The Ultimate Guide to a Good Night’s Sleep
The Amplified Impact Podcast
November 11th, 2023
I’m addressing a much-requested topic today: sleep optimization.
Sleep is vital for a healthy mind and body, but most of us were never taught how to truly optimize it.
Let me break it down into three phases:
- Before You Sleep: Set a consistent bedtime to ensure you have enough hours for rest.
- During Sleep: Create the ideal sleep environment by keeping your room dark, cool (around 65-68°F), and quiet.
- Waking Up: As soon as you wake, expose yourself to natural light for 10-15 minutes to reset your circadian rhythm.
Remember, what gets measured gets managed.
TWEETABLE QUOTE:
“There are so many reasons why it just doesn’t work that way. So you need to really prime your system for the active sleep.”
– Anthony Vicino
LEAVE A REVIEW if you liked this episode!!
Let’s Connect On Social Media!
instagram.com/theanthonyvicino
Join an exclusive community of peak performers at Beyond the Apex University learning how to build a business, invest in real estate, and develop hyperfocus.
Learn More About Investing With Anthony
Invictus Capital: www.invictusmultifamily.com
Multifamily Investing Made Simple Podcast
Passive Investing Made Simple Book: www.thepassiveinvestingbook.com
Episode Transcript:
Anthony Vicino:
Hello. What’s up, everybody? Welcome back to the podcast. Today we are going to do a very highly requested episode, something that I’ve talked about a lot in terms of its importance, but I haven’t, I think, recently at least, gone into detail about how to optimize your sleep. And that’s a shame, because I think, as I’ve talked about previously, sleep is one of the most important things that you can do for a healthy mind, healthy body, healthy life. It is one of the first things that goes out the window, I think, for a lot of us. And interestingly, the fact that we were never taught how to sleep, I find that really fascinating, considering the fact that on the surface, you would think like, oh, I don’t need to be taught how to sleep. That’s stupid. And yet, when I was 16 years old, I was staying up until, like, two or 03:00 a.m.
Anthony Vicino:
In the morning and then sleeping until noon, and that didn’t stop until as like, 25, 26 years old. Right. I really struggle to figure out my sleep. And I think it’s something that we take for granted, that because it is such a basic human prerogative that we all know how to do it, but the truth is, we don’t. We don’t know how to do it. In the same way that there are levels to the breathing game, the breath work game. Yes, we’re all breathing. It’s an autonomous system, but it’s also something that we can control to manipulate our physiology.
Anthony Vicino:
Sleep is this very complicated thing that very few of us really, really deeply understand how to optimize. And as a result, we go through our life with a little bit of brain fog, low energy. And that’s a shame, because there’s really simple things that we could do if only we knew how. And I’m going to share with those with you, in full disclosure, I’m not the expert on this stuff, but, like, two years ago, I realized that I was not sleeping well. My sleep scores with my whoop, my aura ring, they were consistently in, like, the 60s, so very, very low. I wasn’t getting good sleep. I was in bed for many, many hours every night, and I wake up, I’d still Feel exhausted and old. Truthfully, I felt old.
Anthony Vicino:
And so I went diving deep into the world of sleep and trying to understand how it works and what I need to do, what levers I need to pull so that I can get my sleep figured out. And Jamie and I, we spent a lot of time, a lot of energy, experimenting with so many things over the last couple of years, and we’ve stumbled on some things that work very, very well. Now to the point where my sleep score is usually in the high 80s, if not low ninety s. And sometimes I’ll even get up into high 90s. So my sleep is way, way better than it used to be. So I’m going to share with you some things that worked, and then I’ll talk about maybe some things that didn’t as well. But I’m going to break this into three phases. First is what happens before you go to sleep, the sleep itself, and then when you wake up.
Anthony Vicino:
Okay, so a good night’s sleep all starts the night before, and it starts with your nighttime ritual, what you’re doing leading up to the active sleeping itself. It’s like the preparation, the pregaming. It is unrealistic to expect that you can just go to bed and then fall asleep. There are so many reasons why it just doesn’t work that way. So you need to really prime your system for the active sleep. And this used to be way easier for our ancestors because they didn’t have screens dominating their attention. They didn’t have a refrigerator full of food. They didn’t have all of these things that they could distract themselves with.
