- Right, so, people always ask me, "Ali, how do you have so much energy? How do you get so much done? How do you never seem
to get tired of it all?" Now guys, in this video, I'm gonna be revealing
the secrets behind this and those are six tips
on how I'm never tired, and they're all around how
I sleep more productively. Let's get into it. Tip number one is to use a
Kindle on the bedside table. So back in the day, when my sleep used to
be absolutely terrible, and I used to be tired all the time, I used to take my phone into bed with me. So, while I was in bed, I'd be having the bright light in my face and I'd be scrolling through Instagram and Twitter and Tinder very occasionally. This is absolutely terrible. And this is probably the
most game-changing thing that I did for my sleep. I now have the phone across
the room from me on my, on my chest of drawers,
wirelessly charging. And the only thing on my
bedside table is my Kindle. And I've got the Kindle Oasis which has like a warm kind of light in it, not sure if that makes
any difference at all, but I read before bed and I read for about 20
minutes to half an hour and then I kind of feel my eyes closing and then I fall asleep very, very quickly. And since I started doing this, since I stopped having this
blue light shining in my face from my phone, I haven't, like, I rarely feel tired in the morning, so this is a huge, huge, huge tip that I think would really help you guys. Tip number two is to get
a physical alarm clock. This is again, a game-changer. I set the alarm on my
physical alarm clock, I actively decide what
time I'm gonna wake up and then when the alarm
wakes up in the morning, (buh buh buh buh buh buh buh buh buh) it like, forces me to get
out of bed to turn it off, because it's just a,
such an unpleasant sound. Whereas I found that with my phone, when I used to have the alarm on my phone, even if the phone was
across the room from me, it was way too easy
for me to just be like, "Hey, Siri, alarm off." Or, "Hey, Siri, shut up."
- [Siri] No. - And when you have a
physical alarm clock anyway, like, I found that it
makes me more mindful about my sleeping 'cause now I can like, tactilely and physically set
what time I wanna wake up. I can see on the clock face how many hours of sleep I'm getting
and this has contributed to my sleeping productively
/ not being tired. Tip number three is no
caffeine after 2 P.M. Again, I picked up this tip from Matthew Walker's
book, "Why We Sleep", I talked about caffeine. I also did a load of
research into caffeine for a video about, is coffee good for you. Basically caffeine
stays in the bloodstream for absolutely ages. And however we might think that we are immune to the
effect of caffeine or whatever, we're not, like, it does
operate on our neurotransmitters in the brain in various different ways. And it basically stops us from sleeping, or if we do fall asleep, it
stops us from sleeping well. And so I have a lot of coffee before, like, 2:00 or 3:00 PM
and a lot of tea as well. But then after 2:00, 3:00 PM I decide I'm only going to
have decaffeinated stuff. So I've got a box of decaf tea and occasionally we
also get decaf diet Coke from the shops to have with
takeaway in the evening, just so I minimize my caffeine
intake in the afternoon. Tip number four is to
use blackout curtains. Now these ones that I've got in my room are not particularly blackout, but they do block out most of the light. And I found that like, this
is again, one of the most bang for buck changes that you can do to massively increase the
quality of your sleep. And looking at the
evidence, there's a load of evidence that says
the darker your room is, the better your sleep is gonna be overall. And this is why I find, like, when I'm in a hotel that has really,
really good blackout curtains, I sleep incredibly well. And it's been on my to-do list for such a long time to get
proper blackout curtains in my room. I just haven't gotten around to it because I'm a bit of an
idiot, but I'm going to do that straight recording this video. Tip number five, again, is from research cited
in Matthew Walker's book "while We Sleep", which is
that the optimum temperature for most of us to sleep in
is around 19 degrees Celsius. This is quite cold. It's quite, it's a lot colder than like room temperature, which tends to be around 23 to 25 degrees. When we're sleeping, part
of what's happening is that our core body temperature is falling. And so if we're in a
room that's kind of cool, and we're snuggled up
nicely in the blanket, I find that that massively
increases the quality of my own sleep. And so practically, the things
I do to get to that point, are I have this fancy-ass
Dyson fan in the bedroom which circulates wind air around the room. And I also have my windows wide open, which helps, especially in the winter. And it's just like really
creates a very cold atmosphere in my room, which makes
my sleeping a lot easier and a lot better. And then I'm not just, like, struggling because it's too hot and too humid. Tip number six is an amazing
strategy that I discovered on the internet for how to fall
asleep in under two minutes. And the idea is as follows. Apparently this is a
tactic that pilots use to fall asleep anywhere,
because airplane pilots, airline pilots, need to
be able to sleep, at will, wherever they want, so that they can, because their schedules
are all a bit weird. But I started using this
trick when I do want to get to bed, and it works like 90% of the time. It doesn't work 10% of
the time, but that's fine. And the trick is you lie in bed, and then you start off by,
like, closing your eyes and really trying your best
to relax every single muscle in your face as possible. And that often means the
mouth will kind of pop open like this, and the eyes
will be very closed. And it's all about relaxing
all of the facial muscles. And then once the face is
fully relaxed, at that point, we're then are gonna relax the legs. And so I imagine my legs kind of sinking into the bed and, like,
fully, fully, fully relaxing, and feeling like kind of lead weights. And at that point, if
I haven't fallen asleep by then, which usually I have, I usually like 50% of the time,
I just fall asleep by then, and I don't know what happens next. At that point, I kind
of adjust the position of my arms slightly, and
I try and relax my arms, like very deep down into the bed. Relax the fingers, relax the
elbows, relax the shoulders. And then, if I still haven't
fallen asleep, and again, you know, then this is in 70% of cases, I will have fallen asleep within a minute, as I'm just doing this thing. Then for the final kind of one minute, once everything is relaxed, I'm then doing a thing where I just focus on breathing in and out, and I'm trying to do that
meditation-y type thing, being mindful and only
focusing on the breath. And if I have a thought, then
I just let the thought go. And I just focus on the breath. And I find that this sounds, it sounds really weird to explain, and when I first read
this, I think I read it on like the lifehacker.com
or something like that, I was like, oh, there's
no way this is gonna work. And then I tried it, and now
any time I need to fall asleep, I just do this thing, and 90% of the time it works. If it doesn't work after like a minute or two of trying to do
this meditative thing, I'm like, all right, cool, that's fine. And then I read for a bit more and then I try the thing again. And it, I've basically
got a 100% success rate. So before I discovered this technique, I used to think, I used to kind of lie in bed for ages thinking,
okay, I need to get to sleep. But now that I do this thing, it happens like really, really quickly. So I 100% recommend giving it a shot. Now, all this stuff around
sleep is really important because obviously sleep is one of the vital functions for our human body. It helps us make a body healthier, but it also helps to
make the mind healthier, because learning is the thing
that happens when we sleep, like our brain is consolidating
all the neural connections between information. And if you're interested
in using your sleep to improve your learning, you
might also be interested in using something else
to improve your learning, such as Brilliant, who
are very kindly sponsoring this video. Now, if you haven't heard by now, Brilliant is a fantastic platform with online courses in maths,
science, and computer science. It's really good because
they teach you everything from first principles, and they teach you in a way that's much more interesting than the way we get taught in school. It's not didactic. It's not like just
memorizing a bunch of facts. It's solving problems, and building things from the ground up. My personal favorites are the
courses on computer science. They've got a fantastic
introduction to algorithms. They've got a great course on learning Python, and they've
recently added a new one all about cryptocurrencies
and how cryptography works. And currently my crypto
portfolio is doing very well. I think it's up 25%. Probably not going to attribute that to understanding crypto, but, like, understanding the
fundamentals and the maths and science behind cryptocurrencies has made me much more confident with putting more and more of my money investing in crypto. If, like me, you're interested
in lifelong learning and improving the mental
faculties and all that fun stuff, then head over to brilliant.org/Ali/ and the first 200 people to use that link will get 20% off the annual
premium subscription. So thanks, Brilliant, for
sponsoring this video. And if you want to see how my sleep fits into my morning routine
the following morning, then then check out this video over here which is my insanely
productive morning routine. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Bye. Bye.
(beep) Do you want to try some of this? We should feed this to (indistinct). I ended up having, I
ended up hiding like 18, 18 plus spoons of coffee. You know, that's like, stir it first. This is, God. (horror sound) Ugh. Ew. I'm gonna try and drink some. Yuck. Oh God. (coughs) It's so bad. Oh, my day. Try some. You gotta try some. This is what happens when you try and frickin' get a solid hook for a video and you put
like 20 spoons of coffee. Ugh. (beep) - Would you, would you raise my salary If I drank it all? - [Ali] I'd raise your salary
by 0.01% if you drank it all. (sad music) (spoon clinks on cup) Thanks a lot for the spoon. (sighs) I'm really tempted. - [Ali] Yeah, do it (sips and swallows) Oh come on! - I, I, I could do, I could do it. I need water, but I can do it - [Ali] I'll raise your
salary anyway, by 0.01%. - (sips and swallows) - Bloody hell. What's wrong with you? - I'm not gonna to sleep tonight. - [Ali] You're gonna
get a cardiac arrhythmia and you're gonna die. - Thanks. There's stuff
floating in it as well. Maybe I shouldn't have done it. It's not a bad thing. - [Ali] Okay good,
