The Tim Ferriss Show - #113: 5 Tools I Use For Faster And Better Sleep

Episode Date: October 16, 2015

This short (~20 min) episode covers the latest tools, gadgets, and tactics I'm using for faster and better sleep. As a lifelong insomniac, I've tried everything, and these are the critical few that make the cut. Enjoy! This podcast is brought to you by 99Designs, the world’s largest marketplace of graphic designers. Did you know I used 99Designs to rapid prototype the cover for The 4-Hour Body? Here are some of the impressive results. Click this link and get a free $99 upgrade. Give it a test run… This podcast is also brought to you by Wealthfront. Wealthfront is a massively disruptive (in a good way) set-it-and-forget-it investing service, led by technologists from places like Apple and world-famous investors. It has exploded in popularity in the last 2 years, and now has more than $2.5B under management. In fact, some of my good investor friends in Silicon Valley have millions of their own money in Wealthfront. Why? Because you can get services previously limited to the ultra-wealthy and only pay pennies on the dollar for them, and it’s all through smarter software instead of retail locations and bloated sales teams. Check out wealthfront.com/tim, take their risk assessment quiz, which only takes 2-5 minutes, and they’ll show you—for free–exactly the portfolio they’d put you in. If you want to just take their advice and do it yourself, you can. Or, as I would, you can set it and forget it. Well worth a few minutes: wealthfront.com/tim. Mandatory disclaimer: Wealthfront Inc. is an SEC registered Investment Advisor. Investing in securities involves risks, and there is the possibility of losing money. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Please visit Wealthfront dot com to read their full disclosure.***If you enjoy the podcast, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds, and it really makes a difference in helping to convince hard-to-get guests. I also love reading the reviews!For show notes and past guests, please visit tim.blog/podcast.Sign up for Tim’s email newsletter (“5-Bullet Friday”) at tim.blog/friday.For transcripts of episodes, go to tim.blog/transcripts.Interested in sponsoring the podcast? Visit tim.blog/sponsor and fill out the form.Discover Tim’s books: tim.blog/books.Follow Tim:Twitter: twitter.com/tferriss Instagram: instagram.com/timferrissFacebook: facebook.com/timferriss YouTube: youtube.com/timferrissPast guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, and many more.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would have seen an appropriate time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism living tissue over a metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode is brought to you by AG1, the daily foundational nutritional supplement that supports whole body health. I do get asked a lot what I would take if I could only take

one supplement, and the true answer is invariably AG1. It simply covers a ton of bases. I usually drink it in the mornings and frequently take their travel packs with me on the road. So what is AG1? AG1 is a science-driven formulation of vitamins, probiotics, and whole food sourced nutrients. In a single scoop, AG1 gives you support for the brain, gut, and immune system. So take ownership of your health and try AG1 today. You will get a free one-year supply of vitamin D

and five free AG1 travel packs with your first subscription purchase. So learn more, check it out. Go to drinkag1.com slash Tim. That's drinkag1, the number one, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Last time, drinkag1.com slash Tim. Check it out. This episode is brought to you by Five Bullet Friday, my very own email newsletter. It's become one of the most popular email newsletters in the world with millions of subscribers. And it's super, super simple. It does not clog up your inbox. Every Friday, I send out five bullet points, super short, of the coolest things I've found that week,

which sometimes includes apps, books, documentaries, supplements, gadgets, new self-experiments, hacks, tricks, and all sorts of weird stuff that I dig up from around the world. You guys, podcast listeners and book readers, have asked me for something short and action-packed for a very long time. Because after all, the podcast, the books, they can be quite long. And that's why I created Five Bullet Friday. It's become one of my favorite things I do every week. It's free, it's always going to be free, and you can learn more at tim.blog forward slash Friday. That's tim.blog forward slash Friday. I get asked a lot how I meet guests for the podcast,

some of the most amazing people I've ever interacted with, and little known fact, I've met probably 25% of them because they first subscribed to Five Bullet Friday. So you'll be in good company. It's a lot of fun. Five Bullet Friday is only available if you subscribe via email. I do not publish the content on the blog or anywhere else. Also, if I'm doing small in-person meetups, offering early access to startups, beta testing,

special deals, or anything else that's very limited, I share it first with Five Bullet Friday subscribers. So check it out, tim.blog forward slash Friday. If you listen to this podcast, it's very likely that you'd dig it a lot and you can, of course, easily subscribe any time. So easy peasy. Again, that's tim.blog forward slash Friday. And thanks for checking it out. If the spirit moves you. Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. This is an in-between-isode, a short little morsel that I sometimes do in place of the

