2 Ways to Sleep Better and Be Happier

Arthur Brooks (0:00)

Today, I want to talk to you about sleep. I want to do something a little bit different when it comes to sleep, and that's the relationship between sleep and happiness. Specifically, the biggest barrier that most people actually have to sleep, which I believe is not what we often hear. Sleep problems are basically at epidemic levels. About 70 million Americans have chronic sleep problems. If you've noticed that you're grouchier, you're really super impatient in traffic, you're not able to put up with the slightest little annoyance from other people around you like your kids. When you're sleep deprived, that's why. If you go to a sleep specialist, they're basically going to say, okay, there's a barrier to your sleeping that some circumstances that we can actually change. They rarely will talk to you about you actually being the problem. Very frequently when I'm talking to my students and young adults in general, this is what I find, not that they can't sleep, that a lot of people unknowingly are engaging in something called bedtime procrastination.

Hi everybody and welcome to Office Hours. I'm Arthur Brooks. This is our show about love and happiness. I hope you're enjoying it if you're a long-time listener, and if this is your first time, welcome. I'm very glad you're here and I'm grateful to you, no matter if you've watched it for a year or less that you're spending time with us. I'm especially grateful to you if you're sharing these ideas with others because the whole idea of the show is for us all to become better happiness teachers, and in so doing, bringing more of it to our lives and more of it to the lives of other people. My mission is lifting people up and bringing them together in bonds of happiness and love using science and ideas, and I know that you want that too. How do I know that? Well, because you're watching the show or listening to it. Please, as always, when you have ideas for what I should be talking about, I mean, we're a lot of episodes in, and any idea that you like, I'm probably going to like it too. So please do write in with your ideas to officehours.arthurbrooks.com or put it in the comment section, which you like to hear about. Or if I say something and you say more on that, please, more.

Because sometimes I'll talk about something that I don't think is necessarily in the right pocket, but you might. So let me know what you like me to talk about. And I'll also just your questions, your criticisms, your comments. I love all of that. If you want more information like this in written form, please do subscribe to my free newsletter. You can get that by going to arthurbrooks.com/newsletter. Every Friday, completely free, you'll get an email to your inbox that's a lot like this podcast, but it's three to 500 words, just a little bite-sized piece of information to send you into the weekend. If you'd also like to think about getting together with other like-minded people who want to do more in the world of the science of happiness, you might consider a retreat. We have information on retreats that people are attending. You go to the website at retreats.arthurbrooks.com.

Right now, you're like Neo in The Matrix. You can keep scrolling, experiencing a simulation of life, or you can wake up to how your attention is being harvested for profit. It's happening to people all over the world right now. You don't want to be productized like this anymore, but it's hard. Tech addiction is so potent because it's been designed to tap into your dopamine system, just like heroin, porn, gambling. You've got the cravings, you're addicted. You don't like it, and I don't either. But I can't just tell you to stop doing it. That's hard. If you want to break free from the system, you need an incentive. Here's one. Why don't you join a phone company that pays you not to use your phone? If you want to reduce brain rot, get Noble Mobile. It pays you to use less data. It gives you an incentive to unplug. Noble Mobile is the phone plan that finally aligns incentives with what's good for you. Use less data, earn money back. And when you do, you'll be living once again in real life, and you're going to like how it feels. Today, I want to talk to you about sleep.

Now, in almost any optimization podcast that you watch, Longevity, Health, whatever it happens to be, if you're somebody that you follow, you'll find a good episodes on sleep. There'll be sleep experts that are every place and they give you unbelievably good information on what has become this incredibly common problem. And there's no reason for me to rehash that. A very fast YouTube search will send you to fantastic episodes from Andrew Huberman, who's covered this beautifully and exhaustively as a matter of fact, on how to get your sleep habits right and the importance of sleep for your health and longevity. It's been very helpful to me as a matter of fact in those episodes from Andrew and from others. So I'm not going to cover that ground. I want to do something a little bit different when it comes to sleep, and that's the relationship between sleep and happiness. And specifically, the biggest barrier that most people actually have to sleep, which I believe is not what we often hear.