How I defeated jet lag in 24 hours

I just got back from Southeast Asia (Thailand, Hong Kong) and landed in Canada (Vancouver) last Thursday. Typically when making this east-west trip, I suffer from at least 4-6 days of jet lag, but this time, I basically got over it in 24 hours.

It was thanks to the advice given to me by researcher Ian Dunican ( @sleep4perform on Twitter) who was kind enough to give me a free analysis and sleep prescription.

My flight was less than ideal. I woke up at 7am Hong Kong time for a 10am departure in Hong Kong. I flew for the first part of my connection from Hong Kong to Tokyo, where I had a 3-hour layover. The Tokyo flight departed at 6:43pm and would eventually arrive in Vancouver at 10:30am local. That's 2:30am at my point of origin, so that's a rough one - I'd be arriving in the morning, at what would be a couple hours past my bedtime in Hong Kong.

On the flights I consumed no caffeine and very little food. I slept at much as possible on the plane using eye shades and headphones and probably got about 4-5 hours of total sleep between the two flights.

Upon arrival in Vancouver I had some coffee and walked around. We opened all the windows in the apartment to let in as much sunlight as possible. At around 4pm I succumbed to a 30-minute nap, but forced myself to wake up after it. I struggled until about 7pm when I went down to the gym for an hour of cardio and 20 minutes of sauna.

After exercise, I took a 5-minute ice-cold Canadian shower (my own idea, not Ian's) and ate dinner. I tried to stay up until 10pm, but could only make it until 9pm.

I'd hoped to sleep in late, but my body woke me up at 5am, but not bad considering that's 9pm Hong Kong, right when my body would be starting to get tired.

On day 2, I went back off the caffeine. I did some light morning exercise (low-intensity kickboxing and BJJ session at the gym), came home, ate breakfast, and promptly passed out for two 90-minute naps. I was pretty worried that this would affect my sleep at night, but it didn't. At 7pm I did a moderate-intensity kickboxing class, came home, had dinner, and slept all the way to 9:30am, granted, with some wakeups in the middle of the night.

Mission accomplished! Thanks to Ian for the free analysis; I recommend you follow him on Twitter if you're at all interested in sleep and performance.

How to defeat mediocrity: making stress work for you

Imagine any form of strenuous physical exercise. Lifting the heaviest weight you can, running your fastest possible 5k, sparring against the toughest fighter in the gym. You are trying to get through the last rep, the last hundred meters, the last 30 seconds of the last round. You are a full 10-out-of-10 on the effort scale.

Drenched in sweat, you hit the showers. You've earned yourself a nice cool shower and you start to feel better immediately. Now, depending on how well you manage your lifestyle, one of the following two scenarios result:

Scenario 1: Your lunch hour is almost over, and you've got a huge meeting with the boss. Or your wife is landing at the airport in ...oh shit, eight minutes! Time to cut the water, towel off, and still sweating, you throw on your clothes. You grab your gym bag (oops, forgot your water bottle), sprint to the car, and start speeding out of the parking lot. Two hours later, you're exhausted, but there's still lots of work to do, so you reach for another coffee or energy drink to get back to baseline.

Scenario 2: You take a long, cool shower for ten minutes. You towel off and have a smoothie at the juice bar. You take a 15-minute walk home, grab a quick power nap, then move on with the rest of your day.

Obviously, I think most people would prefer to be in Scenario 2.

Since our body always wants to be at a state of equilibrium, I've tended to look at health and wellness through this lens of equilibrium. One of the most important interplays in our body is that of the one between the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). The SNS is the "fight-or-flight mechanism" that engages the body for action. The PNS is the "rest and relax" part of your nervous system. The two systems ebb and flow like yin-and-yang. Neither is ever completely inactive, but throughout the course of the day, the two work together to keep the body in equilibrium.

Activities and experiences can either be sympathetic-dominant or parasympathetic-dominant as well. For example, contrast any of the following:

• intense hill sprints / a slow nature hike
• waking up in the morning / falling asleep at night
• an ice-cold shower / a warm bath
• daydreaming and fantasizing / executing and building
• rigourous studying / escapist pleasure reading
• deep tissue massage / gentle foam rolling
• intense intellectual thought / quiet meditation
• hunting for food / eating and digesting it

These pairs are not "opposites", and neither is one in the pair "better" than another; I simply wanted to show the types of activities that are SNS or PNS dominant. The only thing that is actually bad is too much of one and not enough of the other. Also, I didn't just list physical activities; in fact, for most people who aren't serious athletes, mental stressors (and factors such as diet and sleep) probably have the greatest nervous system impact.

