Edmond Chan

Mind

Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker – key takeaways

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why we sleep key takeaways

Why We Sleep is a ridiculously valuable book for anyone who doesn’t sleep much on a consistent basis. Whether that’s due to insomnia or to being a total badass who thinks that sleep is for the weak and lazy.

Matthew is someone we should listen to. He’s professor of of neuroscience and psychology at UCLA and before that he was a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. He also works as a sleep scientist at Google Life Sciences (Verily)

The main takeaways from Why We Sleep

  • Consistent sleep deprivation is really, really bad for you. By sleep deprivation, he means anything less than a solid 8 hours of sleep. Walker links consistent sleep deprivation to cancer, dementia, obesity depression, and anxiety. Also, the shorter you sleep, the shorter you live. All in all, really, really bad.
  • We have a chemical called adenosine that is continually produced from the moment we wake up. It builds and builds throughout the day until we can resist sleep no longer. This is called sleep pressure.
  • Caffeine blocks the receptors that register the adenosine build up and this is why coffee temporarily makes us feel more awake and alert. If caffeine is still in your system at bedtime, it will likely keep you from feeling tired.
  • Caffeine has an average half life of 5 to 7 hours. This means that 5 to 7 hours after your last coffee, half the caffeine is still left in your system. And in 10-14 after your last coffee, a quarter of that caffeine is still in your system.
  • Drink less caffeine! And definitely not too late i.e. not after 12pm

Professor Walker’s top 12 tips for getting a better night’s sleep

  1. Stick to a sleep schedule. Get up and go to be at the same time every day. Walker highlights this as the most important of his sleep tips.
  2. Exercise is great. At least 30 mins most days and not too close to bedtime.
  3. Avoid caffeine and nicotine. They make it hard to get to sleep and can affect how deeply you do sleep.
  4. Avoid alcohol before bed. It will stop you getting into REM sleep and you may wake up in the middle of the night when the effects have worn off.
  5. Avoid large meals and drinks late at night. This can cause indigestion which interferes with sleep.
  6. Avoid medicines that disrupt your sleep
  7. No naps after 3pm.
  8. Relax and unwind before bed like reading or listening to music
  9. Take a hot bath before bed
  10. Dark, cool, gadget-free bedroom
  11. Get enough sunlight exposure. This helps regulate sleep patterns. At least 30 mins of natural sunlight each day and preferably in the morning. Turn down the lights before bedtime.
  12. Don’t lie in bed awake.

For me, the caffeine control has been incredible in helping me get more sleep.

Walker describes sleep deprivation as:

the greatest public health challenge we face in the 21st century in developed nations. If we wish to avoid the suffocating noose of sleep neglect, the premature death it inflicts, and the sickening health it invites, a radical shift in our personal, cultural, professional, and societal appreciation of sleep must occur.

I believe it is time for us to reclaim our right to a full night of sleep, without embarrassment or the damaging stigma of laziness. In doing so, we can be reunited with that most powerful elixir of wellness and vitality, dispensed through every conceivable biological pathway. then we may remember what it feels like to be truly awake during the day, infused with the very deepest plentitude of being.

Pick up a copy of Why We Sleep here.

Get more sleep!

Definitely feeling the benefits of implementing some of Aubrey Marcus’s book “Own The Day, Own Your Life”

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I love airport bookshops. It’s like the best of books distilled into a few shelves. I can never resist even though it will double my carry on luggage.

The domestic terminal at Melbourne Tullamarine had some enticing books: 12 Rules for Life by Jordan B. Peterson (which I’ve read but only on Kindle, so I bought a paperback there and then), First Man In by Ant Middleton, who I’ve only recently discovered on Channel 4’s SAS: Who Dares Wins, and Own The Day, Own Your Life by Aubrey Marcus.

I snapped it up alongside Peterson’s. (Will get Middleton’s book soon.)

The premise of Aubrey’s book is that by making the right small decisions throughout our day, we optimise our health, mindset, productivity and overall well-being. This helps us to win our day, and if we do this day after day, we win our life.

The section I really like is on supplements. Now Aubrey is CEO of Onnit, a health company with a big focus on supplements, so you’d think of course he would be recommending supplements. But on the other hand, it’s reassuring that he does recommend them given that that’s his livelihood. But the best thing is that he doesn’t say that only his company’s supplements are the ones to get. Lots of company’s produce these supplements.

