(alarm ringing) - I'm tired. I'm tired when I get up, when I'm working, when I'm eating, when I'm having fun. The only time I'm not tired is when I should be asleep.
I don't know what's going on, but it needs to stop. So I'm finally ditching my phone, finding a better way to wake up, and talking with a sleep scientist to figure it out. Thank you to Hostinger for sponsoring a portion of this video and to our patrons for supporting the channel.
So I think I know what's causing my problem. I think you know what's causing my problem. (suspenseful music) But maybe it isn't a problem.
Have you ever considered that? Like I've been tired my whole life, and that hasn't stopped me from achieving mediocrity. I just go to bed at 11:00 PM and then use my phone until 2:00 AM when I literally can't hold my eyes open anymore, and then I wake up at 7:00 AM to a blaring alarm, and then I start using my phone again.
What's wrong with that? It turns out a lot. If you use Google Scholar and try to find the relationship between phones and sleep, it's exactly what you expect: not good.
But how bad is bad sleep? I picked up this pop science book, which I thought would answer a lot of my questions, but it really just had me asking a new one: Am I gonna die? Dementia, diabetes, heart failure, death.
This book links all of that to bad sleep, and it's freaking me out. While I was reading the book, I did have some issues with the way it framed some examples. It was definitely written to make sleep seem like a life or death issue, but that is in extreme cases.
That being said, it was pretty clear that sleep is inextractable from quality of life. Kinda seems obvious, but seeing it in black and white made me realize that I should take this seriously. So I'm gonna do the thing that everybody says I should do.
I'm taking my phone and I'm putting it in a different room when I go to sleep. I don't wanna do it. But in my defense, other than destroying my sleep, my phone does serve a purpose.
It's my alarm clock. (alarm ringing) So if I'm leaving it in a different room, I need to find an alternative. So I got all of them.
I just know I'm gonna get weird ads for a while. I chose these because I wanted to target different ways I could possibly wake up. This is the Lexon Flip+ LCD Alarm Clock.
It tells the time. It has an alarm. If you wanna turn it off, you flip it over.
Of course, we have the Philips Sunrise Simulator, and this will slowly get brighter to simulate the sunrise. Next, we have this. It's an alarm clock with a bed shaker, so it uses vibration to wake you up.
I believe these are especially useful for people who are hard of hearing. (tape ripping) In hindsight, I'm not sure the sound is the thing that's satisfying, but look how shiny that is. Bed vibrator.
Don't demonetize this video. The SoundSpa Slumber Scents. So I can use stink to wake me up.
Reminds me of a rice cooker. We've got a bit of target practice. When your alarm goes off, this target should go up, and then you have to use like a little laser pointer, oh my God, to stop the alarm.
Notice how I'm avoiding using a certain word. That's on purpose. The final alarm clock, it runs away from you.
The idea is that once your alarm goes off in the morning, this thing will just run away. So you have to get out of bed to go catch it and shut it off. I wrote up a quick script in Python that'll set the order for me.
We are starting with the stinky alarm clock. All right, let's figure out how to get this thing working. So we've got the big old egg thing.
"Plug the adapter into the diffuser, then plug the adapter into the outlet. " Seems pretty straightforward. (alarm beeping) Putting some stuff in.
Day one. Let's do it. Wait.
I need to put this. (phone clattering) Bye-bye. Okay, let's get to sleep.
Nope. (latch rattling) Smells like onions. I can't take a nap.
Were you guys just hanging out without me? - You said you were going to sleep. - Why do you look so tall?
You stood in the middle. - Why? - This is like, like a bad Scooby-Doo.
- (laughs) I wanna know how you guys fall asleep. (playful music) - I look at the inside of my eyes. - Shut up.
- Like I'll just lay there and let sleep take over. But if that doesn't work, then I'll listen to like soundscapes, a rainy day cafe. But it's the 1970s or something.
I don't know. It's like someone else is in the other room, and then- - There's someone else in the room. - Like, but it's normal.
It's calming. - Look at the inside of my eyelids and really focus on the darkness. You spend all your time trying to see the black.
- But how do you look? It's closed. - But I put a pillow on my head.
The room doesn't exist anymore. The pillow exists only. If it's a problem with my brain, then I need to like have my brain think about something else.
I listen to podcasts at half speed. - If you watch this video at half speed. .
