People who turn off their electronics hours before bed... What do you do at night?
There's a good thread going around on Tildes right now about sleep hygiene tips. One of those is making sure you stop using your electronics before bed, to help with circadian rhythms and whatnot.
Determined to make a fool of myself in spite of the above thread, last night I stayed up until 4am in bed reading various junk sites on my phone. As a consequence, I slept in until noon š. I don't want to do this anymore! I want a regular sleep schedule... 11-7 or 12-8 would be my dream.
I've tried blocking the problematic sites in the past, and it largely works for me for several months... Until I hit a bad mood patch and get antsy and bored, craving the dopamine hits, wanting to turn my brain off and just scroll mindlessly. (It's very much a self-soothe behavior...)
I think it would be easier to solve this problem if I had an arsenal of things to do that are nice and engaging, but don't involve using a phone or computer. Yet, I'm at a bit of a loss... Seemingly everything involves a computer or screen one way or another these days. I'd love an e-ink device that let's me listen to Spotify or something, but alas, I think I might need to look into low-tech solutions.
What do you do at night that doesn't involve screen time?
Read a book. Really, it's that simple. Fiction, nonfiction, novels or short stories, doesn't matter. Don't have money for books? Go to the library; that's what they were invented for. If you find yourself attracted to the multitasking/jumpy nature of social media, get a half dozen different books and switch between them as you get bored. Forget the e-reader, stick to real paper.
For even better sleep hygiene, get a reading lamp with adjustable light output. Slowly lower the light level as you get closer to sleep time. Right before you put the last book down, have the light so low that you can barely read the page.
Not only will this help with your sleep hygiene, it will help your overall mental health as well. Unless you're reading children's pop-up books, books don't have the same dopamine hit mechanism that social media sites do. People write books to tell a story, to educate, or share an important message; they don't write books to get you addicted to a content mill. You can find actual wisdom in a book; you will rarely find that on any app.
If you still find it hard to focus, being drawn to the screen before bed, adopt a complete moratorium on electronics use before bed. Get a wooden or other box and an actual, physical, old school alarm clock. Put the box in another room. When it's time to read, put your phone in the box and forget about it until morning. Use the alarm clock to wake up in the morning. If you use your phone as a flashlight at night, instead get an actual dedicated flashlight and use that instead. If you're worried about getting an emergency call from a friend or loved one in the middle of the night, keep the box in the same room but put a lock on it. Just keep it out of reach from your actual bed. Make it so you have to actively get up before you can reach it.
And above all, aim for consistency. A good sleep cycle is a delicate and precious thing. Maybe even start setting an alarm each night for "reading time." Spend an hour reading before sleep and actually schedule it. If social media addiction in general is a larger problem, consider scheduling your social media time for a certain time every day. Give yourself an hour or whatever time you want, and just allow that to be your dopamine playtime.
Hope this helps. Good luck. Oh, and above all else, don't beat yourself up over this. It's not weird or abnormal to become addicted to social media; that's the entire point of a lot of these platforms. The major social media companies deliberately design their platforms to be as addictive as possible. They'll hire people with doctoral degrees in psychology, people who really know the ins and outs, weaknesses and failings of the human mind. Instead of using these experts to help people, they put these psychologists to work making their platforms as addictive as humanly possible. The advertising industry works the same way.
It's easy to think of this as a personal moral failing, but this really isn't a fair fight. You're fighting against people who have trained for decades to learn the workings of human psychology, people who then weaponize that vast knowledge and use it for evil, rather than good. Becoming addicted to these sites is these sites simply working as designed.
I have a really tricky time reading long-form books. I try time and time again, but the motivation just isn't there? My attention wanders very easily, and I find it hard to stay engaged.
For some reason, though, I have 0 issue with graphic novels. I adore the medium. I used to go to the library and check out a dozen graphic novels each time, plowing through them with ease.
Case in point: I have a book called "The Secret Loves of Geek Girls" which is an anthology of stories and comics written by prominent geeky women. Whenever I pick it up, I will happily read the comics, but when I turn the page and see a big wall of text, I groan and flip through it until I get to another comic.
