The plan to turn off my drunken monkey brain at bedtime

Or how to fight onset insomnia.

Recently, I have been experiencing problems with falling asleep. It usually happens when I have to wake up early for an important meeting. The obligation and commitment puts you at unease. You’re tensed, anxious, and myriads of thoughts don’t stop floating one after another. Some of them — good insights, some of them — boring regurgitations. And your mind in the drunken monkey style hops from one thought (idea, image, fantasy, commitment, anxiety) to another. Non-stop and without a clear destination.

I would go to bed at 11pm after reading a few articles which caught my attention on the front page of Hacker News [1]. Then after trying my favorite half military crawl position, I would go back to reading, then try sleeping again and giving up on that again. I would then listen to the PandoMonthly fireside chat with Evernote CEO Phil Libin in its entirety (it’s about 2 hours long), then get back to focusing on my breath (deeply inhaling from the left nostril and exhaling from the right one, vice versa). I wouldn’t be persistent, so that won’t work either making me listen Karunesh, soundtrack from ‘The Last Samurai’ or some other meditative music. By the time I would finally fall asleep (by focusing on deep breath again and letting my thoughts flow and just observing them), it will be past 3am. Feeling groggy the next morning is not fun, so here’s my plan to fight the onset insomnia [2]:

• Cold baths one hour prior to bed to provoke sleep (ice baths are too cumbersome). Hot baths would work too as they induce melatonin production [3].
• 1-2 spoons of flaxseed oil to increase cell repair and decrease the morning fatigue [4]. Have to pass on Tim’s wine and almond butter recommendations.
• Eating meals at set times.
• Having protein-dominant dinner within 3 hours of bedtime.
• Making sure the bedroom temperature is in my ideal range, e.g. 19-21C.
• Wearing socks for foot warming.
• (Optional) Trying gadgets like Philips goLITE (blue-light emitter) and Nightwave (slow pulsing light emitter).

Let’s see where all these will take me.

Notes
[1] Usually on someone who was describing his experience getting into YC, why someone choose to pursue PhD in Computer Science, or how they launched airbnb.jp in record time. Reading this kind of stuff fulfills my minor procrastination tendencies to its full.
[2] Based on filtering recommendations from Tim Ferriss’s ‘4-Hour Body’.
[3] The reason I gave up on ofuro while living in Japan for 2 months in 2011 was that my host-family would let me take it first (as a guest) at around 9:30pm. As a result, I would feel really sleepy afterwards and wouldn’t be able to do 1-hour kanji practices I used to do before going to bed.
[4] I used to take it for 5 months (Jan-May 2013) when living in Mountain View, CA but after the morning run for some reason, not before sleep.