. - It's time for you to go to sleep. - We should make sleep stuff.
- What do you mean by that? - Here's what I mean by that. We both know that sleep is really important, and I'm trying to help us get more of it.
So I've compiled and will continue to compile all of the things that I find helpful, like sources, sleep aids, and other advice that might not make it into this video. Luckily, I can still share it with you using a website I made with Hostinger who sponsored this video. When you have an idea, I think it's important to make it as quickly as possible, because then you can see it in real life and test if it's actually a good idea or find ways to iterate and improve.
Luckily, that's easy with Hostinger, an all-in-one website solution. With their premium plan, I was able to claim snoreville. com for free and got a unique website in seconds by typing my idea into their AI website builder.
Then I just added in our unique sleep advice and sleep aids, like making cookies really quietly or talking about Cookie Clicker. - Yeah, You start by hiring some grandmas. - With analytics, SEO, and an AI heatmap to predict which parts of the page will get the most attention, that's everything Snoreville needs.
But if I feel like I'm ready for more advanced features, I can easily migrate to WordPress. It is genuinely amazing how quickly I was able to bring this late-night idea to life in just a few clicks. It's empowering, but also just really fun.
If you wanna bring your idea online with a free domain, professional looking emails and dozens of other premium features, Hostinger is here for you with 24/7 customer support and some incredible limited-time offers. The plan I use is just 1. 99 a month, and you get an additional 10% off if you use our coupon code ANSWER.
So get started today at hostinger. com/answer10 and find everything you need to create a website. Now, I should follow our own advice and get to sleep.
(device crackling) I don't know why I thought waking up to the sound of a crackling fire was a good idea. I didn't even smell anything. Oh, so I couldn't figure out how to turn it off.
This sucked. Hopefully tomorrow's better. (device whirring and beeping) Why?
(device whirring and beeping) (pistol shooting) (device beeping) (device vibrating) (device beeping) (device thudding) (objects clattering) This is- (coffee grinder whirring) By the way, I have still been drinking coffee throughout this whole thing. I didn't wanna change too many variables at once. And after watching Melissa's experience quitting coffee, - It's hard.
- things might get too bleak. Anyway, I was absolutely convinced that getting rid of my phone would've like changed things, and that at least one of the alarm clocks would help me feel better. But I've used all of them and it's not great.
Turn off the light. (device buzzing) I thought that putting my phone in the other room would solve my problem of going to sleep late, but it hasn't. I didn't realize, but I guess I'd been using my phone to silence the part of my brain that has, ow, generalized anxiety disorder.
So yeah, now instead of doomscrolling before turning on a podcast and falling asleep, I just feel a sense of doom for a few hours before eventually falling asleep. And this anxiety also means that all of the alarm clocks are basically the same. I'm a light sleeper.
I know that I'm a light sleeper. I don't know how I convinced myself that a gentler sound would make me feel better. Bro, I think birds chirping are a jump scare.
Now, I have noticed two benefits, right? First, when I wake up in the middle of the night due to any given sound, I can't use my phone. It's annoying, but it probably means that I'm getting more sleep as a whole.
Two, I have more hours in my day. Because I'm not using my phone in the morning, I get through my morning routine way faster because I'm not doomscrolling on the toilet. It's the little things in life.
Those are two great benefits, but hasn't solved my problem. I am still tired. So plan A has failed.
I need to take a different approach. So I went back to researching. But instead of just focusing on the relationship between phones and sleep, I tried to get a better sense of the bigger picture.
I look like an inverted pumpkin. Anyway, I've looked into culture and society, psychology, biology, and it turns out sleep is a little more complex than just closing your eyes for a few hours. The quality of your sleep depends on a lot of biological, environmental, and social factors.
And the quantity of your sleep can be out of your control because of things like school, work, and familial obligation. These are all things that I kind of knew from my last round of research, but now that I am trying to actually process all of it instead of just blaming my phone, I realize I have no idea what I'm doing. There are like 1,000,001 interdisciplinary things that might be impacting my sleep.
And I studied math, guys. The only thing I can do is count sheep. So I think it's finally time that I ask for some help.
- My name's Vanessa Hill. I'm a sleep scientist. And I research specifically mobile phones and bedtime procrastination.