Anthony Vicino:
So when the sun started going down at, like, 06:00 p.m. Their brain would naturally start to slow down. Their bodies would start to slow down as it started getting colder outside, their body would start to go into a little mini hibernation, and then they just naturally fall asleep. That’s just how it worked. So we have so many things that are, like, artificially stimulating our systems now. It makes it way, way harder, especially with the artificial light that we have in our house. So this is the first thing that we need to figure out is the ritual for going to bed. And a couple of things here that are going to be very, very helpful is, number one, you need to set a bedtime.
Anthony Vicino:
It’s not about when you wake up. I don’t actually wake up to an alarm. I haven’t done that in years. I don’t usually set any kind of wake up time. I have Jamie wake me up. Usually if I’m not awake by a certain time to say, hey, wake up, you need to get up now. But beyond that, I just let my body sleep. A lot of people will set alarm for getting up for work, but they don’t set the alarm for going to bed.
Anthony Vicino:
And that is the more important thing, because if you can control that, that’s the lead indicator. That’s the thing that you can control. If you’re in bed every night at this time, then your body will start to get into that routine, that habit, and you will start to fall asleep easier. But the first thing that you have to do is you have to give yourself the window of time available to get your 8 hours of sleep. And 8 hours is like a good proxy. It could be six, could be nine. Everybody’s a little bit different. But you can strive for at least six to seven to eight.
Anthony Vicino:
That’s a really good place. But you can’t do that. If you need to be up at 06:00 a.m. And you’re going to bed at twelve, it’s impossible, right? So you need to have that bedtime that says this is when I need to be in bed and be shutting down and going to sleep so that I can have the opportunity to get the 8 hours. So maybe that’s 10:00 a.m. Maybe it’s 09:00 a.m. Maybe it’s 07:00 p.m. I don’t know.
Anthony Vicino:
I don’t know why I was saying there. I meant P m. But you need to go to bed every time at the same time. And this needs to carry through to the weekends as well. Don’t let yourself stay up later, go partying and all that stuff because you can throw off your circadian rhythm and it can take days if not weeks to get that corrected. And if you’re screwing up your circadian rhythm every weekend, it takes a couple of days to get it back on track. Then you’re midweek again. And then by the time you’re finally getting back on track, it’s wEekend, you throw it off again.
Anthony Vicino:
So don’t do that to yourself a specific time every night to go to bed. And that’s step one. Step two is you need to have your light situation figured out, for lack of better words. So when our ancestors were out in the wilderness, sun would go down, they had fire, right? But the fire that would have been around a campsite puts out very low intensity lumens and it puts it out at a frequency of light that your brain, the cones and rods in your eyes have evolved to process as, oh, this is nighttime now it’s time for me to start secreting the sleepy chemicals. Okay, so the way that we evolved with the sun going down and the angle of light in which it hits our eyes is sending messages to our brain that says it’s time to get sleepy. That has been hijacked because a lot of our artificial lighting is directly above us, simulating noon. Right? Like, when else is the light directly above you? Middle of the day time to be awake. So your body is getting these weird messages from our environment that’s saying like, well, it’s late, I’m tired, but the lights are up, so I must not be ready for bed yet.
Anthony Vicino:
So a couple of hours before bed, you need to be thinking about the angle of your light and the intensity of the light. And so you need to turn off all your overhead lights and you need to start setting up lamps and things that are at eye level or below to simulate that kind of bonfire effect. And so you want to have this kind of like cozy, almost warm vibe. You want to go towards less blue light and go towards more of the red light, more warm lights. And so Jamie and I, we set up a smart house with smart bulbs so that at around 08:00 p.m. Every night, the bulbs, they change their intensity, they change their brightness, they change their hue and all of the lights are below eye level. So no more above. And that seems like a really weird thing, but it makes a very big difference, trust me.
Anthony Vicino:
Yeah, lights. That one’s a massive one. Don’t sleep on that one. All right. Food and drink. You need to make sure that you have eaten and drank your last bits of food and fluids a couple of hours before bed, which in a perfect world, you would do it at least 4 hours before bed, if not 6 hours. That seems like a really long time, but you do not want your body to be digesting and going into deep digestion while you’re trying to sleep because that requires a lot of energy that could be going towards the act of sleeping itself. This IS Very Difficult Depending on your lifestyle.
