[vundercind]

Only candles after dark (I could read comfortably by two beeswax candles, very dim light compared even to most night lights) and no electronics entirely cured my “insomnia” of decades within a couple days. Go figure, hundreds or thousands of candle-power lighting up whole rooms, and entertainment more compelling than a Roman emperor could command on tap, is extremely bad for sleep. What a surprise.

It’s goddamn hard to keep up, though.

[moffkalast]

Pro tip: use RGB light strips for room lighting and set them to pure red an hour or two before sleep.

I don't have any trouble sleeping, but that's what I do when someone requires me to suddenly disrupt my sleeping schedule so I can get up at some ungodly early hour and it's the only way I can go to sleep sooner than usual and actually fall asleep.

If you really wanted to do it every day it would make far more sense to automate it and make it gradual to simulate a sunset though.

[tomcam]

I am not saying this as veiled criticism. I am asking this so I can understand what you said better because my sleep is terrible. When you say no electronics entirely, do you mean after dusk or something? Because obviously you wrote this post.

[m_fayer]

My solution was similar but less extreme: candles or warm low output LEDs that are not ceiling-mounted.

Electronics are allowed until the last hour before bed, but after 7pm or so only with a blue light filter and minimum brightness, and only with text content, no video or gaming.

The second I break these rules I immediately have trouble falling asleep, like clockwork. Which of course I periodically do for a media or video game dive, then I either accept the crappy sleep or I take a pill.

[tomcam]

This sounds less disruptive to try :0

[vundercind]

I’m not doing it anymore. Worked great. Kept it up for a few weeks. Early to bed, slept well. I basically hadn’t done that since I was like 8 years old.

Yes, after dusk. Probably would have allowed a couple hours past dusk in Winter (northern hemisphere). Turns out you (nearly everyone, excepting the few who’d have had insomnia even in a Nebraska farmhouse in 1920) get tired fast with low light and no hyper-stimulus. You can still play musical instruments or play cards or read by candle light or a few other things. But that won’t keep you up until 2AM night after night after night (maybe every now and then).

But god, it’s hard to make that work with any amount of a modern life.

[tomcam]

Thanks tons for these details. Time for me to give it a shot, esp. if playing instruments doesn’t contribute to the problem.