longer format interviews, which are often one to three hours in length and involve deconstructing world-class performers from the worlds of finance, sports, music, art, everything in between. But this time we're going to talk about sleep because many of you have been asking for more in-between-isodes and I thought that I would touch upon some of the tools and approaches that I've found very helpful for facilitating not only rapid onset of sleep but higher quality sleep. And I have struggled with insomnia for most of my adult life, and that would be onset insomnia. So if these things can work for me, I think they can work for many of you as well. So here we go. I'm going to talk about five or so things that have really helped me very, very directly. The first is something called the Chili Pad, and that is spelled C-H-I-L-I, pad. And this was introduced to me by either Rick Rubin,

legendary music producer, or Kelly Starrett. I was going to say Kevin Kelly because I always mix up those two. But Kelly Starrett, mobility wad, famed CrossFit coach. Both of these guys recommended the ChiliPad before I bought one. And what the ChiliPad entails is a thin sheet that you put under your normal bed sheets and a unit next to the bed that circulates water through that sheet. And you can modulate the temperature between 55 degrees and 110 degrees Fahrenheit. So you can use it to keep cool and you can use it to heat yourself up. But what makes it very unique is you have multiple zones. So let's just say that you are sleeping with a partner in a bed and many women are like space heaters. I mean, they're just so, they run so, so hot. I

don't understand it yet. They're under like three or four blankets. And I've heard this from many, many guys who have to sleep with one leg on top of the sheet and then they get cold and then they put it under, then they overheat, et cetera, et cetera. And the ChiliPad solves all of this. But even if you are not with someone else, it is extremely effective for, in most cases, allowing you to sleep cool but very comfortable and get to sleep sooner but dramatically improve also the quality of your sleep and feeling of restfulness in the morning. for I know both Rick and Kelly, and I've experienced it myself, and friends that I've recommended it to in Silicon Valley have said in several cases, Tim, have loved your advice, read the books for years, et cetera.

This is the single biggest game changer that you've introduced me to. So the ChiliPad, it's not inexpensive, but check it out and you can make your own decision. You can get it on Amazon or other places. ChiliPad, C-H-I-L-I-P-A-D. That is number one. Number two is hanging upside down.

I've spoken about this in other podcasts, so I'm not going to spend a ton of time on it. But this was recommended to me by an Olympic weightlifter who has four or five world records, is in his 60s and can still throw hundreds of pounds overhead and land in a ass to heels, uh, squat, you know, snatch position. And he's a beast. He can also do that on a wobble board, like an endo board, just to give you an idea of the shape this guy is in. And one of his principles is hanging upside down after any weight training session. What I've taken that to mean for my own life, even when I'm not on a training day, is, and this is a controversial term, but decompressing the spine or elongating the spine at the very least by hanging upside down using, in my case, gravity boots. Teeter hang-up gravity boots, T-E-E-T-E-R, what I use.

There are a number of different options out there, uh, that can have some safety risks since they're basically ski boots with hooks on them. And you flip yourself upside down and hang upside down from say a standard pull-up bar or something like that. You could use an inversion table, uh, teeter makes those as well, uh, which is much easier to control, or you could use a device that allows you to stretch the spine on the floor. And there's something called the Lynx, L-Y-N-X. Teeter also makes one of these devices and I will often have all of them, uh, in my house in various places.

Uh, since not all nights do I want to go into the garage, strap on these ski boots, flip upside down, and in some cases hold weights then to further, I suppose, emphasize the traction of sorts. So hanging upside down, that would be number two. And I should emphasize that you don't need to do all of these things. If you add even one or two of these, I think each can have a tremendous effect on your onset and quality of sleep. Next, we have sleep mask and earplugs. I'm going to count this as one unit.

Now, that doesn't sound very interesting or original until I tell you very, very specifically what I'm using, because I have tried every sleep mask imaginable and most of them suck balls. They're terrible. They're so uncomfortable. They fall off. They get twisted on your face. They're just the worst. Earplugs, ditto. So I have found two models in each respectively that work tremendously well. So the Sleep Master Sleep Mask, cheesy name, great product. Sleep Master Sleep Mask. And this was great product. Sleep Master Sleep Mask. And this was introduced to me by a friend named Jeffrey Zurofsky. Some of you may recognize his name.

He was Jay-Z, a chef in The 4-Hour Chef, who was very, very involved with the entire process. We did the food marathon together, among other things, in New York City. So the Sleep Master Sleep Mask. A few things that make this very interesting. Number one, it is basically satin, so it's very, very comfortable. It's not rough. It doesn't have edges on it that would bother you. The most important feature, I think, is that it goes over your ears, not on top of your ears.

This seems like a very minor detail, and it turns out to be a huge design change. That means a number of things. That it quiets things down for you. It doesn't irritate your ears. It doesn't move around a lot. And number three, if you are in a very hot room, it could be a little toasty for you. But the Sleep Master Sleep Mask, check it out.

