EVERYONE LOVES SLEEP. IT’S LIKE VIRTUAL temporary fix, a kludge. You may sync yourself back
reality without the dumb helmet. But if you’re the sort with the real world, but that next all-nighter is going
of person who hyper-focuses on challenging tasks, to throw you just as far out of whack as before.
you probably like the idea of sleep more than the If you want to permanently sort out your sleeping
actual practice. Sleep good: just not sleep right now. patterns, you need good sleep hygiene. For that, we
Not right now, when I’ve almost completely heartily recommend William Dement’s The Promise
debugged my application. Not right now, when I’ve of Sleep (Dell), which does a good job of romping
almost checked all these solder joints. Not right now, through the accepted wisdom of handling your
when I’m only three-sixteen hundredths of the way sleeping patterns. For those of you who like your info
through ripping my entire DVD collection. These prog- provided raw and cut-and-pasteable, there’s
ress bars don’t stare at themselves, people!
The problem comes when “right now” consistently “ If you want to permanently
turns out to be 5:30 a.m., and the nagging voice
you’re waving off is your own body’s need to collapse. sort out your sleeping
Congratulations. Your sleep pattern is now a neat
inverse of the rest of your timezone’s inhabitants. patterns, you need good
You’ve hacked your sleep schedule, and now it’s in _{pieces on your workshop floor. sleep hygiene.}”
The traditional nerd folk remedy for a shattered
sleeping schedule is that life hack known as “wrap- nothing better than Bora Zivkovic’s sleep science
ping around,” or “phase shifting.” Sleep experts call it blog, Circadiana, circadiana. blogspot.com/.
“chronotherapy,” and prescribe it for those who have The sleep hygiene hack is this: lots of sun in the
advanced night owl tendencies. In anyone’s terms, morning. Sun is the vertical sync signal in life’s
it’s called “staying up even later than you normally erratic hormonal TV transmission. Get a big shot in
do and seeing what exactly happens.” the AM, and your body will latch onto the correct
Here’s what exactly happens: you stay up two or rhythm. Hide from the “evil day star,” as many hack-
three hours later than usual every night, until you ers do, and you’ll lose vertical hold, and be flipping
are so out of phase that you click back into the next over and over the days and nights.
cycle, and resynchronize with the rest of the world. If you can’t stand the sun, you can build your own
It takes about ten days. At first, it’s a great release artificial one. While thermonuclear explosions are
to not force yourself to go to bed, like trying to get too short to really resync your sleeping patterns, and
yourself on a diet by eating so many pies you’ll never magnet confinement fusion can disturb the neigh-
eat food again. bors, for sleep rebooting purposes, as Zivkovic says,
But then — according to Life Hacks own experi- solar activity can be simulated with “a piece of board,
mental subject, who we’ll call Exhibit DO’B — wrap- 3-4 strong neon lightbulbs, balasts, a switch, a plug,
ping around has all the painful aspects of a bad and some wires.” Shine it in your face at dawn if you
holiday: jetlag, unpaid time off work, and having to tend to sleep late, dusk if you tend to arise early.
deal with strange cultural oddities like breakfast and Don’t forget the flipside: hide from light when
morning people. It’s a hormonal rollercoaster ride, about to sleep. For computer geeks, that means dim
and not covered by any warranty. your screen! For extra hack points, write a script that
You will eventually reach the point where you’re dims your screen gradually over time.
going to sleep at around 3 p.m. and waking up at 11 For those who crave that late-night creativity: go to
p.m. At that point, fun empties from the universe. sleep really early, like 9 p.m. You’ll get up at maybe 4
However your diurnal rhythm is programmed, God a.m., but for night owls, that’s when you’re at your best.
did not mean you to look up from your lunch and It’s important to move to a sleeping pattern that
see the sun rising. When I — er, our subjects — have looks like a sine wave from one that looks like a seis-
done this, I found my body temperature plunged so mograph. Don’t mess your sleep cycle around; if you
quickly it felt like it was trying to slide out of my toes. hack life that much, one day it will hack you right back.
My goosebumps had goosebumps.

But perhaps the worst part of wrapping around Learn how to reel in your mind at Danny O’Brien’s lifehacks.com is that it’s a hack, but it’s not a complete hack. It’s a ^{and Merlin Mann’s 43folders.com.}