1. How many hours’ sleep do you need in order to be at your best, and what’s the minimum you can get on a regular basis and still be functional?
I and most people need 8 hours. I rarely get this, often surviving on 6 hours sleep and occasional naps jolting awake suddenly on the train in the morning. I guess I’m still functional enough, but if I could work off the sleep deficit and get a little more, I would be able to perform better.
2. What’s your favourite sleeping position?
Diagonal and rolled up in the cover.
3. What was the cause of your most recent difficulty sleeping?
Work, life, relationships, all of them worries that keep my brain active.
4. When you can’t seem to drift off to sleep right away, what are some things you do to bring about sleep?
Wait. My head is never quiet, it’s always doing something – calculating a plan or thinking about how something works or building something.
There are only a few times where it’s quiet and I don’t get to experience them very often. One way to quieten it is when pleasant physical sensation overpowers the mental background noise like an interrupt; so hugs and massage work. Pain does not work as this focuses the mind more, so please don’t come and ‘hit me to help me’.
So to get to sleep, I just wait. Sometimes I lie awake for hours.
5. When did you last doze off at an inappropriate time or in an inappropriate place?
I was at a conference yesterday, it was an exhausting day and I started drifting off in the audience. I was sat at the front and was quite visible to the presenter. It was about 5pm.
