Be Productive When You Can't Sleep

Be Productive When You Can't Sleep

Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night. For example, right now as I am writing this post, it is 1:59 AM. I have been awake for probably the last 30 minutes, but physically got out of bed about 3 minutes ago. Most of the time I can sleep through the night, but at times I am wide awake because of a dream, heard something go bump in the night, or some other reason.

Mind on Full Speed

In the past, I would just lay in the bed in hopes that I would fall back asleep in a timely manner. Only problem is that my mind would start running at full speed about what tasks I need to accomplish or how to solve some problem that I could not have seem to come up with a solution when I was at work. Having your mind run at full speed when you are trying to go back to sleep is counterproductive.

Do Something

What I was advised to do by a medical professional is to read a book. Reason being is that for some people, myself included, reading will put you to sleep because it is rather relaxing and does not require much physical effort and depending on the book, can leave you bored to the point that you bore yourself to sleep (literatly).

Of course I do not do was is advised. Instead I use this insomnia moments to get stuff done. I try to find tasks that do not result in me making a bunch of noise as I do not want to wake other members of the household. Thus no running of saws or banging of hammers. That leads me to working on other hobbies, like doing stuff on the computer.

Resist The Phone

You are probably asking just do something on your phone? The reason I avoid using my phone in the middle of the night is because I will be more inclined to get on social media and "mindlessly scroll". Knowing what I know about cell phones, the blue light from the phone is known to mimmic daylight, which in turn, your eyes sends signals to your brain (and probably the rest of your body) that it is daytime, thus further making it harder for you to go back asleep.

Now what I have done is enabled my phone to go into a night mode between 9 PM and 7 AM. My computer is configured to do the same but at a different time. The "night mode" turns the screen an orange-ish color to counteract the blue color that most screens produce, thus reducing the strain on your eyes during the night time hours and that the screen is not as bright.

Writing Code

For those that are not programmers, I will be honest with you. Programming is a mentally draining activity. Sometimes when I leave work, I have done so much coding in a day, that I feel the "brain fog" that some people describe that they have.

Because I know that this is a mentally draining task, when I cannot sleep, I will get up and do some coding on whatever project that I have in progress or work on the issues that I have previously created for an existing project. Depending on the intensity of the coding, this will usually lead me to be sleepy again in about an hour or two.

At a later point when I am well rested, I do go back and review the code that I wrote when I should have been sleeping. Speaking from experience, you are more likely to make mistakes when you are exhausted, both mentally and physically. Thus why I try to refrain from publishing code in the middle of the night unless I know that I have gotten it correct.

Conclusion

It is now 2:27 AM. I am starting to feel sleepy again, but not tired enough that I would immediately go to sleep if I laid down. Now that I have completed this post about not sleeping, I am going to do some coding as I have previously mentioned and hopefully will be able to get back to sleep soon.