The ones he recommends that I’ve started using are:

Greens blend. He describes this as like ‘raiding the shelves at Home Depot when you’re trying to maintain your house’. It’s full of good stuff that your body needs to be healthy. I looked on Amazon and found this one by Hion which was very well rated. The ingredients are: “Wheatgrass, Barley Grass, Maca Root, Flax Seed, Green Tea Extract, Lucuma, Spirulina, Chlorella, Baobab, Acai Berry, Raspberry Fruit Extract (20% Ethanol 80% Water) 10:1.” That just sounds good for you doesn’t it?!

Krill Oil. This apparently is fish oil on steroids. Not actual steroids! But just an amped up version of fish oil. This is the one I bought on Amazon. The description states:

  • Superior source of EPA and DHA because the polyunsaturated fats are packaged as phospholipids, which can be used immediately by your body
  • More stable than fish oil because it includes astaxanthin, a powerful antioxidant, that protects the fragile fats from oxidising

Vitamin D3. I was already taking this. I use this one by Nutravita and I bought it on Amazon. From the blurb on Amazon: “Nutravita Vitamin D3, (The Sunshine Vitamin) provides the preferred form of vitamin D3. Vitamin D3 is the more potent form of Vitamin D, because it is the specific form made by the human body.“

I’m going to start taking magnesium as also recommended in the book.

So how do I feel after a few weeks of taking them? Really, really good. Full of energy and almost feeling a surplus of strength and energy. That may well be down to other factors, including sleeping well, doing lots of running, and also lifting heavier weights than normal. But I do think that small improvements stack up on top of each other over time. It all counts!

Do you take any supplements? And if so, which? Let me know in the comments!

What’s really holding you back? Truly?

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If we start from the position that we all have potential, then why is there a gap between where your potential self is and where you are at the moment?

How big is that gap? What is your true potential? It might be that your true potential is way more than you think it is. In which case, the gap is even bigger than you know.

Step one is where you are now.

Step two is looking at where you think your potential is. So this might be being a writer or being an artist.

Step three is discovering where your true potential might be (and you would need help from outside to discover this). This might be being a rocket scientist, climbing the world’s highest and most difficult mountains.

Step four is addressing how to bridge that gap and narrow it as much as possible.

Do you think that you can achieve step two and step three?

If you don’t think you can, then something is holding you back.

It’s a mindset thing for sure.

A great example of opening up your mindset and horizons is what learning how to swim has done for me. Even after my first lesson, when I couldn’t really even finish a length of the pool, I was looking up scuba diving holidays. Now after three lessons, I’m thinking about taking up wild swimming in rivers and taking up surfing. This is all stuff that I’ve dreamed about doing but thought it was pure fantasy. Those are the sort of things that I come up with when asking myself “What’s on my bucket list? What would I love to do?” And now it’s all possible. My horizons and possibilities with regards to swimming and watersports have expanded.

Now if I asked myself about step 3 (discovering where your true potential might be), what’s possible with my swimming? What couldn’t I even contemplate or imagine before that first swimming lesson? Swimming the Channel or swimming the Hellespont? I wouldn’t have dared dream about that a month ago. Now it’s possible. Maybe not likely, but possible. Hold on, why isn’t that likely? Maybe I’ll think differently after I master the freestyle stroke. Imagine once I get to 1,000m without stopping, maybe my horizons with regards to swimming will be so far from what I can imagine now? Maybe swimming the length of the Thames? Who knows!

So what was holding me back?

Why has it taken me until I’m 39 to finally address my terrible swimming and do something about it? In my head, I told myself that it was because of my eyes that I couldn’t swim because of my poor eyesight. I’m a minus 4.0 in my left eye and a minus 0.75 in my right eye. This means that I can’t really see anything without contact lenses or glasses. And glasses or contacts don’t work in the pool. That’s what I told myself and that’s why I couldn’t go swimming to learn in the past 10, 15 or 20 years.

This was probably bullshit. Stuff I told myself so that I wouldn’t have to do it. Now that I’m 39 and thinking about having kids soon, I think it’s really important that I learn to swim. Just in case I ever need to and to teach my kids and just for the sheer joy of being good at a fundamental human skill.

The solution was ridiculously easy. I just googled ‘prescription goggles’ and it was SO cheap and easy. £15 for prescription goggles. Now swimming is something that I look forward to.

How easy was that?

What’s something that you want to do and what’s holding you back?