In theory, perhaps I could follow your advice with just graphic novels, but gosh... They're so quick to finish? They represent a fraction of the depth that an actual book provides. If I go for quantity, then things become very expensive very quickly, and I risk running out of options entirely.
Oddly though, I have no problems reading post after post of /r/BestOfRedditorUpdates. So, long-form text isn't inherently an issue? If I can figure out this dilemma, I'd love to become a reader again like I was as a kid.
Start with short story collections. Maybe get yourself some collections of the works of Asimov, if that's your cup of tea.
My cup of tea is honestly a bit hard to pin down. There is one book that I read voraciously without my attention ever drifting? It's When Marnie Was There. It's a lovely, warm, wholesome slice of life book with some magical realism elements, and it made me cry so much.
I've tried other books in the same vein (e.g. Tom's Midnight Garden) and they just didn't scratch the same itch. So, I'm not sure where to go next?
Talk to a librarian. They absolutely love helping folks find new things to enjoy reading.
Caveat that Ive not read either of those books but based on your description, I'd suggest checking out Alice Monroe for warm, wholesome slice of life stories (No magical realism at least in what Ive read). Runaway was the first of her books I read, it's a collection of short stories, and I found them deeply but quietly moving.
Margaret Atwood has also written slice of life short stories that in some ways have reminded me of alice monroes woklrk, but also longer more dystopian/sci fi stuff. Not sure Id necessarily say they have that same feeling you describe tbh, but I often enjoy her work.
While Im on a role of female authors, perhaps give Louise Erdrich a try? Ive only read one and a half of her novels at this point, but she packs a real emotional punch, in moments wholesome but often complex.
I've had difficulty reading since my 20s (I was a voracious reader as a child through my teens -- I don't know what happened!)
But I recently tried reading before bed as well. I have picked up the book "Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe", and I finished it last week. If you've seen the movie, you'll have an idea of what's going on. I would venture to say that it's geared towards females in general, but each chapter ranges from a partial page to maybe 4-5 tops. The story bounces all over. It's the first "enjoyment reading" I've done since the first Mockingjay book, and at that time, I was usually just "reading" via audiobook. (If you're not familiar with it, I'd at least read a summary to get an idea if it's something you'd like.)
As I said, I don't know if that'd be something you'd appreciate, but as I've definitely gotten older (and sadly, more into Kathy Bates' role and definitely out of Idgie's role), I didn't think I'd like it as much as I did. It still took me almost 7 weeks to finish though (and I typically pick up my phone afterwards).
Did you do undergrad? I found my leisure reading massively dropped after having to read hundreds of pages of various textbooks for each class.
No, I'd lost the love way before. Then when I went back to school, everything was in pdf form, which made it more difficult for me to read.
I was a voracious reader for years, often getting in trouble at school for reading during lunch breaks. I unfortunately took up smoking in my later post-school years, but it was a means to read even more: I would always read while smoking. When I finally came to reality and quit smoking (ironically by reading a book), it was very difficult to get back into reading. I'd try here and there, but just didn't have the focus.
The book that finally got me back into reading was East of Eden by John Steinbeck, I'm not sure what it was about it that drew me in but I was just captivated. Maybe because it was free (we have "little libraries" around here that are community run, don't worry I gave it back after reading) and maybe because the hook was while I was out camping and didn't have anything else to do in a tent when it was -30 outside, but I couldn't put it down. More realistically, the quasi-mythological feel of it likely had more influence on my keen interest.
Ever since, I've been a pretty active reader, nowhere near as voracious as before, but I'm consistent. I almost always read for about 30 minutes before bed and I usually read 15-30 minutes on lunch breaks. Every so often I have a weekend that isn't filled with housework and I can read for a few hours uninterrupted and those are glorious days. Not sure if it helps in your case, but I do read on a Kindle Paperwhite (with wifi turned off) mostly so I don't keep my wife up with lights/page turning.
Anyway, the point is that I think you just need that a-ha moment and no one book will likely be it for you, it's likely a cumulative thing but once you get the ball rolling, it'll all fall in place hopefully. And remember that the books will always be there for you.
If you want warm wholesome slice of life, but scifi to change it up maybe, Becky Chambers is basically that. The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet and it's 'sequels' (they're only loosely related) at least. Haven't read her other books but they're on my list.
