Dr. Matt Walker

And you say, no, no, no, you didn't understand.

I'm not getting enough sleep, but it's not quite that.

Here's how it works.

If you are spending so much time in bed, too much time in bed, you are not forcing your brain to be efficient.

And by way of constraining your sleep window, even to, let's say, five hours a night to begin with,

I brute force ruthless efficiency from your sleeping brain after several days.

So another analogy would be, let's say you're trying to make a nice thin crust of pizza base and you put the dough on the table and you start rolling it out.

If you roll it too thin, it starts to get gaps and holes in it.

Why?

Because you've spread it out too far, and you've started to create these absences.

That's the same thing that happens, and it's very natural.

As an insomnia patient, you would say, I'm just not getting enough sleep, so I'm going to start spending more time in bed.

It's the very worst idea.

Another way would be to say, look, I go to the gym, and I spend about an hour and a half working out, but if I were to videotape you, a lot of people are doing the, I think I've coined it as your phrase, but the 11th rep,

where people do the 10 reps and then all of a sudden there's the selfie or there's the social media.

And if you look, they're only working out for about, let's say, 45 minutes and the other is wasted.

So what if the next day you came to the gym and I said, look, I'm sorry, and there's some big bouncer guys at the door, you are only allowed to work out for 40 minutes and then we're going to eject you.

And the first day you go back and you do the same thing.

And then you've only got through 30% of your workout.

So you get booted.