Focused - 86: Rest is a Weapon

Episode Date: November 12, 2019

In this episode, Mike and David tackle sleep, napping, and how important they are to Focus.

Welcome to Focus, a productivity podcast about more than just cranking widgets. I'm David Sparks, and I'm joined by my fellow co-host, Mr. Mike Schmitz. Hey, Mike. Hey, David. How's it going? Oh, I'm doing great, man. I'm feeling so good. Excellent. So good right now. It's been really weird for me this week. Like, I don't really understand why.

Actually, now I think I figured it out. But, like, I've been going to the gym and like doing the harder weights and stuff, just like feeling, hey, this is no problem. I'm feeling good today. The sitting at my desk, I've been really focused, getting a lot of work done. And so much so that the last couple days have been so good that I stopped to think about it. Like, what's going on here, man? And I realized something. What's that? With this time change, I have been getting tired at the same time I always get tired, but I've been waking up an hour later every day.

So I've been sleeping, instead of seven and a half hours, I've been sleeping eight and a half hours. And it was like a noticeable difference before i realized the cause if that makes sense sure yeah the problem is when you have kids they don't know that the uh the time has changed so they just yeah keep getting up at the same time i could do a whole podcast on why i think we need to stop flipping the clocks but yeah just just pick one man just pick one, man, just pick one and just stick with it. Yep. I mean, what's that is somebody told me once that we did it because for farmers, so they could get up. I mean, what's the percentage of Americans that are

farmers at this point? Right. I, uh, I, I think it's dumb, but either way, I did get a benefit from it this year because without realizing it, or I guess on some level I was realizing it, but I was just getting extra sleep. I was going to bed a little earlier than usual, and now I'm thinking about keeping that streak going. So we're going to talk about sleep today, but before but before we do, I want to mention the focus calendar. Yes. We've heard from a bunch of listeners that already bought it. There's still some available. We've got a link in the show notes. Go check it out.

It's awesome. It goes on your wall. You can plan out your year. We did a, we talked about calendaring two weeks ago, so you can go back and listen to that show if you missed it. But we have a Focus calendar, and it's beautiful. And it'll look great on your wall. And you should go get one. It does.

I've got the color sample version actually right here in front of me. It looks really sharp. And I'm thinking I'm going to put in my order for a bunch of these shortly. But I think everybody should buy at least one. We talked, you know, like the last episode about it, but I really think that this is the thing that provides the most clarity for me when I'm thinking about all the things that I want to do in a year. And then even, you know, just having it where I can see it all the time and someone makes a request of me, then I kind of know that I've got

a busy month coming up. So I'm not going to want to try to deliver a project during that time. If they need it by then, then I'm not the right person. So we talk a lot about saying no. This is actually one of the tools that really helps me say no to more stuff. Yeah. I think it's a great product for the focused audience. I'm looking forward to getting mine on the back of my door. I've got the perfect spot for it. And so I have to look at it every time I leave the room. I can look at it while I'm on the phone and people are asking me to speak at things. And I look at it and realize I've already double booked myself for that month.

Anyway, it's going to be great. But if you want your own focused calendar, they're really great looking. We'll put a link in the show notes. They're still on sale. And you put a link in the show notes. They're still on sale and you should get yours before January gets here. Right. They are $29 and that includes the shipping. We wanted to make it as simple as possible.

You go there, you pay the $29. That's flat rate. It will ship anywhere in the continuous US, I guess. If you want to get it shipped somewhere else, there's some extra cost involved. Shipping calendars in big tubes is, I guess. If you want to get it shipped somewhere else, there's some extra cost involved. Shipping calendars and big tubes is kind of expensive. But we tried to make it as simple as we could for people.

Yeah. So Mike, let's talk about sleep. I know that sleep is a big deal to you because of your epilepsy. Yes. So I've alluded to this on the podcast previously. It's not something that I normally talk a lot about because I don't want to use it as an excuse for things, but it's very relevant to the topic today. So I'll just share a little bit of my story here.

When I was 18, the summer after I graduated high school, I was thinking I was invincible, you know, sleeping probably six hours a night and thinking that that was was plenty. As young adults typically do, I'm getting ready to go off to college. I'm thinking the world is my oyster. I can do anything, right? And I had a reality check. Standing in line at a McDonald's during a workday,

there was somebody there with me who was from work and we were in between different locations for a video shoot that we were doing. And while we were standing in line at the McDonald's during our lunch break, I had a seizure. And I don't remember much about it. I know what people have told me after the fact that there was also a nurse that was in line with me. And so when I had the seizure, she turned me on my side and kept me safe until the ambulance came. The ambulance picked me up, and the only thing I remember about that is coming to briefly in the

back of the ambulance on the way to the hospital, looking out through the window and seeing my dad driving the car right behind the ambulance and then blacking out again and waking up in a hospital bed. When I came to, they told me that I had epilepsy and it was genetic. I had inherited it from my grandmother. Apparently, it skips a generation. So, my dad's generation, they didn't experience any of the symptoms, but they traced it back to my grandmother and they told me that this was just something I was going to have to learn how to manage. Which at the beginning was really difficult because when I left the hospital, they prescribed some medication for me, which they over-prescribed it. some medication for me, which they over-prescribed it. And it's supposed to regulate your brain waves. I'm not a doctor, but the way that they test for this type of thing really just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me because they hook you up to the EEG and they monitor your brain

waves and they can basically tell if your brain's misfiring at that particular moment. So they have me hooked up for 15 minutes, they don't see anything. And they're like, well, to be safe, basically, you should just keep taking this medication for the rest of your life. The problem is that the medication makes you drowsy. And when I was first taking it, they had over-prescribed it. I, at the time, was 135 pounds dripping wet, skinny soccer player. And they were giving me, they told me afterwards enough for a 300 pound woman. So I was sleeping about 12 hours a night and was still exhausted all day. And I was like, this is miserable. I can't function like this. This isn't sustainable. They dialed in the medication and things were going good. I went off to college

and like probably anybody else who's a freshman in college away from home for the first time, I was a little bit lax in taking my medication. So I had another seizure actually the fall of my freshman year at college. And they told me basically that we don't know when or if you're ever going to have another seizure, but these are the list of things that can trigger it. And one of them is not getting enough sleep. And as a freshman in college, you know, I wasn't getting enough sleep. I wasn't taking my medication consistently. That just kind of combined to not a good situation. So from that point on, it's kind of like, okay, you got to make some lifestyle changes here. And I started paying attention to my sleep, both the quantity that

I was getting and the quality of it. And that's really the gist of what I want to dive into here today. Because I feel like even for me, I've got a medical reason to pay attention to this stuff. But if we're honest with ourselves, I think the culture kind of promotes this idea of a heroic, the heroic worker, you know, who can work 60-hour weeks and live on and be perfectly fine on five hours of sleep a night. And that's just not the case for most people. You have to push back against that ideal that our culture creates. And when you do, you see a lot of positive benefits, kind of like what you were talking about at the very beginning. Yeah. I mean, the show's called Focused and the goal is to help people bring focus to their life. And I think one of the

biggest enemies of bringing focus to bear is this no-sleep culture. And I think people are starting to wake up to that. See how I did that? But for the longest time, it's been like a badge of honor. Just like the busy badge of honor, there's the's been like a badge of honor. Just like the busy badge of honor, there's the no sleep badge of honor. And both of those are bad badges of honor. You don't want them. And it's compounded by the fact that there are a very small percentage of people who can actually survive on less than seven and a half hours of sleep per night. And everybody thinks they fall into that category. Well, I'm one of those. But in reality, it's like two or 3% of people who can do that. And it's 40 or 50% of people who think that they can do that. And a lot of times you don't even

see the crash coming. I remember reading The Sleep Revolution, I think, by Arianna Huffington. And she was talking about how she was workinganna Huffington. And she was talking about how she was working these crazy long hours. And she was sleep deprived. And she was at her desk. And she blacked out. And she woke up. She was on the floor. She had a big gash in her head from where it hit the desk. And it was due to lack of sleep. She didn't have a medical condition. But your body just can't keep going like that. You're stealing from future you when you don't get enough sleep. And we don't realize the price that we're paying when we do that. Yeah, when I first started practicing, one of the attorneys told me,

