Stumbled on a strange idea just weird enough to warrant self-experimentation: standing to improve sleep. I found it thanks to a shared Google reader item from Patri Friedman. It was part of some notes taken from a meetup meeting:

Change in breakfast caused early awakening to get worse. This was the first thing that had made a difference. Led to discovery that any breakfast hurts; supported by rat research. Later found that standing a lot improved sleep. Had to stand at least 8 hr to get effect; no effect of 6 hr of standing. Great sleep when stood 10 hr but really hard to do. More recently discovered that standing on one leg to exhaustion helps. Do twice in one day. Same effect …

Told you it was a bit different. I’m working on hacking sleep a bit, and am immensely curious as to if this experiment would prove out for me. I sit at a desk and start at three computer screens all day, so the one-legged standing to exhaustion will be the method I try.

Stay tuned.

Sidenote: I already skip breakfast most days, preferring to wait until lunch before I break my nighttime fast.

Update: Seth kindly responded to my request for additional information on what he means by standing to exhaustion:

Justin, what I mean by “standing on one leg to exhaustion” has nothing to do with balance — I usually touch something to make it easy to balance. I mean I stand on one leg until it becomes difficult due to muscles getting tired. I never actually endure pain or even discomfort but I go right up to the point where I would start to if I continued. In the beginning I could only do this for 2-3 minutes; now it’s up to about 11 minutes. At the moment the “whole regimen” is what you call one set: standing on each leg to exhaustion once. In other words, left leg once, right leg once.

Got it - and so the experiment can start!

Update 2: Finally got around to trying this out this evening. I still had some standing stamina at 10 minutes, so I just stopped there (per leg). We’ll see how the sleep goes tonight.