Insomnia among founders is not discussed enough. About half of the founders I talk to have experienced trouble sleeping at some point in their founder journey. Mine started (ironically) after I read [[Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker]], and I dealt with it for 6+ months until I was able to deal with it behaviorally. Also I'm not a doctor. This is not medical advice. A lot of what I'm writing here is also out [here](https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-overcome-insomnia-by-breaking-your-behaviour-patterns), with much better prose. I just wanted to have a TL;DR that is easier to read and refer for my future self. ## High-level stuff **What is insomnia? Is it just trouble sleeping?** I find the official definitions of insomnia unhelpful. I'll just define insomnia for my purposes as: you're regularly unable to sleep even though you're giving your body the proper opportunity (e.g. not doing stimulants right before, have a non-noisy environment). It can have two flavors: sleep-onset insomnia (trouble falling asleep) or sleep-maintenance insomnia (trouble staying asleep). I suffered from the latter. **It'll probably be fine** Insomnia is surprisingly common and surprisingly treatable with the right behaviors. But you do need to address it behaviorally. **Do I need drugs?** Probably not. Studies show that behavioral therapy (specifically CBT-i) are as effective as the best sleep medicine in helping fall and stay asleep; and much more effective in creating restful sleep, with no side effects. **High level goal** The high-level goal of CBT-i is creating healthy sleep patterns, and most importantly, creating **an association of your bed and bedroom with going and staying asleep**. ## Best practices / what was helpful for me As far as I can tell, these are the basics of CBT-i. It is remarkable easy to follow through most of it. #### Basic lifestyle * **Use your bed/bedroom only for sleep and sex**: no laptops. Nothing stressful. You don't want any association of stress with that area of the house. * **Get *some* exercise**: get at least 30 minutes of aerobic exercise (just walking is fine) per day. You should do that anyway. * **Meditation**: you don't have to do it every day, but try to meditate 3-5 times/week for 10 minutes. Headspace has a wonderful sleep pack, which is not to *fall* asleep, but to generate health mind-habits so that you can fall and sleep at night. * **No caffeine past 1pm**: seriously. * **Keep the room relatively cold**: I don't like the exact prescriptions, but make sure that your sleeping environment is on the colder side. #### Preparing for sleep * **3-2-1**: Avoid food 3 hours before sleeping, liquids 2 hours before sleeping, screens 1 hour before sleeping. * It's important for you to have at least 30 minutes of wind-down time. When you're suffering from insomnia and have only a 7-hour window to sleep, it's *still better* that you spend 30 minutes winding down and only sleeping 6:30. In that wind-down time, nothing that agitates the mind. * Bonus points: warm shower before you go to sleep (in that 30 minutes of wind-down). * **Phones outside of the bedroom**: Get an alarm clock if you need to. * **Keeping a brain dump journal**: This one is easy -- keep a small notepad next to your bed. Five minutes before going to sleep, do a "brain dump" of everything that is on your mind. * **Do a wind-down exercise in bed**: there's a ton of those out there, but headspace singles is great. #### If you wake up in the middle of the night I'm sorry this sucks. Here are are some things you can do: * **Don't look at the clock**: there's nothing worse than keeping looking at the clock, seeing time pass and seeing yourself unable to sleep. Just don't look at the clock. * **Meditative techniques**: try to use breathing, body scanning, or meditative techniques * **If enough time has passed, get up**: *without* looking at the clock, if you feel like 20-30 minutes have passed and you can't go back to sleep, get up. Do something very monotonic, non engaging for your brain. It could be light cleaning (all in dark), reading something relatively boring, with no light, somewhere *outside of your bed*. Then try to go back to sleep. If another 20-30 mins pass, get up again. #### Misc / More drastic measures I thankfully didn't have to do these for more than a couple of days, but it's in the literature. * **Sleep restriction**: This one is counterintuitive. If you find yourself falling asleep at 11pm and waking up at 4am, and unable to fall back asleep even when you do the above, simply sleep only for five hours for a few days. It'll be kind of miserable at the beginning but you'll be breaking the association in your brain about "being up in bed"! * In those days, if you want to take a nap so that you can function throughout the day, do it early in the day so you have enough "sleep pressure" * **Some melatonin**: This might be helpful *for a few days*, again to break the association of "being up in bed". Melatonin is effective in small doses, so you can take 1g before you go to bed, and 1g right when you wake up prematurely. Or you can take 5g slow-release ones, but those made me drowsy. * **Sleep journal**: When you wake up (for good, in the morning), jot down how you slept, how many wake ups you had, for how long, etc. Use that to track progress. * **Mouth tapes**: Mouth-breathing is associated with poor sleep. You can get mouth-tapes like somnifix.com. In the extreme cases you might need CPAP if you have sleep apnea. This is something you'll need to discuss with your doctor, they'll do a proper sleep test etc. * **Ditch the trackers**: Orthosomnia is when you obsess too much about sleep. If you're dealing with insomnia, now is **not** time to buy a Whoop bracelet and look at your Apple Watch sleep report. Think of yourself like an injured athlete, first you need to do physiotherapy to heal, and then you can "sleepmaxx". ## Resources * https://psyche.co/guides/how-to-overcome-insomnia-by-breaking-your-behaviour-patterns * Why We Sleep, Matthew Walker * Headspace sleep: https://www.headspace.com/sleep #published 2025-02-12