I was gonna say, sounds like OP needs to look into scifi anthology type books where it's ~20 short stories in one.
Do they even make those anymore? I remember them being a thing published in the 70s/80s where I'd find these random anthologies in the library and check them out as a kid. Each story took maybe 30 minutes to finish. It was basically the Star Trek episodic style in book form.
You probably have a local library, and they probably have a sizable collection of graphic novels and manga you can borrow 100% for free.
The reading motivation thing is tough. If you've enjoyed long-form reading in the past, something to try to do is re-read old favorites. If that works, you can try branching out to other works by those authors or other books in the same genre.
Also, while it's not really actionable advice, try not to get self-conscious about your reading choices; you're reading for you, not for anyone else's approval or judgement. If trashy romance novels are what you're able to focus on, then go for it; even the trashiest is going to be better for your mental health than doomscrolling twitter. =)
I do really enjoy anime? Like, hundreds of series watched? Yet, I've never really gotten into manga yet. Manga might solve the quantity/quality issue, since a long-running series might give me a lot to chew on (as compared to one-off graphic novels).
I used to read really terrible scanlations of Naruto on my computer in middle school. Do you happen to know what the scene is like these days? Like, in theory, could I purchase an e-ink reader and read manga on that?
Things have come a long way from Scanlations. I was much like you, reading the same thing at about the same age.
If you can get the manga in a file, most e-ink readers can process it just fine. My very ancient Kindle4 (circa 2011) displays BW pictures just fine.
What if you got into light novels instead? They tend to be short and very easy to read.
There's a lot of great manga out there with official translations! I haven't found a great way to do it with my e-reader, but that's because my phone is too convenient. You can get official translations from mangasee.com (free). My app lets me download them easily enough, not sure how straightforward that would be on the site. But there's a program called calibre that makes it really easy to sync files to your e-reader.
A couple manga that I've enjoyed this year:
Witch Hat Atelier - cute cozy series, phenomenal art. This is my favorite.
Fullmetal Alchemist (big Brotherhood fan, even still felt like some scenes were done better on the page)
Promised Neverland (way better than the adaptation)
It's usually easier to make incremental changes than to make big ones. It's not reasonable to expect yourself to read 2-3 hours before bed if you're not used to it. Your attention span is just completely shot from short-form content that's like candy for our brains.
So, maybe try shutting off the screen and reading for 5-10 minutes before bed to start. When you feel ready, you can increase the time. If reading makes you bored and sleepy at any point, mission accomplished, and you can just close the book and go to sleep.
On the flip side there is nothing worse than coming up on the final stretch of a particularly good chapter when your eyelids start feeling like lead!
My library carries graphic novels and manga. You can also seek out long ones like Bone. Many of the classics have been adapted to graphic novel form.
I'll throw in my two cents on books to read: get an interesting nonfiction book, preferably one broken into a lot of smaller sections. I find that fiction will keep me reading no matter how tired I am, and nonfiction doesn't give me the urge to find what happens next. Years ago I used to read Uncle John's Bathroom Readers in bed, they're collections of trivia and I've learned a lot of strange, useless knowledge from them.
Oh my gosh, another Bathroom Reader fan. I was addicted to them as a kid? I actually collected them, because I adored how each volume had a unique cover design. They looked so neat on a shelf all lined up? Plus, as you say, the trivia and stories were splendid.
Small world! Maybe I can look into rebuilding my collection. (I left them all behind when I moved across the country, sadly...)
I started as a kid too! I used to get one for Christmas every year, I only stopped putting them on my list a couple of years ago. I still haven't cracked open the newest one I have. I've been thinking of taking it up to my bedroom recently so I can read it before bed, and this talk just cements it.
Good news is that if it's been a while, there's probably quite a few volumes you missed. There's also a similar series called Armchair Readers that you can look into!
One thing to try can be books where you've seen (and really enjoyed) the TV or film as it can make it easier to get into it when you know you like the story. Especially if you're keen to get more of it.