hey man, sleep is for wimps. Actually, wimps wasn't the word I used. But just initially, like right out of the gate, they're telling you, no, you need to get less sleep to do this job. And that's just the opposite of what you need when you're doing a hard job. So I spent a little time, you know, sniffing around the internet about sleep deprivation and, you know, what it causes. The National Transportation Safety Administration says 100,000 accidents per year and 1,500 deaths are due to sleep deprivation. I mean, 1,500 people a year die because of somebody driving that's sleep deprived. The one that was,, I think really one of the most relevant ones to this show is that it makes you dumb, you know, forgetfulness. It's almost like you're, you're drunk. You know, it's like people wouldn't tell you at work, Hey, it's really important that you show up every day drunk. But when they tell you to show up every day, sleep deprived, in essence, they're telling you to show up drunk. they're telling you to show up drunk. Waking, there's been studies that show people who don't get enough sleep, it stimulates their appetite. You actually eat more food because you don't have

enough sleep. I don't really know the science behind it, but according to some studies, that's true. Well, I believe it has to do with the amount of willpower that you have is depleted when you're not at full strength, which makes sense, right? Yeah. And there's a lot of research about the topic of willpower. Some people think that it's finite. Some people think it's replenishable. But the bottom line is that if you don't allow your brain to recover all the way, then you are playing with a handicap. Yeah. It kills your sex drive. I mean, man, I don't want to kill my sex drive. That's fun. The long-term effects, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, depression, ages your skin. I think over time, this stuff really takes a

toll on you. Basically, my takeaway from all the research is it shortens your life. If you decide to play fast and loose with your sleep, you're going to pay a long-term price for it. But you also pay a short-term price every day. And that's something that was just underlying for me the last couple of days. Because, man, I've been feeling like a superman the last couple of days. And I realized the only difference was I got an extra hour of sleep every night. Yep. And with the time change, it's kind of built in where in the fall, you have this opportunity to get the extra hour of sleep, right?

But in the spring, we're going to lose it. And the majority of people aren't going to take that into consideration. They're just going to set their alarm for the same time every day. And they're going to go into work and they're going to feel a little bit more tired. Maybe they don't even think about why they feel a little bit more tired. They just try to push through. And really what I want to challenge people to think about during this episode is how can you create the systems where you don't have to rely on the one extra hour of sleep

in the fall to help you recover? Because you can't really recover. All of this stuff adds up and accumulates in what's called sleep debt. And you lose an hour every night, you're not just going to catch up on the weekends. It's going to take a long time to recover that and most people never do. So like you said, it has all these negative effects and ultimately it shortens their life. And also, I would argue, reduces the quality of life that they have. Problem is they don't realize it. Yeah.

One of the things the studies were showing that it impairs your judgment about the importance of sleep because you kind of delude yourself. I'm using the drunk analogy. You have a few drinks. You don't realize how drunk you are. You think you're fine. Yep, exactly. I used to tell younger attorneys when we would go to trial together that rest is a weapon. I tried

to do the opposite of what I was told when I started because I always felt like there's nothing more important when you're under the most stressful of circumstances to have a good night's sleep and full rest, even to the extent that I would go and take naps during trial. And we'll talk about naps later in the outline. But it just, I think it makes a huge difference. I mean, you have to be sharp and sleep gets you that. So, today we're going to talk about it. Maybe we should start talking about what sleep actually does for you. Yeah, and this is something that is fascinating to me. So I'll just try to summarize this real briefly in case it's not fascinating to everybody else.

But basically, your body is wired to have a normal 24-hour circadian rhythm where you go through different periods of alertness and sleepiness. And some people will call those like process C and process S. The process C is the thing that produces the alertness. The process S, that's the thing that produces the melatonin, the sleep-inducing substances in the brain, and it helps you to go to sleep so your brain can recover. And these work together to cause you to go to sleep every single night. And while you are sleeping, there are these sleep cycles that happen. So just because you're not awake and conscious does not mean that all sleep is the same. So there's a bunch of different stages here, four or five stages, depending on where you

look. I'll just highlight the main ones. So stage one, that's what happens first. That's light sleep. Usually happens right after you fall asleep within about 15 minutes. It's kind of like a quick cat nap. It's kind of, it's really the transition to sleep. Within about 15 minutes, it's kind of like a quick cat nap.

It's really the transition to sleep. And then you go a little bit deeper into stage two. That's light sleep where your brain waves now are starting to slow down. This happens usually within 10 to 25 minutes of falling asleep. And this is the stage where your heart rate slows down and your body temperature starts to drop. This is the power nap stage. Then you've got stage three. This is the one that's sometimes Then you've got stage three. This is the one that's sometimes

split up into two different stages, but this is basically where the deep sleep occurs, where you're actually sleeping. And during this stage, your blood flow is directed away from your brain to your muscles and your physical energy is restored. And then stage four is the REM sleep, the rapid eye movement sleep. And this is where most of the restorative stuff that happens during sleep. It's also where dreaming occurs. The general rule is that the more REM sleep you can get, the better rested you are. But you can't just fall asleep and go to REM sleep. You have to transition through all these different stages.

So you fall asleep, you go to stage one, stage two. You can't hack the system. You cannot hack the system. You go stage one, stage two, stage three, and if you get woken up, you never get to the REM sleep. It's almost like that sleep cycle didn't happen, which is not great news for parents of young children. Yeah.

But really understanding how this works, you go stage one, stage two, stage three, stage four, and then you start to come back up. Stage four, stage three, stage two, stage one. That is a full sleep cycle. The average person needs five of these sleep cycles to function normally, and they each take about 90 minutes. So that is, if you're doing the math, seven and a half hours of sleep just to function normally. And when you're sleep deprived and you can get an extra sleep cycle, you wake up

kind of like you've been this last week, David, and you feel really, really good. Because it's like you've gotten used to a new normal. And then when you see how good things can be, you're like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. I can take over the world now. Yeah. It's crazy. I was talking to somebody who's like, you know, there's a term in programming called garbage collection, where the program goes and pulls all the garbage out and dumps it out. You know, it's a programming thing. But it's like garbage collection for your brain. It's like you have that opportunity to process things. Yes. Another analogy I like is it's like an oil change for your brain. The difference here is that instead of every couple of months or every 3,000 miles,

your brain and your body needs this oil change every single night. But it's kind of amazing when you think about everything that the brain does. It's really the most powerful supercomputer ever. And when you don't get enough rest, when you don't allow it to recharge all the way and you're functioning at 70%, 80%, whatever, you can get away with it for a little while. And on the surface, it looks like you're able to push through, but you really don't understand how much your brain does and what peak productivity, I guess, for your body really looks like until you have built in this system and you start to recover from the sleep debt. This is kind of the thing I think that everybody at some point in their life struggles with. I mentioned in my story, you know, I was 18 going off to college and I was accumulating sleep debt and I had this, it really, it was a benefit because it was a forced reset and

it forced me to take this stuff seriously. And from that point on, basically, I've been trying to do things the right way. Everybody's got to have that moment of clarity for themselves though, where it's like, okay, this just isn't working anymore. And if you can do that yourself, instead of falling asleep at the wheel, or having your performance suffer at your job, or flying off the handle when you're home with your family, like all of these things are regulated by your brain. And if you can recognize that things aren't quite right and make the adjustments, that's much better than being forced to do it. I mean, most people don't get this stuff sorted out to their 40s or 50s. Of course, Mike Schmitz does it at 18. Well, I'm not smart enough to do

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make your next website. Mike, before we move past how sleep works, I want to talk a little bit about technology. I know there's applications and things you can buy. I think there's like pillows and sheets and stuff you can buy to help track your sleep better. Have you gone down that rabbit hole at all? Yes, I can tell you just how far the rabbit hole goes. Well, let me tell you my experience first. Because I have never really dug

in on this. I think it's probably a good idea. The last couple of days, like I said, it has been real eyeopening for me in terms, I thought I was getting good sleep, but I feel like, no, obviously a little more would make a difference for me. But you know, I did at one point there was that app called sleep cycle, the original version, you would literally plug your phone in and stick it under your pillow and you leave it on all night. And I did that, but it just never really felt right to me. And now I think they've got one that listens to your snoring. And I just don't know where to start with this, but I'm starting to think I need to look into this deeper. Yeah, the Sleep Cycle has come a long way.

