I am convinced — there is no greater physiological joy than sleeping well. If you could give me a quadrillion dollars in the agreement that I would sleep shitty and poorly and only 2 hours a night for the rest of my life or make me a pauper but sleep like a god every night, I’d choose the poverty life.

Some pragmatic thoughts on hacking and perfecting your sleep. It isn’t guaranteed to work for you, but it certainly works for me:

1. Even the gods sleep

The funny thing when reading the Iliad:

Every night, even the gods sleep.

Every night, Zeus retires to sleep with Hera and the rest of them. Which makes me wonder:

If the Great Greek Gods sleep… why don’t we puny modern humans prioritize sleep?

2. Taylorism run amok

Where does this bias against sleep come from? The bias that to sleep a lot of sloth and laziness? Blame Benjamin Franklin and all these “utilitarian” philosophers, thinkers and industrialists (like Taylor) who tried to turn the human into a productive machine … to squeeze out every ounce of money-and capital-making and producing efficiency from him. In simple terms:

Every hour that you’re sleeping and not awake working is an hour you’re *NOT* earning additional money, capital, and producing goods and works “for the greater good of mankind and God”.

The Puritan or the “Protestant work ethic” (Weber).

3. The Ancient Greeks considered work and toilsome labor a disgrace, and only fit for the slave or working class

In Ancient Sparta, all of the dirty work was done by the helots (citizen slaves) who tilled the land, did all the agricultural work, and all the dirty work. All of the noble work was done by the Spartan soldier citizens … who mostly participated in sports, military exercises, and physical fitness (always preparing for war). To work for work sake was considered insanity and a non-concept.

4. The pragmatic tactics

1. No weed or alcohol or artificial substances to help you sleep at night.
2. No TV, shows, YouTube, Netflix or whatever in the evening. My heretical and contrarian thought is this: better to watch visual media and shows and movies and stuff like that in the middle of the day to energize you, than do it at night. Because there is this physiological synthesis between moving images, moving people (in TV shows and movies) and your own physiology, this means if you watch TV shows and movies at night it will actually stimulate you to move and be active at night (undesirable).
3. For dinner, have a feast. Eat a shitload of meat (I aim for 5-6 pounds of meat a night), and I eat 1 pound of (frozen) kale. This knocks me the fuck out and I sleep well and deeply.
4. Don’t check email or your phone or text messages or whatever after dinner or before sleeping: This will keep your mind awake.
5. At night after dinner and before sleeping read a book. Either paperback, hard cover, Kindle, iPad whatever. I think there is something very soothing about reading before sleeping.
6. After dinner, take a fucking cold-ass shower (ice cold shower) until you shiver, then just hop into your super warm and cozy bed (lots of blankets). This will help you sleep better at night.