Typically, you want to ramp stress up, and then ramp it back down into recovery. That's why people do warmups before the tough workout. It's also why I take a short walk outside in the morning before I do any heavy mental lifting, as well. When I'm done with the stressful task and it's time to put the weights (or the laptop) down, I wind down, grab a drink, and do something relaxing.

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Imagine that we had a way to determine, in real time, what a person's stress level was at any given moment. This guy is competing for a gold medal at the Olympics, he's at 10. This guy is delivering a career-defining presentation, he's at a 10. This guy is doing his usual morning workout, he's at a 7. This guy is getting a Swedish massage on the beach, he's at a 2.

What's useful is, of course, not the average or the sum of a person's stress level, but rather its distribution. Probably, most people in first-world countries are at a normal distribution:

(I should note that stress should not really be linearly evaluated in such a way, but I am treating it as linear to make a point here.)

Most people spend almost all their time in the middle. Their lives are fine. They get some exercise, but probably not enough. They get some sleep, but probably not enough. They are fairly good employees at work, but not superstars. They don't have financial troubles, but nor do they have great wealth. They watch a lot of TV and spend a lot of time on Facebook. They can also probably tell you a lot about the personal lives of their favourite celebrities and athletes. 

When they try things, they set low expectations. They half-ass a lot of different things, and are rarely too engaged in what they are doing. 

There's nothing wrong with these people, really. Society needs them, and luckily they are an abundant resource. They're just simply not serious achievers.

I don't want to be one of these people, either. You probably know some of these people. One could be your boss, your personal trainer, your teammate, your colleague. They might make a lot of money (or go broke gambling it all). Two hours after they leave the gym, they are reaching for another can of Monster or Red Bull just to get back to baseline. They are writing e-mails at 11:30pm and checking for responses at 5am. They certainly don't bother with meditation, or gentle stretching. Ain't got no time for that!

If they are professionals, they are running from one high-stress decision to another. If they are athletes, they are training multiple times a day to exhaustion (and never take days off). Sure, they might end up billionaire CEOs, Olympic gold medalists, or revolutionaries. Or they may drop dead of a heart attack. It's a coin flip.

Note that in spite of the fact that the huge majority of their lives are spent in the 7+ range, there is a big spike at the 1. That's because their lifestyles are so high-stress that they frequently get sick or injured, or get burned out, have nervous breakdowns, and so forth. At some point, their bodies have enough and shut them down. If you spend all of your life at the redline, don't be surprised when the engine blows up. 

Most of us don't know too many of these people. We probably don't know too many zen monks living in isolation on top of mountains. While these people might seem enlightened and happy, the vast majority of them probably aren't getting much done either.

In his fantastic book Flow, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi argues that this approach is possibly even responsible for some of India's troubles:

"...the Indian fascination with advanced techniques for self-control, at the expense of learning to cope with the material challenges of the physical environment, has conspired to let impotence and apathy spread over a great proportion of the population, defeated by scarcity of resources and by overcrowding." 

This is what I'm looking for. As an athlete, I am trying to train hard, at high intensity, to improve in my sport. As a businessman, I am trying to work hard and think of creative solutions. As a student, I try to study with intent. As someone currently writing a blog post, I am trying to put aside distractions and focus on my words. But I also make sure to balance this with down time. I do some post-workout static stretching and quiet meditation. I eat well. I take naps, lots of them. I take caffeine in the morning, and magnesium at night.

You'll often hear people say (with pride), things like "I work hard and I play hard". This is great. But to this, we must add, "I rest hard". You might also hear someone (probably a millenial) describe him or herself as "pretty chill and laid-back". This person needs to add, "but I get shit done when I need to."

I am not putting myself out there to be better than anyone else. I often fail both at being too intense and being too lazy. I still spend more time at the 5s and 6s -- that wishy-washy level where you're not really doing anything useful, but not actually focused on recovering -- than I would like. But I put this out there as an ideal to strive for, not a goal to be reached.

Stress is not good, stress is not bad. Stress just is. It is a part of life and one that should be embraced as well as respected. One should not go through life trying to avoid stress, but rather actively managing it, and making it work for you.

If you want to be an achiever, then achieve. Work hard. Focus. Go all-in. But then, rest, recover, then do it again.

Making home a computer-free zone

The last week, I've been experimenting with not having a personal computer at home on weekdays. Instead, I've simply been leaving both my work and personal computer at the office. Now that I work a day job (and try to go to the gym afterwards), I find there's no real strong reason to be online after dinner and before bed.

