Here’s an obscure life hack.

If (like me) you:

  • Don’t like going to bed, due to it conflicting with keeping on doing things

  • When in bed, wish you had something more engaging and enjoyable to do instead of just lying there waiting—for instance, playing a very compelling computer game until you get tired

  • Do not in fact reliably get tired from playing a very compelling computer game

  • Like puzzles

..then a solution that has worked surprisingly well for me before (and I wrote about previously) is having hard math puzzles handy to think about as I go to sleep. Somehow thinking about math at the bounds of my limited ability to imagine does make me sleepy. And is also quite compelling.

I haven’t done this for a while, I think due to disorganization and losing track of the puzzles I had, and not having a great source of new ones. But I have recently reinstated this in a nice format.

I think ideally you want this to involve no preparation at all at bed time, and no going on your computer. So you want a nice supply of the right kind of puzzles in a physical place near your bed. So I sorted through puzzles and found a bunch of good-looking ones, printed them out, cut them up, folded them into pleasing parcels, and put them in my ex-housemate’s ex-teapot. Now if I’m ready for bed, I can draw a tiny package, and open something actually fun and helpful to think about in bed.

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