During the long days of the Northwest summer, I often wake up as daylight breaks, which these days is closer to 4am. But recently I’ve applied a face mask upon waking, after which I lie in bed silently for another 90 minutes or so, hoping to sleep a little more. This seems remarkably effective. Making a conscious effort to stay in bed a full eight hours seems, at least according to my watch data, to give significant additional sleep, even though at the time I don’t feel like I’m sleeping.

See how dramatically my watch-measured sleep time increases since mid-May when I began trying this in earnest:

Funny how maybe the best way to improve sleep is to simply…sleep.