That's actually one that I use in before we get into my whole sleep workflow, for lack of a better term. I will say that I struggled with the same thing. That putting it under the sheet just felt weird. I tend to move around a lot when I sleep. And so I was always afraid that I was going to send my phone flying

and I'd wake up and phone would be on the floor and I'd have a cracked screen or something. So I'm glad that that's not the only option anymore. And honestly, there's a ton of options available if you want to track your sleep to get a picture of what's actually going on while you're sleeping. It sounds like you may have a solution. We're going to talk about our sleep, kind of like, I don't know, I'd say patterns, our sleep habits later. Maybe you want to talk about it then. Sure, yeah, we can do that. I'll mention a couple of the things that you can do to make the most of your sleep, though. And this is something that a lot of people, I think, just don't really think about. You tend to stay awake as long as you can, kind of like my kids. They try to stay up as late as they possibly can,

right? And then when they're exhausted, they fall asleep. And then they get up at the time they have to get up in order to do the things that they have to do in the day. And I think applying a little bit of intentionality and planning for how and when you are going to go to sleep can provide some big benefits, at least in my experience. These are some things that have helped. And we can talk about how we tie all these things together. But one of the things that I think is kind of underrated is the level of light that is in your room. It shouldn't come as a surprise that the darker your room is, the easier it is for you to fall asleep. But if you ever just lay in bed at night and look around the room,

you'll probably see quite a few flashing lights and different colors, right? And you just have, you're so exhausted that you've trained your body to overcome that sort of stuff. But figuring out which of those things you can remove can have a very positive impact on your sleep, specifically the clock in your room. So this is my, I cannot sleep with a clock in the room. If I go sleep in a hotel,

I've got to unplug it or turn it against the wall so I don't see it. Because I see the time on the clock and then I get frustrated that I'm not asleep yet. And so if it takes me a half an hour to fall asleep, in the back of my mind, I'm thinking, oh, tomorrow's going to be really tough because you're not getting enough sleep. And that just has a cumulative negative effect. One REM cycle down, already one down. Exactly.

And then the anxiety that that produces means that I'm probably going to miss another one, too. Yeah. So not knowing, you know, what time it is when you're going to sleep, I think is probably, you can look at your clock or your phone, you know, as you're going to bed, obviously. I try to be in bed at the same time every night. Doesn't mean that it always works, but I've got my ideal time. But after that point, once you are in bed, you don't want to be looking at those things. Yeah, I don't like the way, because when I was a kid, I had a clock in the bedroom all the time, never really thought about it. But now, if I go to a hotel room it lights up

it's like there's a flashlight on in the room i can't get over how much light it emits even when you put them on the dim mode so i don't have one either the i do put my apple watch on a charging cable on the side of my bed so if i tap the the watch it gets into nightstand mode and i can see what time it is and occasionally it's useful if you wake up in the middle of the night and you can see what time it is or sometimes i wake up like between i guess room cycles like i'll wake up at like 4 30 and like oh i guess i should get up now and i'll just check the time that way you know but the um uh but i maybe at the end of today's show, I'm going to be start wearing my watch to bed. I don't know, but the, um, but I do have

something there, but it's not always on in terms of the light in the room. However, it is something to take a look at. Like I have a, um, one of those, um, you know, charge, you plug in the wall and then you've got a bunch of plugs in it and it's got a what do you call this? A charger one of those things that stops if there's a surge in the line texture electronics. But it's got a blue light on it that lights up the room.

I mean it feels like it really is like a beacon in the night so I just got some gaff tape and put it over the little LED and if you lay in bed at night and you see a bunch of lights beacon in the night. So I just got some gaff tape and put it over the little LED. And if you lay in bed at night and you see a bunch of lights on in the room, it's not a bad idea the next day to go through and knock some of those out

with a little piece of tape, you know, black electrical tape or even this masking tape would probably be enough. But the black tape does a better job of it. And when you're at home and you can control more of the elements, you can obviously take this further than you can when you're traveling.

But one of the things that I think is very underrated is these blackout curtains. We actually got some of these probably about a year ago and it made a huge difference. I never really, before we had them, I never really thought that the light coming in from the outside, because we don't live in the middle of a city, it's not very bright or very noisy, but it really does make a huge difference once we installed these blackout shades instead of the normal shades that were in our house to begin with. It really does help us to transition to sleep faster. Yeah, I mean, and if you've ever slept in a hotel room and you find that you oversleep the next day, it's because of those blackout curtains. I mean, if the room stays dark, your body is

perfectly happy to get more sleep. Yeah, it's the way it's designed to work, right? We evolved as, you know, going to bed when it was dark and waking up when it was light. And that actually kind of leads into, I'll put a pin in this, but there's things you can do to make sure that you wake up in the right state that can kind of help you hit the ground running so you don't feel super groggy in the morning. Yeah. One of the challenges for me before I built the studio in the house was a lot of the work I did every day was in a corner of the bedroom. And that actually made it harder to go to sleep because I could see the work.

I could physically see it across the bed from me. And I think I had a harder time disconnecting. Yeah, it's the siren song of One More Thing, right? Yeah. interacting. Yeah, it's the siren song of one more thing, right? Yeah. Yeah. Which we'll talk about that to evening routines and how that's kind of worked for me too. But when you have your workspace actually be the place that you sleep as well, then you do have to recognize that you have to fight against that. You have a weighted blanket. I do. This is amazing. We'll put the link in the show notes to the one that we have because there's a lot of these out there and majority of them are smaller.

This one actually goes over our entire queen size bed. And the general rule with weighted blankets, by the way, is that you want it to be about 10% of your body weight. This one is more than that. My wife picked it out, but we both love it. So we continue to use it. This one is 25 pounds. So neither of us are 250 pounds. It's probably a little bit heavy, but we really enjoy this because when you lay down, it forces for me specifically because I tend to move around a lot. It forces me not to move so much. And it also, there's a lot of research that shows that these weighted blankets, they're often used in like special ed classrooms, children with autism, for example, they'll have these weighted blankets and it'll help calm them down when they're

dealing with anxiety. And that's one of the things that causes you to stay awake at night, at least for me, you know, it's something that I deal with is, okay, I'm going to bed now, but am I actually going to go to bed or is it going to take me 45 minutes to fall asleep? Right. So this kind of helps me to calm down a lot quicker and transition to sleep a lot faster. Also causes me to stay asleep. So I find that I get up in the middle of the night a lot less when I'm using this, this weighted blanket. Daisy got one for us. It's like a, it's like one for on the couch. It's not a full size for the

bed, but I don't think she like did a lot of research on it. And it's like the weight, whatever's in it to create the weight, like accumulates like in the bottom of the blanket. So it's not you know i find it kind of frustrating to use it so i'll have to pull it out and try it again but that's that's specifically why we wanted one that covered our entire bed because if you have one that's smaller it's going to move from side to side and you're going to have that exact same thing it's going to roll off the bottom or you know it's all going to get bunched up on one particular side we've used several different blankets and we've had that experience with pretty much every single one of them they all have different systems to try to keep it evenly distributed but the best

thing for us is having it go over all the ends of the bed yeah then it pretty much stays there interesting yeah yeah i never really thought of that as helping get sleep but i hadn't really looked into it much either it just feels really good too it's it's an interesting feeling i'm not sure it feels good to me but um i don't i'm gonna get it back out and try it again after today's show i when we first got when we got the first one because i got it for Christmas last year. I tried taking a nap with it. And when I laid down, my comment was, it feels like you're sleeping in a warm hug. It just, I can see where some people might not like it, but I really enjoy it. All right. I'm going to try again. I'm going to try again. I'm going to have to get it out and shake it out or somehow get the weight in the right place again, but I'll figure it out. What other gear are you using to help yourself get some sleep?

