Sleep
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Falling asleep has been a lifelong challenge for me. I suspect there is a "preference fight" going on, among other things, keeping my thoughts highly active.
I am sometimes physically tired by hour 16 of the day, but I can easily stay up and continue working to hour 18 or 20. I have no caffeine or nighttime sugar.
I do fall asleep more quickly the longer I've been awake, but not by as much as one would hope. After being up 18 hours, it still may take an hour or more for me to fall asleep.
So just stay up 18 hours every day, and sleep in the next day by the extra two hours (assuming 8, which seems optimal for me).
This perpetual 2-hour creep is not compatible with the obligations of life, such as getting to work by 9am every weekday.
But you don’t have that obligation right now, right?
I do not have a consistent 9am obligation now, no. But my implicit hope here is to find lasting solutions. I expect to have morning obligations again one day, maybe very soon.
Daytime noise in any kind of city is hard to avoid. One can try to optimize their living situation to avoid, but that's not always doable. Earplugs and noise-machines can help, but have never been totally foolproof for me.
You may be overstating the difficulty. IIRC you like rural America. Finding a quiet place to live should be doable, even in cities but especially in rural places. (Believe it or not I once stayed at an Airbnb in Tahoe that was TOO quiet to sleep. It was so quiet it kinda freaked me out. And that’s saying something because I love quiet.)
I would not say I care for rural America. It sounds nice on the one hand, but conflicts with my anti-hermit hangup (I don't want to be isolated from society, at least not too much...). My vague ideal has always been: "big city in the near distance." Agreed that too quiet is a problem but that's trivial to solve compared to too loud.
Finding quiet places in a city is indeed doable, but it's hard to even come close to guaranteeing success. There's no way to sample an apartment for 24 hours before moving in. It comes down to scoping it out, reading reviews, interviewing other residents if you can, then signing the lease and hoping for the best. If it's a bad fit, moving again is a huge, costly hassle.
Increase reliability of the quiet apartment search by thoroughly interviewing several neighboring residents.
This depends on neighboring residents being home during your apartment tour, and being honest (or correct) about noise pollution (maybe they're causing it and don't know). The search remains an uncertain one, even with great interview participation.
This perpetual creep of waking time will mean one's circadian rhythm is messed up, inverting every several days. (Being out of sync with sunlight is a health concern.)
Not sleeping at all certainly damages the rhythm. But for me the current choice is between a chemically-mediated 8-9 hours from, say, 12am to 8am, or a natural 5-6 hours, from 2 or 3am to 8am. Both are similar in terms of the day night cycle, and not close to as bad as sleeping in to noon (and later and later) would be, I think.
I tried this for a few days recently. By day three or four I went to bed at around 6am and woke up at 2pm. Didn’t feel great the rest of the day. Went back to a more regular sleep schedule after that and feeling better now.
I notice a tendency to find more things to do (such as research questions) leading up to bedtime, similar to how I miraculously find more tasks to do (such as taking out the trash) when trying to leave the house for an appointment (I have a lifelong habit of running late as well; I suspect a relation between these two).
I also clearly procrastinate preparing food and eating, almost every day, conflicting with caloric intake goals. For a few years in childhood I had an anxiety disorder around eating. I suspect some residual hangup from that, but hard to say. Relates to the sleep trouble..?
Could you do meal prep for the week? Have meals ready in the freezer so you don’t need to cook every day.
Something I made the other day, recipe in the caption :) https://www.instagram.com/p/Db2DzFplBXq/?igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==
Looks awesome! Didn't realize you have a bodybuilding channel, will check it out.
The cause of procrastination is a conflict between preferences. Part of you wants to take out the trash, another doesn’t. The solution is a common preference: a new option both parts of you prefer to their respective initial position.
Can you identify those parts within you?
Try brainstorming many new options on V. With any luck, you’ll find a new option both parts of you want without delay.
It strikes me that I may have some confusion around compromise. There's an idea (from who/where? Gemini says Brett Hall...) that a compromise can actually be bad, because it is a new theory that no one was advocating for. So if it fails, it's harder to learn from and hold anyone accountable for. Yet, to resolve our procrastination and other hangups (and many problems in life), it seems like finding a common preference is the thing to do (and it seems like it works). But isn't that the same as compromising?
Gemini says Brett Hall...
No it’s TCS: https://takingchildrenseriously.com/how-is-a-compromise-not-a-real-solution/
… a compromise can actually be bad, because it is a new theory that no one was advocating for.
Compromise is always bad. It’s a form of irrationality.
… it seems like finding a common preference is the thing to do …
It is.
… (and it seems like it works).
It usually does.
But isn't that the same as compromising?
No. A common preference is a new option everyone involved prefers to their respective original stance. A compromise is an option they do not prefer, but merely reluctantly agree to. And it’s usually not really new in content but resulted from mechanically mixing existing options. See the article linked in #5301.