I think that a lot of people have an unrealistic expectation of what their sleep should look like, and they think that they're getting bad sleep or that they're a bad sleeper, and you should never label yourself that way just when you're getting kind of normal sleep. - Can I be honest with you for a second? It was only after she said that when I realized that I have no idea what I'm trying to get out of this.
Like I assumed that if I slept good enough, I'd just wake up and be a stock image model. But it turns out that the result of good sleep is basically just are you awake enough to do the things you need to do without being in real risk of falling asleep at any given moment? I do that already.
I thought there was another level to unlock. It's like learning Santa Claus isn't real. But despite how disappointing and honestly kind of vague the idea of good sleep is, the science on how to get it is surprisingly clear.
- [Vanessa] So I want you to imagine that when you wake up, you are at zero. You are hypothetically well rested. So throughout the course of the day, you build up something that's called sleep pressure.
It's also sometimes called a sleep drive. And it's one of the processes that dictates when you sleep. Your sleep pressure increases and increases and increases until you get to this point at night when you have so much sleep pressure that you can't stay awake anymore and your body physically needs to sleep.
- This process should work in harmony with your circadian rhythm, which uses your body's internal clock to dictate things like appetite and alertness. So ideally when you sleep, you relieve your sleep pressure and wake up feeling alert. But these processes can fall out of sync with shift work, jet lag, sleep procrastination, or even blue light.
Blue light is the reason I've heard for why I shouldn't have my phone at night. It's also why I thought putting it away would solve all my problems. But it turns out there's nuance.
- What I'm concerned about is what people are doing on their phones. In some research, this is referred to as passive media and active media. So you can imagine passive media is things that help you relax.
Active media, you could define more as things that are kind of keeping you hooked. So you could be using your phone to de-stress, to watch a comforting YouTube video to kind of relax and like get in the mood for sleep. If that works for you, then go for it.
You need to make your sleep work for you rather than to try to conform to society's expectations of when you should sleep and when you should get up. There's a lot of shame around not sleeping well or being a bad sleeper, but it's just like an area of health. Like you can just keep working at it and keep trying to get a little bit better, but your best is okay.
- It was only after like that hour-long conversation I had with Vanessa when I really started to accept how much I'd let my feelings guide my research. It was bound to happen because this subject really matters to me, and I wanted an answer as quickly as I could. But it's a whole field of research, and there's so much information and I got overwhelmed.
So I just let my gut decide what to focus on. However, my gut isn't always right. For example, the reason I feel tired all day might not have anything to do with sleep.
- Quite often you can feel tired because you're just not moving your body enough. You're not spending enough time in the natural sunlight. You're not eating things that are giving you like the right nutrients.
All of these things can contribute to how you feel, and they're all kind of interconnected. - Even Canada's sleep recommendations is sandwiched in between movement guidelines. I just totally ignored it because I thought if I was tired, I had to fix my sleep.
- Wrong. - So with that lesson learned, I decided to give this experiment one more week with some changes. Instead of trying to find one big fix, I focused on small tweaks to my sleep hygiene.
I kept my phone to listen to podcasts, but I set it to airplane mode to avoid social media. I set my alarm on my phone, because it turns out every alarm clock sucks. At least my phone keeps track of the time zone.
And when my alarm went off, (alarm beeping) I got up to keep my bed associated with sleep. And then this was the biggest change. I went for a morning walk, just pumped some daylight into my eyes and reminded my circadian rhythm what time it is.
Plus, it was a chance at some exercise and to catch up on the playlist Melissa curated for our newsletter. Throughout the day, I try to stretch and drink water at least once an hour. And when it was time for bed, (alarm beeping) I'd do it all over again.
I didn't stop drinking coffee. I didn't go to sleep at the exact same time every day. And I just stared out the window one morning when I was too lazy to go for a walk.
Thank you so much. But one week later I could say that these changes were way more effective than any of those wacky alarm clocks. Like I'm still not a stock image model in the morning, but a more consistent routine has made it easier for me to predict my energy levels throughout the day, helped me notice some details that I might need to see a doctor about.
Oh my God, that's delicious. I didn't realize how much guilt I carried about being a bad sleeper, and how it created like this cycle of pity where I didn't even get to appreciate the times when I do have like a lot of energy, because I thought that I just needed to be tired all the time. But now when I do feel like the sense of tiredness that a quick stretch and some water can't quite fix, I take a nap.
And guess what? I sleep like a baby.