Or books with an accompanying audiobook. Sometimes some books can be hard to get into at the start, but listening to the audiobook while doing household chores or whatever gets past that first bit until you're invested and have the momentum to continue.
you might enjoy epistolary novels? they're presented as a series of letters between characters, sort of an 18th/19th century BORU.
I'd clarify that with "as low as you comfortably* can". While you're not at risk of actual damage, reading at a very low light level can cause temporary eye strain from exertion.
Good point.
I want a 2am-10am sleep schedule and i keep waking up at 10 but i fall asleep later and later every day. Got to falling asleep at 5am every day until i had an appointment earlier and had to only sleep 2 hours that day, which fixed it temporarily but i'm drifting to my old habits quickly
I see a few people mention books, however what I do find issue is, book in engrossing it keeps me up for hours past bedtime lol.
Hahaha. That has happened to me many times. Before bed books have to be interesting enough for you to want to keep going, but boring enough that you can put away. It's a hard balance to find!
Sometimes I find the perfect book for that, then near the end with the climax, things get exciting, and I'll have to abandon the book and delegate that to day reading instead.
I'm going to be honest, I find the idea somewhat laughable that electronics are to blame for insomnia or are the root cause of poor sleep hygene. I guess someone should have just told Emile Cioran that he didn't have to wander the streets at night if he just put away his iPhone? There's no end of historical figures who were insomniacs before we had modern devices. There were ancient Greeks with insomnia.
Sure, I accept that people who have poor sleep hygiene, insomnia, anxiety or a combination of those will use devices in the late hours as a crutch. Sure, I will accept that using those devices may make them worse. But they are unlikely to be the cause of the problem. They're any easy out for us to avoid looking for the real, often individual, problem at the root. The appeal to nature is very convenient.
Like a depressed person who will still be depressed after moving to a new city, and insomniac will still have insomnia if she's not engaged with electronics.
I think you're confusing insomnia (cannot get to sleep) with behavioural screen addictions which prevent people who otherwise could fall asleep from doing so. There is a lot of research showing that blue light inhibits sleep schedules.
I understand your point. What I was trying to get at is that I believe OP is conflating a more likely underlying issue with poor sleep hygiene/screen use. Blue light does shift circadian rhythm by several hours, specifically the release of melatonin if zi remember the research correctly. This doesn't account for OP being awake at 4 am when he wanted to go to sleep at 11 pm. There's more going on there than a delayed circadian rhythm.
OP should look at what is driving the late night screen use.
No offense but I have to ask. Did you really think that calling OP's concerns "somewhat laughable" was really the best way to convince them they might have a deeper issue than poor sleep hygiene? To me at least, your comment reads more like someone who is more excited to be right rather than someone who genuinely wants to help.
That's an interesting point. I guess you're right, I'm unlikely to convince the OP due to my word choice.
To answer your question, no I did not honestly think calling OP's concerns "somewhat laughable" was really the best way to convince them they might have a deeper issue than poor sleep hygiene. I honestly didn't give much if any consideration to OP being the reader of my comment. I suppose that is rude of me specifically towards OP on a thread where they were looking for advice. I hope I didn't cause OP any offence, it really wasn't my intention. OP didn't come up with the idea of poor sleep hygiene from devices, our culture is rampant with newspieces about it. I just figured since we are in a public forum there would be room for broader discussion of the topic at large. If that's not okay or what's wanted on tildes I have no issue with my comment(s) being removed.
Just to chime in here as OP: I wasn't at all bothered by your comment, and I actually took it to heart!
I think you're very right to point out that my topic description wasn't written very clearly? I didn't go too deeply into what my sleep habits + phone usage habits have been like long-term, and I absolutely conflated a few different ideas. There are a lot of factors at play here?
For what it's worth, I don't have insomnia? I've had a 12-8 sleep schedule for long stretches of my life, and while that has shifted recently to 2-10, the bad 4am nights are an outlier. That night just so happened to be a particularly anxious night for me. I had stayed up until 2am on my phone (due to factor #1), and then found I could no longer fall asleep (due to factor #2), so I did a pleasurable (non-phone) activity for another 2 hours to calm my anxiety. But, most nights (especially those where I put away my phone early), I can fall asleep at around 12 -- hence my desire to seek ideas for factor #3 and reinforce a healthy routine.