This is getting easier thanks to internet mattress companies like Casper, which before I started doing this podcast with you, I heard about Casper on a podcast, probably Mac Power users, to be honest, some relay show. And decided to order one. And with the understanding that because they had the 100-night return policy that if my wife didn't like it, we would just get rid of it. Yeah. And, uh, I got it for her around her birthday as a birthday gift, which maybe wasn't super smart for, uh,

I guess I would say don't generally take that approach by a mattress for a birthday gift, but, uh, it is one of my wife's favorite gifts that i ever gave her is this this casper casper mattress and uh one of the thing we like about it is that she moves at night i don't feel it or vice versa because of the way that the mattress is constructed we had had a air mattress the kind where not the select comfort ones but the ones

where you can basically fill in your side to where you want it yeah uh so we had a decent mattress but this is way better and we both sleep way better now that we have a mattress upgrade yeah i agreed we did the same thing i you know i did the usual thing when i was in when we first got married. I bought a used mattress from a friend that was moving. And we kept it for way longer than you're supposed to keep a mattress. When you have kids, it's like you don't spend money on your own stuff when you have kids. You're constantly buying stuff for them. They're growing out of their beds. You need to buy them new beds.

So you're dealing with all of that. And then a few years ago, we realized our kids are kind of grown and we could spend some money on ourselves. So we bought a Casper mattress as well. And the, um, it's great. It's just, it's amazing. And I don't know why I waited so long to like get a good mattress. Right. It was just so stupid in hindsight, but you know, whatever. Well, it's one of those things that you don't see the immediate benefit of it when you're trying to justify the purchasing decision, because what you have is good enough, right? Yeah. Kind of this whole topic of sleep, you know, what I'm doing now is good enough.

But when you kind of shift that thinking and try to optimize it to be the best that it can be, it's kind of a no-brainer. You're going to spend a third of your life on your mattress. Now, you put something in the outline that has me, my eyebrows raised. He just wrote in it, gang. He wrote the word magnesium spray. I'm thinking, what the heck is this, Mike? Well, magnesium, again, I don't know all of the science here, so take it with a grain of salt. But magnesium has a bunch of health benefits. And one of the things that is tied to using magnesium is improving the quality of your sleep. So we have this magnesium spray, which I first heard about this from my brother and kind of thought this was a little bit kooky.

There's no way this works, right? But I bought a bottle. It's like 12 bucks on Amazon or something. And it's, you just spray it on like the bottom of your feet or your back, uh, and it absorbs into your body. And it really does, at least for me, help me to sleep better. The first night that I tried this, I actually slept completely through the night. That was probably the first time in like three or four months. Um, and again, your mileage is going to vary, but now it's just become part of the evening routine. You have to wonder if it's a placebo or I don't know. I've never heard about this, but hey, if it works for you, man. Yeah. Well, like I said, I'm kind of probably off the deep end when it comes to this stuff

because I'm going to perspective on it. So I'm going to do everything that I can to optimize it. And I noticed some, some improvement. No, I'm not sure if like my body adjusted to it now and it's not as effective, but it just become part of the routine and it takes a couple of seconds. So no big deal.

Or maybe it's a, something you bring out on important nights, you know, like where you really need to get good night's sleep you know deploy it tactically yeah but the but hey you don't want to wake up in the back of another ambulance so whatever it takes yep yeah i i do think that that you know all the things we're talking about are ways to kind of plan towards getting a good night's sleep and if it's something you want to take seriously,

I think it's something you need to think through. Absolutely. Another thing that can help you sleep better but requires a little bit of forethought is making sure that you are hydrated. I don't know the percentage, but I would wager that the majority of people do not drink enough water. And if you stay hydrated, that can help you sleep. It's kind of counterintuitive because you think that the more water that you drink throughout the day, the more likely you're going to have to get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom. But as long as, in my experience anyways, you don't drink a ton after seven o'clock

or something, then no, it's not going to have that effect. There's different things I've used to make sure that we drink enough water. I used to have one of those spark water bottles, the Bluetooth ones, that would track how much water you're drinking. I liked it, but the battery didn't last very long and I got annoyed having to change it all the time. So I've just been drinking. I've got a clean canteen water bottle now that I use but I found that because it's not tracking I don't have the numbers I wasn't drinking quite enough so my brain the way it works is well how do we make this more fun and the way that we did that is we bought a soda stream it became something

that I was using to kind of relax at the end of the evening if we were not running until 10 o'clock at night. We were actually home. We would buy sparkling water from Costco and I would drink a can at night. And then I started calculating how much we were spending on sparkling water, realized we could buy a SodaStream for 50, 60 bucks and make our own at home. realized we could buy a SodaStream for 50, 60 bucks and make our own at home. And we just take, we have a filter system built into our sink. So we take that filtered water, we don't add any flavor to it, but we just always have a couple bottles of sparkling water in the fridge. And it's more fun to drink sparkling water. So we drink more water. Yeah. Yeah. But the underlying point is, you know,

drink a lot of water during the day and you're going to sleep better at night. I think that's, that's important. Yep. Uh, I also keep water nearby. Um, if I, if I do wake up thirsty in the middle of the night, I don't want to have to go downstairs to get water. Yes. That's a good tip. This episode of focused is brought to you by Ahrefs. Whether you work for a big brand, you run your own small business, or you do freelance work, getting traffic to your website is always a challenge.

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traffic to convert into sales, go there right now, hrefs.com and get that $7 trial. That's hrefs.com to get that $7 trial. Our thanks to AhH-R-E-F-S.com to get that $7 trial. Our thanks to Ahrefs for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. Hey, let's talk about some of the challenges to getting sleep. You know, we've talked about some of the things we bring to bear, but there are things that get in the way.

And I know you're one of the things you're right in the middle of right now. You've got five kids. So that is a problem if you want to get a full night's sleep. It is a challenge for sure. As your kids get older, it gets a little bit easier. I'm not sure that there is a magic solution for someone with a newborn. I mean, you've got to get up when your child needs something, right?

Well, I would say that there is a solution of teamwork, you know, that the parents take turns and so you don't have two straight nights where you get no sleep. Yes, that's a really good point. But as your kids get older, you can kind of guide them in the direction of creating their own positive sleep habits. And one of the things that we have done in that area is we have bought this OK to wake alarm clock. We'll have the link in the show notes. There's a couple different versions of this. The one that we have does actually have the time on it. So you mentioned, David, you had a clock with the time on it growing up. It seems like my kids don't really care about that sort of thing. They're not bothered

by it. In fact, some of our kids, they're falling asleep before they even get in their bed. So this is not something that's keeping them awake at night. But also you can use it to, you can program it so that it changes color when it is okay to wake up. So we have it set to 7 a.m. And the rule in our house is that you stay in your room, you can play quietly or whatever, but you're not going to come bother mom and dad until 7 a.m. and your clock is green. So when 7 a.m. hits or whatever time you determine,

the clock turns green and that's a visual cue that it is okay to get out of bed. And obviously, I think people will have different results with this. Your mileage is going to vary for sure. But this has been a game changer for us. It did not take our kids long to adjust to this. And they're completely fine with it. And they've kind of built the habit now except for the two-year-old who doesn't really understand this yet. But she's getting to the point where we can start to work on this. We've got one of these at home. We've got one at the vacation home up in Door County. I mean, this is part of the

routine for the Schmitz family, and it's been awesome. What a great idea. I mean, I remember once when my youngest was like three, one morning I woke up, I was on my side, I just opened my eyes and she was standing next to the bed, like holding her doll, just looking at me. It was very jarring. That does happen occasionally. I mean, it's not perfect, but generally speaking, this has really worked. And for the people who maybe are thinking that this is a little bit selfish, the rationale behind this for us is that you have to protect the golden goose, right? So, we have built in a buffer at the beginning of our day where my wife and I can go through our morning routine and we can make sure that we are in the best possible position to help all of the little

humans that rely on us. And I don't think that that is selfish. On the surface, it can kind of be and you're going to have to kind of push through that. But once you start doing it for a little while and you start to see some of the results, you recognize that this is actually one of the most unselfish things that you can do. Yeah, no, I get it. Another challenge I think people have is just you work too late. If you work right until the moment you go to sleep, you are not going to go to sleep. You know, your brain is just racing.

I know that's true for me. I am, you know, there's different people. Some people, their best focus time is later in the day and others that are in the mornings. I really have sympathy toward people that have their high energy late at night and they get all their work done because I don't know how they get to sleep afterward. Yeah, well, I think, again, there's the debate of night owls versus morning larks or however you want to define those. owls versus morning larks or however you want to define those. And again, I think that a lot of people are just so wired. They're all jacked up because they're staring at their phones and the blue light is tricking their body into thinking that it's not as late as it really is. So they

think that they are night owls. And on the surface, they say, I'm more productive at night. But I would challenge everybody listening to this to try and experiment and try to force yourself to become a morning person. This is actually what Sean McCabe did. And he was adamant that he was a night owl. He did his best work at night. And then when he started forcing himself to get up early, he recognized because he was tracking what he was actually able to get done, the number of words that he was writing, that he was much, much more productive at the beginning of the day than at the end of the day. So just don't default to whatever you've always done as that's what works for you. Well, it would make sense that after you have a full night's

sleep that you're going to have the best focus, the best energy right after that, as opposed to, you know, 10 hours into it. That's what makes sense to me. And that's kind of why I try to get up early and get some focused writing done before any of the other craziness starts in my day, because I recognize that I'm able to do more at that point. My mental resources are at the highest levels they're going to be all day. From that point forward, it's downhill. So I'm going to make the most of it as I can. Another challenge that you can have toward getting sleep is your significant other. If you share a bed with somebody, their idea of what bedtime is and perfect dark isn't necessarily the same as yours.

I mean, maybe your spouse wants to have an alarm clock that they can look at. Or I know my wife looked at me kind of side-eyed when I started walking around the room with tape, taping up all the little LED lights. She's like, are you crazy? And so it's a challenge. I can tell you for me, and we're going to talk about our own habits later, but my wife likes to decompress at the end of the day. She's got some games she plays on her phone, and maybe she's reading the news.

I don't want to look at a screen at that point. And one of the things I keep in my bedside table is one of those blackout masks. You know what I mean? So if she's really going and it's keeping me awake, I'll just put the mask on. And we don't, there's no judgment. She doesn't get mad. She doesn't feel like I'm like passively, aggressively chastising her. I just need to get some sleep and that's fine. But you need to address that if there is that if the person that you share the bed with doesn't have your exact same habit. Yeah, one of the most productive things you can do is not try to force your habits on the person or persons that you live with.

Because what works for you is not necessarily going to work for them. My wife and I have a little bit different bedtimes, but for the most part, I am ready for bed a little bit earlier than she is. It's not a big deal and we tend to just kind of compromise and meet in the middle. But I'm usually ready for bed about a half an hour before she is. And if it's a bigger difference than that, then yeah, there are things that you can do like the sleep mask to block the light. We actually have hue lights on either side of our bed. We'll get into the main reason I have those in the routines in a little bit. But one of the benefits of that is that if I'm going to bed before she is, or she's going to bed before she is,

or she's going to bed before I am, then, because that does happen occasionally too, then we'll turn the light on on the other side of the bed and keep it real low. So they can, they can see when they come into the bedroom, but it's not enough to keep me awake. There are, in addition to the sleep mask though, there are these special headphones, which I actually have some of these and I bring them with me when I travel and they've been, um, they've been, um, uh, a big help in certain situations. Uh, I tend to sleep on my stomach or on my side. So just sticking in normal headphones into my ears is going to hurt by the morning, but they make a really thin cushioned headphones. The ones that

I have are called bed phones and I've had them for several years now. And they plug in and you can play white noise or something to help you fall asleep. These I brought with when I went on my mission trip to Costa Rica. I had no idea what the sleeping situation was going to be like. And it ended up being in this hotel, which had open windows, basically. They didn't actually close. And it was right on a busy street. And so there's light streaming in and there's noise and brought my mask, brought my bed phones, and I was good. I was able to fall asleep, make sure that I got enough sleep. Looked like a bug, probably.

I did, yeah. And there were some people who were sleeping in the room with me. There were three of us in the room. And they probably thought I was a little bit weird because they're going to bed and I'm already tucked in the corner, you know, trying to get as dark and quiet as I can so I could fall asleep. But the last thing I wanted to do was have a seizure in a foreign country. Yeah. No, makes sense. I wanted to do was have a seizure in a foreign country. So yeah, no, makes sense. Yeah, there's definite things you can do to overcome these challenges. The biggest challenge I think is the no sleep culture is the if you've got the mindset that you don't need a lot of sleep,

I really would like you to challenge that, that assumption. Yes, agreed. And the other thing that kind of goes along with that, I think, just in terms of reframing and rethinking the defaults is how you use your screens. And I really am a huge fan of the fact that Apple is, and other companies too now, are bringing attention to this in terms of the limits that you can set for yourself in different applications, but even just the amount of time that you spend on your screens. I actually have a discipleship group with a bunch of guys at my church and talked about this intentional use of technology at one point. And I had everybody go in and look at the screen time stats in their

phone. And some of the guys were like, what? There's no way I was on here for seven hours. I'm like, well, yeah, you were. And the numbers don't lie, right? So specifically try to use your devices less, use them more intentionally. And specifically at night, make sure that you're not staring at a screen before you try to go to bed. This is the biggest thing that can derail a good night of sleep for me is using my phone a lot. Even with the night shift features that Apple has added, it's not as effective as something like Flux for your Mac, in my opinion. In fact, the Flux website has tons of research behind how the program works. It essentially works the same as night shift. It tries to eliminate a lot of the blue light and make it more of like an orangish tint to simulate like a candlelight or something. But the brighter the blue light, the more your body thinks that it's

still daytime. And so, talking about daylight savings, it gets dark here in Wisconsin now about 5.30, right? So, starting about 5.30, if I'm not staring at my phone and I'm outside and it starts to get dark, my body is saying, okay, now it's time to start transitioning to sleep. It's going to produce melatonin, which is the thing that's going to help me fall asleep. And you basically short circuit that when you bombard your body with blue light and your body's like, oh, I guess it's not that late. So we won't produce the melatonin. And then when you try to go to bed, you're up for another hour or two. Yeah. What about napping? Are you a napping guy, Mike?

I'm not a big napping guy. I use it occasionally. I guess, you know, I deploy it tactically. For the most part, I do not nap, but if I don't sleep well, then I will take a 30, 40 minute nap in the middle of the day. The thing that always pushed back against me when I would try to take a nap is that I would lay down and then I would think, well, I'm not falling asleep, so this nap has no point. I'm not getting any restorative benefit from it. But I realized not too long ago that actually just telling your body, forcing your body to lay down, even if you don't actually fall asleep, that does have a restorative effect. It's better if you can get to like that power nap stage. But even if you don't, it's not

pointless. So I tend to do this if I have a bad night's sleep the night before, I'll try to squeeze it in. But for the most part, this is not part of my daily routine. Yeah, if you want to try and nap, one of the useful things you can tell yourself is, it's okay not to sleep. I'm just going to lay down for 30 minutes and whether or not I sleep, this is useful to me. But in my case, it almost always works. I always fall asleep. But I don't do it every day. I do it at least three times a week usually more um and to me a nap is uh quite often in the afternoon i start catching myself having trouble with my focus i mean that's the point of the show right and i'll i'll see myself like when i'm doing you know deep work and suddenly i'm catch myself reading the same paragraph two or three times trying to

figure it out I'm like oh wait a second I have a problem and I I'll just go take a nap and I'm fortunate now that I can do them because I work from home so many days I can literally just go to the bedroom and lay down my my kind of my workflow for that is I just tell my Apple watch to set a timer for 35 minutes and I'll lay down and I'll be asleep in five and 30 minutes, my wrist taps, I get up and then I go read that contract term just once. And I know what I, what I I'm doing. Um, for me, the math works every time I, I take a 30 minute nap. I get, I get it back and you. And I get so much more back out of that 30-minute investment in terms of productivity and focus for the rest of the day.

It's absolutely worth it. It's the difference between having an afternoon where almost no work gets done and having an afternoon where substantial work gets done. So it's absolutely worth it. Everybody's different. And I know not everybody listening to this show has the benefit of being able to work from home. I can tell you for 22 years, I worked in an office. I still took naps at least three times a week. And when I was in the office, I had a couple of things I would do.

I would go down to the parking structure. I never told my coworkers I was doing this, but often I would eat lunch at my desk or, you know, I do light lunches quite often. You know, I don't, I'm not a big fan of spending long lunches when I'm at work. I just want to get my work done, but I would go down and do the same thing. I'd get my car, I'd put the, you know, those sunblocker wind shades up, like, you know, the ones you would have to keep the sun out of your car on a hot day. But I would just put those up and then tilt the seat back and take a nap. When I was in trial, we'd have hour and a half breaks. So I'd take care of all my witness stuff, whatever, eat a Clif Bar, and then I'd take a 30-minute nap in the car and come back

ready and raring to go as soon as the hour and a half break was done. So there's ways to find a way to take a nap. And this isn't something that everybody has to do. But if you find yourself lagging in the afternoon, if you look at your output in the afternoon and realize it's not very good, a nap experiment might be something worth trying. Yeah, I don't think anybody can argue with the benefits of the nap and sleep in general. If you look at the people who are really at the top of whatever their sport or their field is, athletes specifically kind of famously sleep a ton and then also nap. But if you think about even in the business world, for example, if you want to be able to perform at the highest levels, you, there are things that you can do that

and they're, they're usually tied to sleep that can set you up for success. And, uh, the, the challenge is that mindset. And this is something I think that everybody can benefit from is recognizing, you know, who are the people who are doing what I want to do really, really well? And then what are they doing? And if you pay attention to their sleeping habits, there's a good chance that they're actually sleeping a ton. Yeah.

And I've tried taking naps longer than 30 minutes, you know, but it doesn't work for me because those naps are much harder. Like a 30 minute nap, I can just jump up from and get back to work. An hour and a half nap, I'm kind of a mess afterwards. And it just takes me a while to get like rolling again. Yep. And it just doesn't feel right. And I know I haven't studied this in terms of the science, but I know, I guess it has

something to do with the REM cycle. Like if you get into deep sleep, it's much harder to come back out of that. Yep, definitely. This episode of Focus is brought to you by FreshBooks, online invoicing made easy. You know what would help you get a good night's sleep, Mike? It would be if you got all your invoices paid. And that's what FreshBooks is here to help you do. FreshBooks saves freelancers 192 hours.

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It's just great. I use it all the time. And when you email a client an invoice, FreshBooks can show you whether they've seen it, which puts an end to the guessing game of have they or haven't they. You have to call them and say, hey, did you get my invoice? You know they saw the invoice. You know exactly when they opened the invoice. I had a bunch of problems with getting paid with some of the stuff I was doing with Max Barkey.

It wasn't that the people I was working with were deadbeat so much as I was lazy and I didn't have a good system for getting invoicing out on a timely basis. So I signed up for FreshBooks a few years ago and it has solved all those problems. When I create a new invoice, it auto-fills based on the stuff I've used before. It sends the email out to the customer. The customer can pay right in the email. They can use their credit card or a bunch of different payment systems and make it very easy to pay. And then FreshBooks keeps me up to date as to the invoice status on each one of those. Since I started doing that, I've not had any problem with invoicing and it's just been so much better. So if you're listening to this and not using

FreshBooks, it's time for you to give it a try. FreshBooks is offering an unrestricted 30-day free trial for listeners of this show. There's no credit card required. All you have to do is go to freshbooks.com slash focused and enter focused, F-O-C-U-S-E-D in the how did you hear about us section. So we thank FreshBooks for their support of Focused and all of RelayFM. Want to talk about our sleep routines? Yeah. I think you should go first

because it seems like you have more, you've thought this through more than I have. I am the Padawan here. Well, I've thought it through, but again, this is the ideal and it doesn't happen all the time. Tell me about apps too, because I feel like it's time for me

to like go down that rabbit hole again. Sure. Well, to be honest, I haven't really played with a bunch of them. I've tried some of the big ones, the auto sleep and the sleep plus plus, but the thing specifically that I use is sleep cycle. And the thing that I love about it is that number one, as we mentioned at the beginning, they changed how they track your sleep and it uses the microphone now instead of the accelerometer and you don't have to place it next to your head under the sheet. So I can just set it on my nightstand and activate it when I go to bed and then it's going to track everything. And it's probably not as accurate as something

that's like if you're going to use your Apple Watch to track it that way. It's not going to give you a one to one probably in terms of what's actually going on. But for me, it's good enough. It gives you a chart and it shows you basically from awake to deep sleep and you can see the number of sleep cycles that you've got. It gives you a completely arbitrary, but a sleep score, like a percentage. And I just want to keep seeing that go up basically. So you don't use Apple watch for this? I do not. No. Sleep cycle does not have an option to wake you up via the Apple watch, which is kind of the thing that I would like it to do is if it could just have a silent alarm and use my Apple Watch for that, that would make it perfect

in my opinion. But there's a couple of other things that kind of make it indispensable for me. So number one, it integrates with my Philips Hue lights. and that allows me to set a wake-up window the reason that the wake-up window is better than the standard alarm and again you're going to find people who say this is complete garbage it doesn't work that way i've noticed no difference for me i feel like it really does help me when you wake up at the bottom of a sleep cycle you're in your deep sleep and your alarm is blurring and you got to hit snooze three times. You wake up and you feel groggy. It can take hours, if not the entire day, to shake that feeling. But if you can transition out of sleep and wake up at the point where you're coming up out of your sleep cycle, you're very near the top of your sleep cycle, that helps you wake up

more rested and you're ready to hit the ground running. At least that's my experience. So the wake-up window means that it's going to watch for where you are in your sleep cycle and it's going to time it right when you're at the highest point in your sleep cycle so you're in the best position to be alert when you wake up. Does that make sense? Yeah, but it's kind of amazing to me that it can do all that just based on the noise in the room. Yeah, and the way that it's working is you can, if you listen back to some of the recordings, you can hear how your breathing patterns really do change as you go through the different levels of sleep. So it's not perfect, but for me, it's good enough. But what about your wife? I mean, she's also breathing. How does it know the difference? I honestly don't know how it does that, but it does know that she's running it on her side of the bed and I'm running it on my side

of the bed. And in fact, when I go to activate it, she's already, she's already done it. I'll see on the screen, like a little chain link icon and it says Rachel. So it's balancing those things out. And again, you know, it's probably not perfect, but it's good enough for me. And it's accurate enough where it recognizes that just because my wife got up in the middle of the night, I did not actually get up in the middle of the night. Yeah. And with the new Apple Watch, the battery life is a little lower. So doing the thing where you wear the watch through the night sometimes can be, you have to manage that.

You have to take time during the day to make sure you charge it. So this is kind of an easy solution in terms of not getting in the way of your other technology. Yeah, I love my Apple Watch. This is the thing that kind of got me to establish a running habit. So I think that it's provided a lot of health benefits for me. But I have always placed it on the charger in the middle of the night.

I've never worn it through the night. I tried it a couple of times and it just, it felt weird. I don't like having the thing on my wrist. I've worn it through the night. It doesn't bother me at all.

Put it in theater mode so it doesn't light up the room, you know, accidentally. But otherwise, it's fine. But I haven't really successfully used it for sleep tracking. light up the room, you know, accidentally, but otherwise it's, it's fine. But the, um, but I, I haven't really successfully used it for sleep tracking. You know, there are sleep tracking apps out there that look at your motion with the watch that's attached to your wrist. And those are good too. I think I may try sleep cycle the way you're using it. I'll tell you one downside is I've

always preferred the tap alarm on my wrist with the watch. That's one of the nice things about wearing the watch to bed is you can wake yourself up without waking up your spouse because it doesn't make any noise. And I know Sleep Cycle doesn't do that. In fact, last time I tried Sleep Cycle, all of their alarms were unacceptable to me. They're just a little too nature-y, if that makes sense. I don't know. Yeah, the alarms aren't that great.

But the thing that makes it work for me is the integration with the Philips Hue lights. So I actually own a Philips wake-up light, which kind of takes this wake-up window idea and simulates a fake sunrise. So it starts off just real low, and then during the wake-up window it gets brighter and brighter and what that does is it helps your body accelerate up out of a deep sleep cycle. And you can do the exact same thing with sleep cycle using Philips Hue lights.

So if I've got a half-hour wake-up window, which getting into some of the specifics here with my routine, I usually have my wake-up window set from 6 to 6.30. So I am awake by 6.30. At 6 o'clock, the light is going to start glowing. And at 6.30, it's going to be at full strength and the alarm is going to go off. I find that often I wake up before the alarm goes off. And so I don't even hear the noise because of the Philips Hue lights. And again, I've got one on my side of the bed, my wife's got one on her side of the bed. So we tend to get up about the same time anyways,

not really a big deal. If our schedules were very different, maybe this wouldn't work. But I've found that because it's linked to a specific light bulb, if she's getting up a little bit earlier, it doesn't really bother me or if I'm getting up a little bit earlier,

it doesn't really bother her. Yeah, that was my next question. Honestly, it's like when the light starts waking earlier, it doesn't really bother me. Or if I'm getting up a little bit earlier, it doesn't really bother her. Yeah, that was my next question. Honestly, it's like when the light starts waking up, it doesn't wake up both of you. No, it doesn't. But again, you know, maybe it is a little bit and we're just, it's, we get up so close to the same time that it doesn't, doesn't really matter. But this has just been a game changer for me. I probably have used that term a lot in this episode. But I was the kind of person who needed to set five different alarms because I am a very deep sleeper and I would sleep through alarms. In fact, when I travel before I was start doing the sleep cycle stuff, that's what I would do to make sure I didn't miss a flight or something. I would set five different alarms and I don't have to do that anymore. In fact, most of the time I don't even need the alarm. I'm waking up naturally, which feels way better. And then sleep cycle data can get shared to the health app. So you've kind of got data to look at as well if you want. Yep. It'll tell you if you're snoring, you can play back a recording. So, you know, if you,

if you ever have those discussions like, hey, you were snoring last night. No back a recording. So, you know, if you, if you ever have those discussions, like, hey, you were snoring last night. No, I don't snore. Well, there's, there's proof. Yeah. What about getting to sleep? What, how do you, how do you get to sleep? Yeah, again, this is the ideal, but sometimes it's a little bit later than this, but, but nine o'clock typically is when I want to start my evening routine, which consists of two primary activities. Number one, reading. So I am, well, I'm taking notes usually in my note on my phone. I'm not staring at my phone the whole time.

I'm usually reading a physical book and that helps me to fall asleep when I actually go to bed. I also have a reflection template that I fill out inside of day one. I've kind of changed that around a little bit lately. I really like the templates that they added. And so I don't use the shortcut anymore. I just use the built-in templates, which is really nice. And then by 10 o'clock, basically I'm in bed. The blackout curtains are down. I've already mentioned I got the weighted blanket and I'm launching sleep cycle and I'm in bed basically eight, eight and a half hours ideally. And then waking up sometime between six and 630. Yeah. I, for me, the, the bedtime routine starts for me sometime between nine and 30. I go up into the bedroom and then I got to, you know, kind of just get ready for bed,

brush and floss, all that stuff. And, you know, medications. And then when bed brush brush and floss all that stuff and you know medications and then when i get in bed i like to um sometimes i will watch tv we have a tv in the bedroom now and i do like watching like brain dead youtube you know like there's a new drone out and i'll watch somebody talk about the new drone or you know i, I don't, I don't watch news at that hour because it gets me too worked up. Um, but I'll, you know, I'll watch or something about a video game or maybe even some technology stuff, but even that feels like work. So I, um, I, I, you know, I'll have some brain dead YouTube usually on while I'm kind of putzing around the room. But once I get in bed, I, I have a kindle that i keep at the bedside table and i read that most nights and i don't read fiction on them i usually am reading some kind of

you know productivity nonsense but i do find reading the kindle easier than reading an ipad in bed yes absolutely because it doesn't have the other distractions it doesn't have the blue light etc um the other thing i do quite often is, even though I usually have a shutdown routine earlier in the day, I like to journal at the very end of the night just a little bit. So I just bring my paper journal to bed with me, and I have a little desk bed I can pull out and write on for a while. And for me, that's kind of like a therapeutic thing of finishing the day off and then closing the book. And then I'm ready for bed. So usually for me, lights out are between 10 and 10.30. And usually I wake up.

It just depends on the day. Like on gym days, I wake up at 5.30. On other days, I wake up at 6 or 6.30. So before this week, I've routinely been getting at least seven hours of sleep, usually seven and a half. And something I want to change as a result of the feedback loop I've had this week is, is I want to get it up to eight hours a night of sleep. And the question for me is, well, how do you do that? Because the, I work a lot during the days, but in the evenings, you know, six-ish to nine-ish is family time. I mean, my daughter's home, my wife and I are here,

we talk, sometimes we watch TV together, sometimes we play games, whatever, but we're doing stuff together. I don't think the answer for me is starting the bedtime routine at eight o'clock. Right, yep. Because that's the time that I really like being with them. And I don't think I have a lot of space there. So maybe what this means is I need to move my wake up time to later. Yeah. And that could be something that is hard to do. I know when I was writing my book, I was getting up at 5am and kind of in the back of my head, I've always had that as like the gold standard. I want to, I was getting up at 5 a.m. And kind of in the back of my head, I've always had that as like the gold standard.

I want to get back to getting up at 5 a.m. The reality is that it just doesn't work with our lifestyle. And I'm not the only person living in my house. So I don't have complete control over it. And I've just learned to adapt. And, you know, I'm going to just make sure I've got eight hours carved out for sleep every single night and do the best I can. Yeah, if I'm going to get to bed at 1030, then I need to be setting the alarm for 630,

not 530. And I was thinking about it, but I have some data here. Like I know when I take a 30 minute nap, I get it paid back. And I think I know that if I gave myself an extra hour in the morning, it would get paid back as well. And so I seriously want to start looking into this. And like, like, you know, I've always, we've talked about on the show, you know, our productivity prime time. And I actually, when my wife and I go to the gym together, we have to do it in the morning because she has to go off to work. But days that I go to the gym without her, I always do it in the afternoon because I don't want to give up that time in the morning. So I just have to like start getting more intentional about this. But I am

definitely interested. I'm going to start tracking more and figuring some of this out. Nice. Yeah. It's an experiment for me to conduct. We'll see. That's the common theme with Focused is we just keep conducting these experiments on ourselves we figure out what works what doesn't work and even when we figure out what does work we make mistakes and we try it again the interesting thing for me is i thought i really had sleep nailed i'm like seven to seven and a half hours i'm doing great and there's no further benefit for me and just coincidentally without realizing it, I did an experiment this week

and I'm like, oh, wait a second. I feel really good. What has changed? And it's just that when I thought about it, I'm getting an extra hour of sleep every night. Pete Yeah. You know, you were talking about the napping and how that pays immediate dividends. It pays you back, I think is the term you used. It reminds me of Winston Churchill, who famously, whenever he had a very important decision that he had to make, the first thing he did was go take a nap. And he's also the guy who said, and I think this kind of encapsulates what Focus is all about, is that success is simply going from failure to failure with no loss and, and,

uh, and momentum. And that guy, that guy knew how to, to put out a quote, didn't he? Yeah. Um,

I read, uh, years ago I read, I don't know why I even read it, but somehow I came across the Colin Powell biography. And, uh, you know,

Colin Powell, he was Secretary of State. He was a general, really smart guy. And one of the things he wrote in the book was he talked about all his failures in his military career. He had all these disappointments. And he said the first thing he learned whenever he had a disappointment, whenever he didn't get the promotion or whatever, something went wrong, was he decided to take no action on it and get a good night's sleep. And that was like his answer to every problem was sleep on it. You know, we've all heard the same, sleep on it. And I've always, and I've read this so long ago, my kids are used to me telling

them this because I always give them the same advice. When something goes wrong, I say, you know, just get a good night's sleep. And something goes wrong, I say, you know, do it. Just get a good night's sleep. And then tomorrow morning, it won't seem like as big of a deal as it does right now. Right. And then you can deal with it. And that's what he had, the advice he had given in the book. And I've used that myself many times.

I think it really works. Yep. Do you want to talk a little bit about how this maybe gets modified when we travel? Yeah, yeah. It sounds to me like you've already kind of told us. You've got the headphones, the bed phones. Yep. The sleep mask. Do you have, what do they call the thing, you know, the isolation chamber, the, you know, I'm talking about those white pods people climb into in Silicon Valley.