How can you break through? Maybe it’s that you want to be a singer. So how about taking a singing lesson. £100 for 5 lessons from a professional singing teacher. Or maybe you want to be an artist. Go on a short course at a decent art school. I did one for about £350 for 10 x 2 hour lessons at Chelsea School of Art. At the very least, it’s fun and you’ll find out whether it’s something you want to pursue. Let me know what you want to do in the comments below!

Slow the fuck down. How taking your time a bit more will help you enjoy your day.

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I’m generally rushing and multitasking most of the time. I want to squeeze in a podcast in the shower, watch self-improvement videos on YouTube, read business books on the bus to work. I cook quickly, wolf it down and wash up like a dervish.

Two things I’ve read recently have made me question this mode of doing stuff.

Firstly, I read a great article on Medium by Aytekin Tank (which I haven’t fully digested yet). It’s called: Why reading 100 books a year won’t make you successful. In it he says reading as many books as possible in the shortest amount of time won’t make you successful, and that actually it harms the very reasons why we should read in the first place:

(1) it destroys reading for pleasure. The best books I’ve ever read are probably the classics such as War and Peace, The Odyssey, and The Iliad. There’s no way I read these speed reading. I read them for pure pleasure. Not at a lazy speed, but just at the speed where I got huge pleasure from reading. (If you haven’t read them yet, please do yourself a favour and do so! You won’t regret it!)

(2) if the aim is to read as fast as possible, the speed likely hinders the

Secondly, I read a great chapter on Derek Sivers in Tim Ferriss‘s seminal book Tools of Titans where he describes how he does a long bike ride where he pedals hard and strains and sweats and which always takes him 43min to complete. One day, he did the same ride where he decided to take it slow and chilled and has a great time noticing things that he normally doesn’t like the ocean and pelicans. When he finishes the ride, and looks at his watch, he’s shocked to see that the ride took him just 45mins! 2mins longer and he had a much better time doing it.

Mind blown!

Try slowing down now. Some of the benefits are surprising.

Let’s start with reading.

With Ayetkin’s article in mind, today I started reading some of Laszlo Bock’s famous book Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead. I tried to read it slowly and make sure that I wasn’t skimming and speed reading. I waited for my attention to catchup with my eye on the page. I stopped every so often whenever I wanted to and looked up from the book and a few seconds later (again when I wanted to), I started reading again.

5 mins went by. 10 mins went. Then 15 mins and I had to get back to work. But that was a very pleasurable 15 mins of reading. No judgement on myself for how much I read or didn’t read. Just a state of flow.

It’s very hard to make yourself slow down reading but just try and remember to do so. Don’t beat yourself when you forget.

Enjoy it. Slow down.

What is psychological health?

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I’ve written quite a bit on mental health in the past. Articles like:

But recently, I’ve been wondering about another question. What is psychological health? We hear a lot about what mental illness is but what about its opposite? What does a psychologically healthy person’s mind look like?

Much in the same way as an out-of-shape person has to aim to be an in-shape person, a person struggling with mental health has to know what they’re aiming at for in order to be mentally healthy.

It’s oddly tricky to find a good article about this on the internet. Try searching for ‘what is psychological health?’ and you don’t get much back.

But then I remembered I’d read an introduction to psychology book when I was younger, possibly whilst still at uni. It had a bit in it about what constituted psychological health. I found it after much searching at my Dad’s house.

It’s called Introducing Psychology by Nigel C. Benson and it’s a synopsis of the history of psychology. It’s got some superb diagrams and cartoons all designed to help the layman — ie. me.

In it, there are two theories about what constitutes psychological health:

The first is from Abraham Maslow. According to my edition of Benson’s book, at p.111:

Psychologically ‘healthy’ people show:

  1. An objective perception of reality
  2. Acceptance of their own natures
  3. A commitment and dedication to some type of work
  4. Naturalness, simplicity in behaviour, and spontaneity
  5. Independence; a need for autonomy and privacy
  6. Intense mystical/peak experiences
  7. Empathy with, and affection for, all humanity — including strong social interests
  8. Resistance to conformity
  9. Democratise characteristics
  10. Keenness to be creative

The second is from Carl Rogers. According to my edition of Benson’s book, at p.112:

The psychologically healthy person shows:

  1. An openness to all experiences
  2. An ability to live fully in every moment
  3. The will to follow their own instincts, rather than the will of others
  4. Freedom in thought and action, eg. spontaneity, flexibility
  5. Much creativity

Check out Benson’s great book here.