of the past 3 years, I’ve had exactly 6 hours 51 minutes of sleep on average.
I’m now sleeping more than 7 hours on a consistent basis. I’ve invested a LOT of time and effort into improving my sleep. I no longer get tired in the afternoon, and I DO get tired in the evenings when I want to go to sleep. It’s awesome.
Making sleep a priority is essential. I prioritise sleeping well above almost everything else.
This blog post provides an instruction manual for improving your sleep, based on everything I’ve learnt. I’ve tried most things, and this is what actually worked for me.
Start with the basics, then go up the levels if you still need them.
Let me know how it goes for you!
Quick summary
Decaf: stop drinking caffeine by 2pm
Go dark: avoid bright lights in the evening by using red lens glasses and red lamps
No screens: keep your phone and laptop away from your bedroom
Consistency: stick to a regular wakeup time
Cool room: use a light duvet and/or reduce your bedroom’s temperature by opening the window before bed
Level 1: Cheap Fixes
Have a consistent wake-up time
What time do you want to wake up at? For me, it’s 8am. This gives me enough time in the morning to do my morning routine, exercise, and commute to work in time for our 10am standup.
I try very hard to not change my wake-up time. Even if I go to bed late or can’t sleep, I will still wake up at 8am.
If you start moving your wake-up time because of late nights, you’ll fall into a spiral of being less tired the next evening, then not being able to fall asleep, so you move your wake-up time even later.
Your wake-up time is the anchor for your whole sleep routine. I start my evening routine at 11pm, 9 hours before my wake-up time. This gives me enough time to switch off in the evening from work.
Bright lights in the morning
Once you wake up, open your curtains and bask in the beautiful morning sunshine.
Consider stepping outside and getting some fresh air.
Bright light first thing in the morning will tell your body it’s daytime!
Drink less coffee
If you don’t sleep well the night before and you’re super tired in the afternoon, don’t solve it by drinking 5 coffees. Remember that you will soon become your future self: be kind to them.
Get a decaf coffee, swap coffee for tea, include some herbal tea in there (rooibos is lovely!), do whatever works so you consume less caffeine.
Avoid alcohol
Alcohol might help you fall asleep, but it’s terrible for your sleep quality.
My watch gives me a “sleep score”, and even after just 1-2 drinks, my sleep score drops by 20-30 points.
If you’re serious about improving your sleep, drink less alcohol, or cut it out entirely.
No late-night snacks or drinks
I try to avoid any food or drink after 7pm. I don’t always succeed at this, but I do most of the time.
You need to give plenty of time for your digestive system to process your food before going to bed, and you don’t want to wake up in the middle of the night to pee.
No phone in the bedroom
Smartphones are the enemy of sleep. You’re probably addicted to your phone. So am I. It’s not ideal.
I use AppBlock to make my iPhone unusable in the evening, and I keep my phone in a different part of the house. I never bring it into my bedroom in the evenings.
Buy a standalone alarm clock to get you out of bed. Put it on the other side of your room so you have to get out of bed to switch it off. Resist the urge to go back to bed.
Red lens glasses
Cavemen didn’t have bright screens and LED lamps.
We inundate ourselves with bright lights all day, extending late into the evenings, which ruins our circadian rhythm.
I work late, and my work involves staring at a bright computer monitor. I used to think my most productive period was from 10pm-2am, because I felt wide awake.
Buying red lens glasses was the single most impactful thing I’ve done for my sleep.
I put them on around 9pm, and for the first time in years, I feel tired before going to bed. It’s amazing.
They block out blue and green lights, and you can get them for £23 from Amazon, or you can get them on prescription here.
Keep your room cool
An hour before going to bed, open your window to let cool, fresh air into your room.
Your body needs to drop in temperature to fall asleep properly. Aim for 16-19°C.
Eye mask
Foam ear plugs
Back in the day when we needed to be super vigilant at night in case a bear ransacked our mud huts, it made sense for us to be light sleepers. A bear hasn’t ransacked my mud hut for a long while, so I want to dull myself to nighttime noises.
There are feisty foxes in my garden that fight during the night, and parakeets that sing at an ungodly hour. Damn them!
Solve this by wearing ear plugs. You can get cheap foam ear plugs on Amazon - try out a bunch of different ones to see what works for you.
Level 2: Advanced Sleeper
Red light bulbs
I’m writing this at 10pm. Walking past my house right now, you’d see a room emanating a spicy red glow.
All the bulbs in my bedroom and office are RGBW smart bulbs. At a set hour, they all go red, and sleep music starts playing out of my speakers. It’s a clear signal to my brain that it’s sleep time.
Darker screens
I like working, and I work late. To reduce the brightness of my screen, I use a chrome extension called “Dark Reader” in the evenings.
It turns every website into “dark mode”, even if the website doesn’t have a native dark mode.
This is a nice complement to wearing red lens glasses and having red lights on in the room.
Journaling
Being a human can be pretty stressful. We make mistakes all the time, we live in a crazy chaotic world, nothing makes sense.
I’ve found that reviewing the day, describing what I did, writing down how I’m feeling, and doing a “brain dump” into my journal has helped me reduce how much I ruminate in bed.
I journal in Airtable, but you could do this in any random app, a google doc, a notebook, or wherever works for you. Don’t stress about the format - just do it.
Meditation
Ommmmmm.
Meditation is another classic technique for helping you notice what your mind is doing, calm it down a bit, and start to slow down your thoughts in time for going to bed.
You could get a fancy meditation app, or you can just type in 5 minute meditation into Spotify. Again, just do what works - don’t stress about the format.
Breathe through your nose
There’s a reason why “mouth breather” is an insult.
Breathing through your nose has lots of health benefits. Breathing through your mouth can also make you snore. Bad for your partner’s sleep!
It’s a bit weird, but you can train yourself to breathe through your nose by taping your mouth shut with surgical tape. I did this before going to sleep for a few weeks, and now I breathe through my nose all the time (including while running! Which is a great feeling too).
Custom fitted ear plugs
Foam ear plugs are fine, but you know what’s better? An ear plug that is moulded to the exact shape of your ear canal.
If you’re in London, check out this or this. You have to go to a specific place, where someone will squeeze a bunch of gel into your ear to make the mould. It’s a weird experience.
I wear these 90% of the time. Sometimes I swap back to foam ear plugs for a night for variety, but the custom ear plugs are much more comfortable. I barely notice I’m wearing them, they don’t fall out, and they block out most noise.
Level 3: Sleeper Pro Max
Breathe clean air
200 years ago, we started this thing called the “Industrial Revolution” and it filled our lungs with soot.
If you live in a city, the air quality is probably bad.
I have two Xiaomi air purifiers at home and they’re great.
Blackout blinds
Eye masks are really annoying and they sometimes fall off your face. Then the blinding light from the sun that will one day engulf the earth wakes you up. I’m trying to sleep!
Upgrade your see-through curtains to a set of fitted blackout blinds. These block out 100% of light. It’s magic. It’s also a fun party trick to show your friends how dark your room is. I’m really cool.
I bought the non-smart versions of these - find whatever works for you.
You can make them “smart” in a DIY way by getting a blind motor. That’s another really super duper cool party trick - “Hey google, open the blind.”
And of course, make them open automatically in the morning and close automatically at night!
Buy a good mattress, pillow, and bedding
I don’t know how to buy a good mattress. It’s a terrible consumer experience: you can’t really test it beforehand; even going into a mattress shop and lying on a few of them doesn’t give you much information about which you’d sleep best on.
I read lots of reviews and bought this mattress, this pillow, and these bedding. Are they the best? Who knows. I like them.
Seasonal duvets
I used to have only one duvet. This is a mistake, especially if you sleep hot.
I now have a 10.5 tog duvet for the winter, and a 4.5 tog duvet for the summer.
White noise machine
Ear plugs are great, but they don’t block out all sound. To dull out any other external noises, I use this white noise machine.
It goes off and on automatically using a Shelly Plus Plug. I taped the light on the plug using blackout tape.
Temperature-controlled bed
This is perhaps the most fancy thing in this entire blog.
During the Summer, even with a light duvet, I often struggle to fall asleep due to being too hot. This improved a lot once I got an Eight Sleep.
It’s super expensive, but for me it’s been really good. If you don’t have an AC in your room and you sleep hot, I recommend it.
Portable AC unit
The Eight Sleep works great for 95% of hot days, but if the room gets too hot during a heat wave (>30°C), it’s not enough.
In these instances (which is ~1 week in a year in the UK), I use a portable AC unit. I bought a Black + Decker one and it’s great.
Conclusion
Sleep is super important. You’ve read this far — you know it’s important. Improving your sleep takes many small experiments over a long period of time. Don’t rush to do everything. Do the cheap and easy things first, and consider doing the more time-intensive and expensive things later if you’re still struggling to sleep well.
You can and will sleep better. I’m rooting for you!
Whenever I am walking in the city at night and see an apartment with red light streaming from their windows, I feel a kinship
"Resist the urge to go back to bed": I used to find this very difficult. Solution: to switch off my phone alarm, I have to scan a barcode in the bathroom. The "Sleep as Android" app can lock down your device pretty hard, so there's no easier way to stop the alarm. For me, this totally solved the issue.