I've found that I have definitely improved sleep over this period. There's obviously a gigantic body of evidence that electronic screens before bed will harm your sleep quality. Even ignoring issues like blue light and melatonin production, I've simply had more relaxing evenings. I'm not too worried about the crisis du jour -- if it's a legitimate crisis, someone on my staff will phone me. Everything else which isn't a crisis, can wait until the morning, when I find that I am more productive anyway these days.

The biggest difference though, is that I waste *way* less time browsing random garbage on the internet. If I choose to watch a TV show or movie (actual cable, Netflix, Youtube), I'll actually watch it with intent. Since I still have my phone and tablet at home, I'm still not fully out of the habit of checking work e-mail -- but because phones and tablets are still largely onerous to type with, I don't feel nearly as tempted to make sure I respond immediately to that e-mail.

Additionally, the computer is no longer the first thing I check when I wake up in the morning. For my entire adult life, I have habitually gone straight from the bed to the computer. Now in the morning, I take one lap around my apartment complex to gather my thoughts and think about what things I want to accomplish for the day. When I get back, not having a computer means I get ready for work far faster with no procrastination. (I'm writing this at 6:50am.) My overall time spent being productive is actually the same number of hours and minutes, but the productivity itself is way higher because when I am actually at the computer now, I have focused, specific tasks.

Anyway, this is a small thing, and far from groundbreaking, but it has helped me a lot and I will continue with this experiment for a little while.

Product Review: Beddit sleep tracker

I admit it: I'm a sucker for wellness apps. I'm an athlete, but I'm also a geek. So anything that intersects physical performance and numbers is right up my alley.

I also think that more than diet, more than exercise, sleep is probably the single most important major lifestyle determinant in wellness and human performance. How much and how well people sleep seems to have massive effects on body fat, cancer rate, athletic performance, cognitive performance, and more. Additionally, I find sleep results harder to modify and optimize than either diet or exercise. While diet and exercise are largely an issue of good decision making, commitment, and time management, I find that I often do all the "right things" when it comes to sleep and not get a great result. I try to go to bed shortly after sunset, sleep in a nearly pitch-black room, avoid late afternoon caffeine, do relaxation exercises, and basically everything that is thought to achieve a good sleep result, but my results are still inconsistent.

Enter the Beddit (www.beddit.com), which promises to "automatically tracks your sleeping patterns, heart rate, breathing, snoring, movements and environment. In the morning, Beddit tells you how you slept and how to do it better."

After hearing that pitch, this was me:

The Beddit consists mostly of a strap containing a sensor that goes underneath your bedsheet. It connects via Bluetooth to your smartphone and gives you results that look like this:

There's even more data promised in future versions.

This is the kind of shit that I love. The only small problem? It doesn't work.

To date, the Beddit is largely giving me garbage data. According to the Beddit, I haven't slept over 5 hours a single night that I've gotten it, and most nights it's said I've only slept 2-3 hours. I will be the first to admit that I don't get enough sleep, but after one night of just 2-3 hours I'm usually useless, and after a week of it I'd probably be approaching death. The Beddit is recording large gaps in my sleep during hours that I know I was definitely asleep.

Part of the problem may be the length of the Beddit strap. I have a queen-sized bed, and the strap covers less than half of my bed. That means if I roll over on to a part of the bed that the strap isn't sensing, then I'm not getting tracked for that sleep. On one particular night, the Beddit told me that I got up from bed 7 times, when I actually got up from bed once or twice, at most. I think increasing the strap length will help, but I do not think that is the only source of the Beddit's problems at this point, since even when I sleep through the night and wake up on the same side of the bed, my sleep is being dramatically underreported.

I've contacted Beddit support, and they've been fairly slow to respond. This is not too surprising considering that they're an indie company who probably weren't ready to handle the amount of business that they got. I'm happy to be an early adopter of this item and in spite of the fact that the product is currently unsatisfactory, I'll be happy that they got my money as long as that money goes towards product improvements. I want to support a company that comes up with good ideas like this, and I hope they are able to deliver on it. As someone who works in a startup that simultaneously seems to "get it", also desperately needs some major product improvements, I think I'm more sympathetic to this idea than anyone.

I'm continuing correspondence with Beddit support and will update this review if information changes (it's possible I just got a lemon, for example). But the bottom line is this: I think at this point unless you also want the good karma of supporting a sleep app, you should probably pass on the Beddit for now. 

But like some might say about my company, I'll be cheering for them.