No, I don't have one of those. Was it the Barium or something? I kind of know what you're talking about, but I've never actually seen one of those. The main thing I guess I want to call out is when you are traveling, things are going to change. And it's kind of the same advice I would give somebody in terms of sticking with a morning routine is figure out an abbreviated version of this that's going to allow you to make the most of your situation. So I'm not going to

necessarily have the blackout curtains and I'm not going to probably have the weighted blanket. And I may not even be in control of what time I'm actually going to bed. But there are a couple things that I try to make sure I stick with when I'm traveling. And the one thing that I want to stick with for my evening routine is the reflection inside of day one. I try to never miss a day. I find that just kind of processing what happened through the day and that dumping that stuff out of my brain that allows me to release it. I don't have to think about it anymore. it. I don't have to think about it anymore. And then if I don't have complete control over the environment, you know, maybe I'll use a sleep mask. I prefer not to. I don't like wearing the thing. But if I have to, I will. I will use white noise. So I just use an app on my phone. There's a lot of good ones. The one that everybody seems to like lately is, I think it's called Dark Noise, and it looks really nice. But in my opinion, the app that I use is called My Noise and the sounds that I get from that are a little bit better. So I use that for

White Noise. And then if I need to, you know, I've got my bed phones. If things are really loud, if I'm in a hotel and people are running up and down the hallway outside my door, I'm not going to get bent out of shape. I'm not going to go yell at them. I'm just going to throw my bed phones on and turn up the volume so I don't hear anything. Yeah, I'd agree. Well, one thing I would add about travel is if you're going away, a lot of times you go away for a work trip. Even when I go to WWDC, I'm there for a week. I always try to pick at least one day in the middle of the week where I lie to everyone I know and say, I tell everyone that I have meetings with somebody else and I get to like eat dinner, like five.

And I go up to the room and go to bed, like in the middle of the trip. I just like, I, I retreat from the whole thing and, um, have one night where I get like 10 hours of sleep. And I find that really useful on trips. Particularly, I would say business trips. I mean, vacations are different. You get plenty of sleep. At least I get plenty of sleep on vacations.

But in terms of like when you go on work trips, try if it's an extended trip, try and get one night where you're not going out with everybody from work or you're not going to some event and you just get in early, take a bath, get to bed and have a really good night's sleep. Right. Yep. Great advice. All right. Well, that's sleep. Sounds like you, I mean, medically, you've got a lot of reason to really have this wired down. And of course you do because you're Mike Schmitz. But that doesn't mean I'm perfect. You know, I want to really make that clear. Like I've, I've thought through what my ideal evening routine looks like, but my success rate on that is going to depend on, on the day. We, we got stuff going on. I'm, I'm at church a couple nights a week and sometimes, you know, worship team practice runs late and I don't get home till 930.

My evening routine is messed up. So at that point, I just bump it back a little bit and don't feel so bad about sleeping a little bit later the next day. So be flexible and don't get mad at yourself if you can't stick to your ideal. And you know what? Your children, whether they're two or 20, they have crises. And quite often they'll show up at night and you have to deal with them. And, you know, sometimes your wife is having trouble at work and you want to help her out with that. Or, I mean, there's lots of reasons, good reasons why you're not going to be able to stick to these patterns, but at the same time being intentional

about it. And when you can following these i think can make a difference in your focus and that's the reason we're here we want you to get better at getting the hard work done um i uh i have uh like i said this week has been really good for me and i want more of this so i'm going to make effort and i'm really thinking that i'm going to make effort. And I'm really thinking that I'm going to start adjusting my wake-up time to sleep just a little bit longer every day and see how that goes. And I am going to start tracking sleep. I'm going to start out with your sleep cycle, but I'm going to look into some watch apps too, because I don't mind wearing my watch to bed and just kind of see how the data varies. Like you, I don't feel like I need scientifically verifiable data. I just need the ballpark.

So maybe sleep cycle will be enough. I really am not a fan of their alarms. And that's a big problem for me. But either way, I'm going to check it out. If you are a sleep Zen master or if you're trying to get better at your sleep, we have a forum. You should let us know what you're doing maybe what your favorite apps are what works for you what doesn't just have her to talk.macpowerusers.com and let us know speaking of the forums we've got some some feedback and

questions yeah so an unexpectedly hot topic was the question that somebody asked when do you shower during your day and And this is, this is, this actually folds nicely into the whole topic of sleep here because I think you could use this as part of an evening routine to transition into sleep. Personally, I shower in the morning. I've talked through my evening routine, but I find that I just feel, I feel gross in the morning. And so that's part of my morning routine to wake myself up. When do you shower? Well, if you saw my hair when I wake up in the morning, I look like a serial killer. My hair is everywhere.

So I always take a shower in the morning. Usually if I have a morning workout, obviously after the workout. But many days I take a second one in the afternoon i uh i partake and i do find it it's a nice way to kind of transition into the evening especially if i worked out in the afternoon or it was just a really hot day in california and i feel sweaty and i want to take another shower right but i do take them very fast. I appreciate that water is not an unlimited resource, but I like sometimes taking two. I think there is, I don't know the science behind it, but I believe there is some science behind cold showers too. And I know that's something that my parents would always do is when I was little, take a shower before bed and they'd always turn it real cold at the end because it helps you sleep better, supposedly. But I do think that there is some truth to that. I do that with every shower. I don't know why. I think when I was a kid, I read it in a book and I don't even know why,

but it's a habit I've had. At the end of my shower, I always make it very cold. So there you go. Nice. Every shower, I do that way. Another question So there you go. Nice. Every shower I do that way. Another question was, you know, we've got a calendar for sale. We chose to make the calendar start on Monday. Yep. And there's a question in the forum. When does the week start Sunday or Monday? Yeah. And this is personal preference, but I prefer that it starts on a Monday. I think you do too, correct? Well, it's personal preference but there's one right answer. Okay, fair enough.

It doesn't make any sense to split the weekend. I agree, I agree. So the focus calendar is that way where the week starts on the Mondays and then the weekends are visually denoted by a solid color line under Saturday and Sunday and they happen at the end of the week. So you can see both of those days together. are visually denoted by a solid color line under Saturday and Sunday, and they happen at the end of the week.

So you can see both of those days together. Yeah. I don't even know that there's anything to debate here. It should start on Monday. Every app I have starts the week on Monday. I mean, to me, that's the fresh start of every week. And when I'm planning out for things, like if I have set this is the week I'm going to work on this project, it starts on Monday, it doesn't start on Sunday.

Yeah. And for me, it's always been difficult starting a week on a Sunday because we're pretty involved with our church and we're there most of the day on Sunday. So, to have that be the start of the week always felt kind of weird because that whole day is basically spoken for. So, I just feel better about having that at the end of the week. It's like, that's the last thing that we do. And then the next morning we can set the direction and we have control over where we're headed, what we're doing. Yeah. I feel like maybe that's the reason why for so long calendar started on Sunday because this country was a lot more religious in the past than it is now. And people looked at Sunday as the church day, so that's got to be the first day.

In a lot of ways, I think that's kind of counterintuitive because you would want the church day to be the day where you're not thinking about all the other work you have to do. Exactly. That's why I find it beneficial to put it at the end of the week. Yeah. It's a good bookend. All right. Well, there you go.

Take plenty of showers and get to work on Monday and get some sleep. I was serious, though, about the forums. I'm super curious to hear what listeners think about this stuff. You know, we call the show Focus, but honestly, I believe that sleep is very relevant to this topic. If you want to get your best work done, you cannot buy into the no sleep culture. And if you have, now is the time to change. Maybe you say, well, I'm young and it doesn't bother me.

You know what? It does bother you and it does have a cost. It'll catch up to you. So get those habits sorted out right now. And do let us know what you're thinking in the forum. We'll have a feedback show at some point. I'd love to get some feedback on this topic in particular. We are the Focus Podcast.

You can find us over at relay.fm. Thank you so much to our sponsors, Squarespace, A-Refs, which I'm going to become a customer of, I think, Mike, and FreshBooks. And also, check out our calendar. We're really happy with the way it came out. We'd love to see you put a focused calendar on your wall. Have a great day, everybody.