The Sleep Newsletter #4

Hey

Welcome to the 45 new subscribers to The Sleep Newsletter!

This is The Sleep Newsletter. We pack sleep insights like a suitcase for a weekend getaway - only what you need, nothing you don’t.

Erling Haaland is the best soccer player in the world.

If he thinks sleep is cool, so should you.

In Today’s Edition:

• 🌸 Your Morning Self vs. Evening Self

• 😲 The biggest myth about sleep

• 📣 NEW COZO product colours are here!

But one small, tiny, minuscule favour before we jump in:

Could you please, actually pretty please, reply to this email with "Hey Jim". It helps make sure you actually get the emails.

It only takes 6 seconds. Writing each newsletter takes 6 hours. 

Lets go!

I paused dramatically…

“So, it was bullshit all along?”

I asked, almost shocked at what I had just heard.

“Yep … the fact you thought you’d get away with it in the first place was silly”, he exclaimed.

I left that discussion with my friend unconvinced.

I had to do more digging.

And boy, did I dig.

Until BAM!

It hit me like a ton of bricks.

There it was… proof.

Dr. Matthew Walker, author of ‘Why we sleep’ and probably the most knowledgeable person in the world about sleep.

He agreed with my friend.

“Damn it”, I muttered to myself.

Even after typing the words now, I still can’t believe that people, including myself, believed opposite.

Ready to be shocked?

……

There is NO such thing as ‘catching up on your sleep’.

Or catch up sleep.

If you only get a few hours of sleep at night, that’s it.

The learning, memorisation and overall general health benefits you would have gained are gone….forever.

Your body is just not capable of regaining all of the lost sleep that you had.

We’ve all been there. You’ve had a big night and only got a few hours sleep.

Only to decide you will sleep early the next night hoping to ‘make up’ those hours lost.

Nope.

Turns out, once you deprive yourself of sleep one night, there’s no accumulation of those health benefits the next night.

Not the next night, the night after that or the night after that.

What I’m getting at is it’s very unhealthy to be inconsistent with your sleep cycles.

Personally, this has REALLY changed my viewpoint on how I use my weekends.

Now I know ‘getting an early night’ the next night won’t help me recoup all of the things I learned that day.

If you’re like me, you have two personas.

Morning Jim vs Evening Jim.

And boy, does the morning Jim feel cheated by the evening Jim ALL THE TIME.

I’ve had a lot on recently.

This means extracurriculars, hobbies and general stuff I get done at night push back my normal sleep time.

By ALOT.

So it comes as no shock I wake up exhausted, dreary and with zero energy in the mornings.

Sure enough, this is when the promises begin.

“I’m into bed by 9pm tonight”

“No screen time 30 minutes before bed”

“Finish work earlier - that’s an order!”

And of course, the evening rolls around and evening Jim is out to play.

Constantly scrolling social media; watching TV shows; reading - you name it.

Another day, another broken promise.

Until this Monday morning.

Instead of a promise, I used a simple, yet surprisingly effective tactic.

I set myself a night-time alarm.

The inverse of a morning alarm, if you will.

9.40pm.

And once that alarm goes, I drop everything I’m doing and I go straight to bed.

And guess what?

It actually worked!

For that whole night, I knew 9.40pm was my cut off and planned accordingly, scheduling my evening around that.

So why was this so effective?

Well, after reading Atomic Habits (highly recommend), it’s starting to make sense.

As humans, if we write down or hold ourself accountable that we can view or take an action to, we are FAR more likely to do it.

Setting the alarm was like setting up a contract with myself.

If I wanted to break the contract and willingly go against what I promised myself that morning - that’s fine! But I had to willingly turn off that alarm knowing I was breaking my promise.

Turns out, the decision to turn off the alarm is the trigger to think “you know what?… I set this for a reason - I am going to bed now”.

This isn’t just relevant to sleep either.

Many people use phone apps like SPACE to lock themselves out of their phone throughout the day to kill procrastination.

There are a few successful weight loss companies that force people to send money to them if they don’t hit their targets for that week.

And they lead to AMAZING results.

Sounds insane, but it actually works.

So if you’re like me and know you need the extra hours but get distracted at night, try this trick.

Oh, one thing.

Make sure to set your alarm in the morning.

It gives your evening self a reminder how tired and lifeless you were the morning you set it.

Well folks, it doesn’t get much better than this.

After months of deliberation, COZO has just launched two new product colours.

The results?

A lovely Green & Charcoal pillowcase.

These are already selling out very quickly.

But I wanted to give my loyal readers a chance to grab one.

So here’s a 10% discount code just for being a subscriber.

10% DISCOUNT CODE: COZONEWPROD

Oh, and our winner from the referral raffle last week?

Drum roll please….

🥁🥁

Congratulations to …. Stephanie Hudson! (with a whopping 10 referrals)

You are the winner of a Green Eucalyptus Silk Pillowcase!

You will be emailed shortly.

That’s all for this week.

Don’t forget, share this with a friend if you love the content!

Until then, sleep easy 💤

jim (Founder of COZO)