It's fantastic. Also doesn't use elastic. It uses Velcro on the very back. The earplugs, I've tried a lot of the very back uh the earplugs i've tried a lot of earplugs and the earplugs i ended up that using most often are the 3m and get ready for the worst product name ever ear soft fx spelled e hyphen a hyphen r lowercase s o f tF-T-F-X. So 3M EarSoft FX. And these are disposable earplugs that I often reuse until they lose their bounce. But you'll get a box of these on Amazon for like 20 bucks and they're industrial strength. I absolutely love these things and travel with them constantly. Next,

so those are three. We have ChiliPad, we have Hanging Upside Down, we have the Sleep Mask and Ear Plugs. Next, we have tea. And I had laughed at my girlfriend because she drank this tea and I was like, oh, that must be very helpful for, at the time, you know, menstrual cramps, but I don't really need it. And the branding is very targeted at women, but this is specifically yogi soothing caramel bedtime tea supports a good night's sleep, uh, rainforest rainforest Alliance certified. So it's got a lot going on here, but yogi soothing caramel bedtime tea. And I saw this and I remember I was at home alone one night. My girlfriend was out for some reason. And I was like, ah, I'll have some tea. I don't feel like having anything caffeinated, but I want something with flavor. And I drank this tea. I let it brew

for maybe five minutes. And I felt like Leonardo DiCaprio in the payphone scene from Wolf of Wall Street, where he's taken too many quaaludes and it all hits him at once. I felt like I'd been hit with a tranq dart and had to sort of, in the most awkward fashion possible, drag myself to the bedroom and just go to sleep. I was very impressed with how strong this stuff is. Your mileage may vary. You may find that it seems ridiculously ineffective for you. But for whatever reason, this stuff knocks me out even more so than something I used to use, which I think also has applications. And that's just straight California poppy that you can put in drops and say water. All right. So that's the tea. Another option, another brand is something

called Sleepy Time Tea. But this one to start with, they also have the worst kind of fortunes slash mantras on these tags imaginable. I have no idea who they paid in some non-native English speaking country to put these together, but they are kind of hilarious at times. So Yi soothing caramel bedtime tea. And then last but not least, we have visual overriding. And that's not a term I've heard used, but that's the way I think of it. This is what you do right before bed to, in effect, crowd out whatever is replaying in your mind or whatever you happen to be obsessing about that is going to inhibit sleep. So that could be email. That could be things you have to do the next morning. That could be an argument or debate you had that day. It could be any number of things. But

if you're anything like me, you lay down at night and for whatever reason, that's when your brain decides to rev up. Meditation helps a lot with this. I've talked about my morning routines before, which include meditation. So I'm not going to repeat this here. You can listen to that short podcast if you want my morning routines. Meditation helps a lot to dial down the volume and frequency and intensity of this internal chatter at night. But what also helps very, very much is either playing Tetris for 10 minutes, and this can also be applied to PTSD and other things. You can listen to my interview on this podcast with Jane McGonigal on game design and using games for everything from weight loss to mitigating the damage from traumatic brain injury, PTSD, etc. Tetris for 10 minutes. I won't get into all the explanation, but that can be very, very helpful for the kind of visual overwriting for

purposes of sleep. The other option, which I take advantage of all the time, is short episodic television. And I'll give you one particular recommendation. If you've ever dreamed or fantasized that bell in the background is my puppy doing kind of backflips on the floor for some reason. If you've ever fantasized about, you know, just saying, fuck it, quitting your job and going back to the land, you know, getting out of the city and going to Montana or going to God knows where in some sort of rural utopia and tilling the soil and making your own food and whatnot, then Escape to River Cottage Season 1 is what you have to watch. It's a blast. It's a really, really good episode.

It features the celebrity chef Hugh Fernley Whittingstall, most British name ever, fantastic host, excellent chef, and really a good philosophical exploration and pragmatic reality check of what it means to go from city slicker to farmer, effectively, or homesteader. And it's a great, it's a really great series. I really enjoyed it. And it's very retro in a way that I find endearing and engaging in a way that sort of modern CGI, I think, has lost some of its allure. In any case, so those are the five points. I'm not going to make this any longer than it has to be. Chili pad hanging upside down, the Sleep Master sleep mask with the 3M earplugs that I mentioned, the tea, the Yogi Soothing Caramel Bedtime Tea, and then using some type of visual overriding, whether that is 10 minutes of Tetris before bed on a dimmed screen, don't forget that,

or Escape to River Cottage Season 1 or other episodic television. And if you haven't signed up for Five Bullet Friday, please do that. That's my closing request. Five Bullet Friday is the little sampling of awesomeness, hopefully, the most interesting things that I have found or experimented with in a given week. And that's a short email with five bullets. It goes out every Friday. And you can check that out by going to fourhourworkweek.com forward slash Friday. Just go to fourhourworkweek.com all

spelled out forward slash Friday or go to fourhourworkweek.com and just fill in your email there. It's free. All right, guys, thanks very much for listening. Until next time, keep up the experimentation, sleep well, and take care.