Ask HN: For normal sleepers, what is your sleep experience?
Go to bed at the first hint of being sleepy.  At first, if that&#x27;s 8:00 PM, just go to bed and be done with it - the important thing is to get normal sleep rhythms - you can work on syncing them with activities and clocks later.  After many stressful years as a startup CTO&#x2F;CEO, I had trouble sleeping.  I&#x27;m under more stress now, but sleep pretty well almost all the time.  The one thing I&#x27;ve learned is that if I ignore that first tired&#x2F;sleepy signal, there&#x27;s a good chance I&#x27;ve missed the boat and will not be able to get to sleep later.  Staying up past 11:30 these days is a sure recipe for a bad night&#x27;s sleep.<p>A &quot;normal&quot; night&#x27;s sleep such as I experience now: At first sign of sleepiness, STOP whatever I&#x27;m doing and immediately get undressed and ready for bed.  Brushing teeth is good dentally, but tends to wake me a bit, so I sometimes jsut swish with a hydrogen peroxide rinse and turn in.  Turn out <i>all lights</i> and make sure room is <i>dark</i>.  If not too tired, take melatonin and magnesium (I prefer magnesium taurate) - both promote sleep and relaxation.  A year ago, I also started taking a limited part of my supplement regimen aimed at tissue repair overnight just before bedtime.  It&#x27;s working so well that I now think it does more good than everything else I take in the daytime (aimed more at energy production and utilization).  If you&#x27;re taking an autophagy and vitamin C regimen, this is the time to do it. Avoid B vitamins, as they&#x27;re too energy-releasing.<p>Go to bed, head hits the pillow, say prayers (the mantra-like rosary seems to help my Catholic friends, mine are more stream-of-consciousness, but including a lot of deliberate thankfulness) and usually go to sleep in the process.  If not, concentrate on the darkness, and if you&#x27;re really stuck, find <i>two</i> background sounds to concentrate on at the same time - this almost always brings sleep.<p>I sometimes wake up in the middle of the night - if so, pee and maybe have a <i>small</i> drink of room-temp filtered water (cold water from the icebox is surprisingly good for waking - almost as good as coffee!), then immediately back to bed, where sleep usually comes easily.<p>Wake up to either sun, alarm, or sometimes, just your body waking up.  I don&#x27;t fight this anymore, either, esp. since I&#x27;m often going to bed by 11 at the latest.  If I wake up at 5 AM, or even 3:30 or 4 AM, fine, get up and read&#x2F;pray&#x2F;plan.  Often, especially in the middle of the night, this leads to sleepiness again - and I find that the &quot;second sleep&quot; that follows this is often the most refreshing.  (N.B.: Set your phone to be silent from say, 11PM to 7 AM and NEVER look at it until after you&#x27;re up the next day (for me, it&#x27;s never until after I&#x27;ve poured a cup of tea or coffee.)  Do NOT use your phone as your alarm clock.  you can afford to buy a real one.)<p>Repeat daily.<p>Other tips:  No caffeine after dinner.  No sugar or snacks after dinner.  If you must have dessert, do it very soon after dinner.  No hard exercise within X hours of bedtime (seems to vary a lot per person, for some reason - experiment and see...)  If really having trouble sleeping, music <i>may</i> help - instrumental ONLY - words are your enemy if trying to clear your mind to sleep.  If you have Amazon Prime and an Echo, I&#x27;ve found the &quot;Just Breathe&quot; playlist puts me down quickly enough that I&#x27;ll sometimes use it to provoke a bit deeper sleep for an afternoon nap if I need more than usual recharge from that.  Despite (or because of?) it&#x27;s complexity, baroque classical seems to help, too - kind of the opposite of the previous playlist, so see what works for you.  Someone once told me that Bach&#x27;s Goldberg Variations (I prefer them on harpsichord, Trevor Pinnock&#x27;s recordings are especially good)were written to help a patron who was having trouble sleeping - it does seem that the intertwining complexity and counterpoint seems to put the mind in a more relaxed state.  Use low volume, so the music stopping doesn&#x27;t wake you up!<p>BTW, naps of no more than about 20 mins can do wonders for nighttime sleep, too.  If your work situation doesn&#x27;t allow naps, either get creative, find a new job, or just realize you can&#x27;t nap after all.<p>As always, find out what works for you - YMMV!<p>Sleep well.  You&#x27;ve got this.