Anthony Vicino:
For me and Jamie, Honestly, this Is the One that We can’t really Manage with our Lives. When she gets back from what she does in her Life and I get done with what do it’s. We’ve only got about 2 hours, maybe an hour before bed. And so we’re often going to bed on a full Stomach and that’s really not ideal. But if you have the ability to control that, take your dinners, take your fluids earlier in the evening and then don’t take snacks before bed. Good luck. That One doesn’t work for us, Unfortunately. But there’s a lot of Science behind that one.
Anthony Vicino:
And then the last one is your Screen time. So two aspects of this One is the light, the phones and our Screens, our TVs, our computers, they put off a lot of blue light. And you can program it so that at a certain time every day, the blue light is blocked on your phone, or you can put on blue blocker glasses. Those things will help you want to make sure that you’re not getting that blue light into your eyes past a certain time, Preferably 2 hours before bed. Because again, this IS Sending the Messages to your brain that says, hey, it’s daytime, it’s time to be awake and be alert. So There Are Apps, There Are Programs in your phone, in your computer that can change the hue so that the blue light Is not coming Through. But maybe Even better Would be just to Forego the screens Entirely. Not because of the light, that’s one aspect of it, but because It’s Stimulating your Brain.
Anthony Vicino:
And you really want, in those last couple of hours before bed, for your brain to start unwinding, unpacking, you don’t really want to be stimulating it with a lot of attention. And so screens, it’s a lot of information per pixel. Whereas if you just read a book or stare at a fire, stare at the wall or journal for a bit, those are going to be much more relaxing activities that prime you for a good night’s sleep. So that is the nighttime ritual. Now, let’s talk about the process of sleep itself. We need to control for our environment. And there’s a couple of things in particular that we need to think hard about. One is the light.
Anthony Vicino:
We need to be sleeping in the dark, the dark, dark, not a little bit of dark. In the modern era, there is a lot of light pollution coming in from the outside, coming in from all your devices, your phone, everything’s blinking. There’s more light in your room than you realize. Our ancestors didn’t have this problem. They slept in the dark dark. And if you’ve ever got, like, blackout curtains and slept in a pitch black room, you probably experience this where you’re just like, wow, I went deep into the sleep, and you need to be able to recreate that for yourself. The best way is blackout curtains, or what I use is just a sleeping mask. That has been very, very effective for me.
Anthony Vicino:
But make sure that you’re sleeping in the dark dark. Next is you need to be sleeping in a cold room. Again. At nighttime, temperatures drop. Our human body has evolved to when temperature drops, we go to sleep. And so through the night, our body is going through a constant decline in temperature from about the moment we fall asleep until about 04:00 a.m. Or so. So if you go to bed at ten, around 04:00 a.m.
Anthony Vicino:
Your body’s going to have reached its peak low, and then it’s going to start warming up and start waking you up. Okay, so we need to keep our body in that low body, like, that low temperature state to optimize our sleep. But our beds are kind of little heat traps and our blankets are designed to keep us nice and warm and toasty. If you’re sweating in your sleep, you’re too warm, and there’s a chance it’s going to impact the quality of your sleep and wake you up. And so you need to be sleeping in a nice, cool, crisp environment. It’s probably colder than a lot of people are comfortable with, but the truth is, like, 65 to 68 degrees is the ideal that you’re shooting for here. One of the things that we invested in a number of years ago that was a game changer for us was the eight sleep mattress. It is a cooling mattress that Jamie and I can program so that her side stays on one temperature.
Anthony Vicino:
Mine’s on a different, and it’ll cool us and then warm us through the night to keep with that thermoregulated rhythm that our body kind of strives for. That has been a game changer. I don’t wake up sweating anymore, and I stay in deep, deep sleep throughout the night. So temperature management is massive. Next is you got your light, you got your temperature, and then you have your sound. The human, we evolved to wake up at the slightest sound because it could have been a tiger trying to eat us. And so any sound anywhere in the house can make you immediately wake up. It’s just what we’re designed for.