I'm happy to say I slept from 1-9 last night, and I'm hoping to gradually shift my rhythms even further back to my desired normal with the help of activities that can ween me off of my phone usage. :)
You been on Tildes longer than me, so I won't try and claim that I know the website better than you. Though I will say that one of the major differences in my own behavior here compared to reddit is that my responses are addressed to whomever I'm responding to. On reddit, I basically had this philosophy when commenting (i.e I was really talking to the audience rather than the person I was actually responding to). Here, whenever I respond to someone, even if it's about something I disagree with, I'm still genuinely trying to have a conversation with person I'm talking to or, at the very least, try and take the person I'm responding to into consideration. It may be a result of the small size of Tildes but it's still a change I appreciate and a change I'd like to see every ex-redditor take on. Not to say I want everyone to just be overly nice robots to each other all the time, just that I'd rather see people conserve in a way more akin to IRL conservations rather than the rage induced flame wars you see everywhere else.
I think the small size of Tildes definitely breeds more familiarity between users and intimacy of conversations... but I also think Tildes core philosophies of "Don't act like an asshole", and applying "the golden rule" / "charitable interpretations", as well as Deimos' consistent moderation efforts are also part of the reason for there being less soap-boxing, condescension, flamewars, and personal attacks here than on reddit. Those behaviors aren't tolerated here like they are on most of reddit, and Deimos has removed overly condescending/soapboxy comments in the past, and banned plenty of overly hostile users too. And Tildes being invite only also means that bans have a real impact, since ban evasion takes more effort, and so is pretty rare, unlike on reddit.
In my experience, I find using screens at night is fine for sleep hygiene as long as I dim the brightness, use aggressive blue light filter software and turn off the lights after sunset. I also try to stick to a consistent sleep schedule to sleep and wake up at the same time each day. With this setup, I get really sleepy as the night progresses and I sleep at 10PM-11PM.
As a bonus, don't eat anything after 7PM so that you can avoid washroom use from disrupting your sleepiness and brush your teeth earlier in the night.
My experience is the same. I have a night light setting on my phone that automatically dims the brightness/filters blue light on my phone that turns on automatically at the same time each evening. On my PC, I use f.lux. I will often go straight from using the computer to bed, or even read on my phone in bed, and I always fall asleep immediately (sometimes while reading on my phone). I'm sure it also helps that I always go to bed around midnight.
The only exception is when I'm really stressed or anxious. What I do then is put some meditative or calming music (sometimes even a guided meditation track) on speaker and set it to turn off after 30min. It gives my brain something to focus on instead of ruminate. So far, I was always asleep way before it finished.
Thank you everyone! I've ordered a refurb Kobo Forma (recs from this Tildes thread and this YouTube video) and I'm very very excited to start reading manga (and books!) in bed.
I do read but since that's already been said a bunch, here's another idea: I have a stack of articles printed off that I like to translate. I keep a small battery-powered thermal typewriter by the recliner, and I'll just grab articles off the stack and type up translations until I'm too sleepy to continue.
I use a Sharp PA-1050 for translating to English since it's whisper quiet, small, and easy to use. It has a modest two-line calculator screen for editing, and a 6000-character memory so you can do a whole article in memory and then just print it off after proofreading. I'm going to try upgrading to a slightly larger but still quite similar Casiowriter HW-800JS soon so I can also do some translations into Japanese.
Either way, it's a quiet, slow hobby that finishes out the day with a puzzle and doesn't require any lit screens. The typewriter part of it is just a personal fascination, and it could just as easily be done with a pencil.
I think. Maybe that sounds dumb, but in my day life, I have so many specific things to handle mentally, I just never have a moment to let my thoughts wander where they will. I don't have any rules, though I generally focus on topics that I find pleasant or interesting. Its enjoyable, relaxing, and best of all it provides a seamless transition to sleep.
That doesnāt sound dumb at all. I took a vacation several years ago to a beach and just sat there all day doing nothing for almost a week, just watched the water and birds.
When I got home I realized it was the first time Iād really let my mind clear up in a really, really long time. When you really let your mind wander, different things are going to show up than when youāre doing more controlled/categorized thinking. I realized that I loved my job and coworkers but I was miserable about everything surrounding it (burnout, not enough vacation time allowed in our āunaccrued vacation policyā, stressful company policies). I hadnāt previously realized that was what was making me unhappy, Iād just had a vague sense of unhappiness.
Work on art or crafting hobbies; read, write, or chores
Most nights after I get into bed, I put in my earbuds, queue up an ambient album, then put my phone away on the nightstand. Iām usually out long before it finishes.
If I know Iām going to be up for a bit because my brain is going too fast or Iām simply not tired yet, Iāll often queue up an album I know and love, followed by an ambient album. Listening to the one I love occupies my brain and keeps it from spinning on whatever it was spinning on, while the ambient album has the desired lulling effect on me. Sometimes Iāll even fall asleep during the first album.
During a particularly bad period where I kept going on my phone way later than I should, I started plugging it in outside my bedroom and queueing up my music there before leaving it to head into bed. The range on Bluetooth was enough that I could still listen to my music with my phone in another part of the house, but the distance and hassle of getting up out of bed and going to another room to use the phone kept me from idly staying on it into the wee hours of the morning. I donāt do this anymore, but there were a few months where I would do it on and off, and it genuinely helped.
If you do decide to try something like this, my recommendation would be to get behind-the-neck earbuds. If you do wireless stand-alone ones, you will lose them in/under the bed. The corded ones are a lot easier to locate after youāve unconsciously taken them off during your sleep.
Now, I should mention, in the interest of full disclosure, that Iām actually typing this from my bed, where Iām on my phone instead of going to sleep (lol). So, take what I say with a grain of salt. Iām far from perfect. š
I just queued up Ratatatās Classics for my loved album and Rafael Anton Irisarriās Peripeteia as my ambient one. If all goes according to plan, my phone will stay away after this and you wonāt hear from me again until tomorrow at the very least!
This is surprisingly relevant to me. I used to use devices pretty much all the time. I had them on up until I slept, and often while I went to sleep. About a year ago, I started turning them off a couple hours before sleep. It was seriously uncomfortable at first, because it was just so foreign to me. I thought - what will I do? I felt so bored and strange.
What I did, and what I still do today: I just sit with my thoughts. I think about problems I want to solve, mostly, and try to come up with ideas for them. Or, I reflect on some conversations I've had. Sometimes I let my thoughts wander and see where they go. Most importantly: I do not try to relieve my boredom, because I realize, that's exactly what I was using the devices as a crutch for in the first place. I sit with the boredom, I feel into it and embrace it. It has made me realize it's nothing to be bothered by, or rather, that the "bothered" feeling it causes is possible to endure. That has been incredibly liberating. I realize now how much of my life I wasted trying to relieve boredom, and how much more is open to me when I'm willing to endure it.
Read! I would spend an hour reading before sleep.
Sometimes I draw or do any craft related thing instead.
Although now that I've got a new cat, I've been trying to establish a routine where I play with the cat, feed her, and then go to sleep. It really does take a while.
But she usually sleeps after that whole routine too. It's very cute.
Read a book.
Like, the paper kind. You probably have a local library; sign up for a library card if you don't already have one, pick out several (or a bunch) of books that look interesting (if you have audiobook preferences, that's a good place to start), read them in bed about a half hour to an hour before you want to go to sleep. Don't worry about reading "good" books, and don't worry about continuing to read a book that's not grabbing you. Bedtime reading isn't meant to serve any purpose other than distracting your mind from itself.
I know this slightly undermines the point of the thread, as they are electronic devices, but nonetheless I find that reading books on my e-reader has markedly improved my sleep hygiene. Personally, I prefer e-readers as I can use Overdrive - which is a bit like having a library at one's fingertips - but also because I find that I benefit from larger page margins and font sizes than are often available in print books.
I like to think that with an e-ink display and reading by lamp rather than backlight that it isn't harmful. I wouldn't get half as much book reading done without my e-reader.
All you say is very reasonable though. And there's a unique pleasure to looking through a library to pick out books!
I find there's two camps of people saying only read paper books: those that don't understand e-ink versus LED displays and pretentious folk.
E-ink is really no different than looking at words on a page in terms of visual stimulation. It's an electric Etch A Sketch.
I love my e-reader. I never liked dealing with the physical aspects of books (no clue how many times I've dropped a chunky book on my face, lost my place, and goofed the pages a bit), so mine got me back into reading. One of my favorite parts is the built in dictionary though! Being able to just click a word and get the definition is just awesome.
I have an eink reader. The lightness of it, the tactile feel and the smaller screen size just don't work for me. I can't describe it other than it just feels off. I can sit in my lounge chair, have a beer and get absorbed in a book for hours. But the same setting and book with the reader and I won't get into it.
Did you try an 8'' ereader with physical buttons? The size is akin to a paper book and you get the tactile feel because of pressing the buttons to turn a page. For me, personally, it works just the same as paper books, I just see the text and the device sort of disappears from my view. :)
While e-ink technology is pretty good there have been some legitimate reasons to not want to lease e-books. Maybe that's not relevant to sleep patterns but I could see a valid argument for just removing all electronics as a way to change bad habits.
Well that's a bit harsh.
I just grew up with physical books. I like the feel, I like that they're a physical object I can have laying around, I like that I can go past my bookshelf, look at a book and trigger memories of it, I like that my kid can walk around the house and see books not another screen someone's looking down on and perhaps this will stir an interest in her, I like how giving a book can be a very personal gesture, I like how I can scribble notes on a book, I like how I can look at a book spine on someone's bookshelf and get curious or strike up a conversation about it.
I bet e-ink is amazing, the best thing to happen to fonts since the printing press. I don't have anything against it. It's just that I prefer printed books.
And that preference is perfectly fine and I get that! I tried to be clear with my wording in specifying people that say to only read physical books, but I could've been more clear. I was talking about folks that tell other people not to use e readers.
Aaah shit nope totally a misreading on my part, sorry. I understood it as "saying THEY read only physical books".
My bad.
Using an e-reader is actually what got me back into reading. I read a lot of books from the library as a child and teenager, stopped during college, and then picked it backup in my mid-20's by buying a Kindle. The convenience won me over. And now I read every night before bed.
I had to double check I'd not written a comment and forgotten about it ā I went through exactly the same arc of reading a lot as a child and teenager, stopping once I wasn't around a familiar library at university, then getting a Kindle a few years later and found it incredibly convenient. I still think among all the electronic devices I've owned it's been the best value for money by a very big margin.
I do the same! I read an hour before sleep and I use my Kobo. It is electronic, but I don't count it as an electronic device.
The screen is not the same and you're not connected to any other distractions like social media or messaging.
It's pretty much just a book display to me.
I have a smart speaker, which is super cheap and can play music from prime music (other brands of speaker are available), and audiobooks. Also could consider getting an ipod or a cheap phone and loading it up with mp3s to listen to. Also if you have decent radio stations in your area, you can try getting a physical radio.
I personally cycle between a couple different screenless hobbies such as reading, playing instruments, and Gunpla. These hobbies become a lot more important to me in the winter months when going out is less desirable.
In my opinion, it's less important what the hobby is specifically and more about what feelings it evokes. Education makes me feel more wise so reading is fulfilling. Playing instruments can help express a variety of different emotions, so it's a versatile outlet depending on my mood. Gunpla taps into my engineer/tinkerer mind in a way I didn't realize I missed before the pandemic.
Figure out the things you liked to do when you were young before the age of smartphones and adapt them into adult hobbies.
Reading, cooking, time with the family, board games, etc. It's made a world of difference.
Tidy, turn white off light and turn on red light, shower, water pick, ingest magnesium, brush, nasal salene spray, moisturize entire body, stretch and yoga, brain dumb and ambitions on white boaed, start audio book, theragun in bed, lie in bed enjoying audio book, turn on fan for white noise.
People always ask why it takes me 3 hours to go to bed.
I don't have a strict "no phone/ipad in bed" rule but I rarely use my phone at home anyway. I find it so freeing to just leave it on its charger and not thinking about it. I'd leave it home on the weekends if it didn't run my music in the car.
My typical process: