In 2018, Matthew Walker was on a media blitz, promoting his book, Why We Sleep. I was one of the many people who picked up the book. It slowly ruined my sleep. But recently, I fixed it. No, this is not a takedown Before I go further, this is not a “takedown” of Why We Sleep, like the one that’s been floating around. I’ve read that takedown, and I didn’t find it convincing. I trust that Why We Sleep is mostly full of accurate information. I say “mostly,” because I understand Walker has been on a mission to elevate the importance of sleep. Sometimes you have to say something like “the shorter you sleep the shorter your life span,” for a sleep-deprived public to get the point, when, technically, research shows people who sleep longer than the recommended 7–9 hours live shorter lives. It’s called rhetoric. When FDR said “we have nothing to fear but fear itself,” thankfully there weren’t blogs to write pedantic takedowns of his logic. My complaints about Why We Sleep don’t involve ill intentions. I’m sure Walker wants people to get more sleep. But I don’t think the book has the effect he expected. Why Why We Sleep will scare the sleep out of you In Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker, PhD says if you don’t sleep enough, you are at risk of the following: Obesity Cancer Dementia Alzheimer’s Heart disease Depression Anxiety Diabetes Car crashes Lower income Low sperm count Deformed sperm Female infertility Not being able to jump as high Longer workout recovery Vulnerability to colds and flus (today, that also means COVID) Low testosterone Smaller testicles So, yeah, Walker makes not getting enough sleep sound extremely scary. If that’s not enough to keep you awake at night, Walker also points out there’s also a rare sleep disorder that develops in mid-life, where a person cannot sleep, and eventually dies. Again, I get that society is full of a lot of ignorant or toxic beliefs about sleep, such as “I’ll sleep when I’m dead”. I may be in the minority in that I had the luxury of being able to take Walker’s recommendation of 7–9 hours sleep to an extreme that actually harmed my ability to get enough sleep. I was doing everything right After reading Why We Sleep, I, like many people, decided I was going to take sleep more seriously. But, as a creative with an interest in the neuroscience of creativity, I had already been taking sleep pretty seriously. I already slept with earplugs and a mask. I already avoided screens before bedtime, and had for years worn blue-light-blocking goggles before bed. I already didn’t read or watch TV in bed, and didn’t allow electronics in my bedroom. I already didn’t consume caffeine and rarely drank alcohol. I already lived a low-stress lifestyle with plenty of exercise and friends. I didn’t and don’t have kids that wake me up in the middle of the night. I already had a bedtime, and a nighttime routine, like I talked about on episode 259. I tried to do it right-er I was doing everything right. Where I went wrong was trying to follow Walker’s recommendation of 7–9 hours of sleep per night. The way I went about that: Stay in bed until I got eight hours of sleep. At first, it wasn’t a big deal. I would occasionally wake up much earlier than I had intended. But I brought to mind a graph from the book, which showed that sleep cycles come in ninety-minute increments. Now, this wasn’t a recommendation from Dr. Walker, and was my big mistake: I figured that since sleep cycles came in ninety-minute increments, if I happened to wake up too early, all I had to do was stay in bed until I could fall asleep again –which could take as long as ninety minutes. Yes, I understand I’m incredibly privileged to have the luxury of being able to stay in bed an extra ninety minutes just to fall asleep again. But, as an author, my ability to be productive is more a matter of mind management than it is ...