Anthony Vicino:
So anything that you can do to block that is a game changer for me. That’s white noise. Jamie and I, we turn on a speaker with white noise, and that is awesome also, because we have cats that try to meow at our door, and they’re very, very annoying. So anything that makes it less likely that we’re going to wake up to an auditory distraction and keep us in our deep state of sleep, that’s very key. Now, two other things that I use that have helped me immensely. You might not have these issues at all, but I have a problem breathing through my nose. I’m a mouth breather. I must have some kind of blockage in my nose.
Anthony Vicino:
I need to get it checked out. But I use nose tape to keep my nostrils open, and then I use mouth tape to encourage my body to breathe through my nose. And what I have found is that when I’m breathing through my nose, I get a better night’s sleep. It’s harder for me, but I get a better night’s sleep. I have sleep apnea. So I have a machine that they want me to use. I don’t love it. I don’t use it pretty much ever anymore.
Anthony Vicino:
But the nose tape and mouth tape has been very, very helpful for me because when you breathe through your mouth, one, it’s really not ideal. It’s not how your body is designed to breathe, but two, it’s drying you out more so than if you were just breathing through your nose. Your nose is designed to warm the temperature, to moisturize it. When you breathe through your mouth, it dries you out. There’s a lot of negative things that go alongside that. So those are just two side supplemental things that have been helpful for me, but might not be necessary for you. Okay, so we’ve talked about the nighttime ritual. We talked about our sleep environment.
Anthony Vicino:
Let’s talk about waking up. And the most important thing that you can do when you wake up is to make sure that you get morning light into your eyes as quickly as possible, because this is going to set your ultradean rhythm. It’s going to say, oh, this is when you woke up. And now you’re going to go through these different ultra rhythms, which are these 90 minutes peaks and valleys throughout the day until they finally get to the end of the day when it’s time to go back to sleep. Okay, so when you wake up, getting that light into your eye signals, oh, now I’m awake. And that’s starting that cyclical clock. And so it’s very important that as soon as you wake up, you go and you get about ten to 15 minutes of good quality sunlight into your eyes. Now, if you live in a place like I do in Minnesota, where we don’t get sunlight in the winter until, like, 10:00 a.m.
Anthony Vicino:
You can get a happy lamp, you can get red light. There’s a lot of tools that you can use to get that light, but it is very important for resetting your circadian rhythm, which is just going to make it that much easier for you to fall asleep the following night. So those are three things to think about. The nighttime ritual, the sleeping environment, and then your waking up ritual. So you take all of those together, you put them and play with them. I don’t kNow, some of it works better than others, but I would encourage you also to be tracking your sleep because that which gets measured gets managed. So you can get, like, an aura ring a whoop band. The eight sleep mattress does all my bio analytic tracking these days.
Anthony Vicino:
I’ve used all those other tools. They’re all great and fantastic. But you need to have some objective way of measuring the quality of your sleep so that you can actually judge whether or not you’re getting good sleep. I think that’s step one. So hopefully this brings you guys a little bit of value. If it did and you think somebody else would get some value out of it, share it with them, I would love it. That’s awesome. Appreciate it.
Anthony Vicino:
Thank you so much. And as always, thank you guys for being here. We’ll catch you in the next episode. But until then, stay hyper focused, my friends.
This Week On YouTube
These 3 Daily Habits Made Me A Millionaire in 3 Years
Whenever you’re ready, here are 3 ways I can help you:
1. Unleash your hyperfocused mind to dominate life, business, and everything in between? Here’s how:
→ The Hyperfocused Masterclass: the exact system I used to overcome ADHD, write 12 books, build 4 businesses, and acquire $70M of real estate.
There are a handful of spaces left in The Hyperfocus Masterclass for those who want to snag the early bird preorder special discount of $49.
Email anthony@anthonyvicino.com to let me know you want on the waitlist.
2. Learn to passively invest in commercial real estate with better returns, less risk, and zeo hassle.
→ Invictus Capital: my real estate private equity firm.
→ Multifamily Investing Made Simple: Top Apple Podcast.
→ Passive Investing Made Simple: Amazon Best Selling Book with 100 5 star reviews.
3. Want more like this? Check out these 3 popular articles from the vault:
