Neurohacking the World Sleep Championships
I’m the last person you’d expect to compete in the World Sleep Championships. A life-long insomniac with Central Sleep Apnea, I’ve spent the last 10 months diving into the latest in neuroscience research with the goal of not only helping insomnia sufferers, but improving Sleep Performance for the greater population.
The competition used the data from Oura rings which classifies sleep as REM, light or deep, and factors in the number of hours you slept, how quickly you fell asleep, and how much time you spent in each sleep state.
More people have died in their sleep than during any other activity, making this the most dangerous and extreme competition that has ever taken place!
The organizers of the World Sleep Championships decided on a tournament type structure for the competition. We started with the seeding process to get our baseline sleep data, and build the competition tree. Seeding was followed by 5 alternating nights of head-to-head competition where the highest score for each pair of competitors made it through to the next round .
The only rule was that we couldn’t take sleeping pills, everything else was fair game. Rumour had it that sleep deprivation on non-competition nights was the strategy of choice for many competitors.
I didn’t stoop to such tactics, instead relying on the SoundMind prototype to guide me through the competition.
It started off very well, when I averaged the 2nd highest scores through seeding, and managed the 2nd highest score of 92 points on the first night of competition
I believed Oura was removing points for a low amount REM sleep as a percentage of my overall sleep, so I made an adjustment to the sounds played by SoundMind to promote more REM sleep. I had a hint that this would work, but, it was a bit like running a marathon in a new pair of sneakers. A wrong move and my competition would be over.
My competitor that night put in a very solid score of 93, and apparently began his celebrations early, before seeing the 96 points I achieved with the updated version of SoundMind. This turned out to be the highest score of the entire tournament.
This was followed-up by a score of 95 the next night of competition. Far above my pre-SoundMind average in the low 70s.
Going into the semi-finals, a win looked unlikely. At 2am, somebody rang the buzzer at my apartment, it was a food delivery guy who had the wrong address. When the buzzer rang a 2nd time at 2:30am, I was wondering if this was a new tactic my opponent had discovered as the only way to destroy my sleep and chances at winning the night. Waking up, I felt pretty good, but didn’t know if I’d have the high score to win with only 89 points. However, potentially my opponent's guilt over interfering in my sleep, if she actually had done this, kept her awake fretting, and I had a few points lead over her, which led me into the finals.
I felt confident going into the finals. Not only because of the high scores I had been seeing, but due to the consistency. Anybody can have one or two nights of great sleep, but to consistently be able to sleep great every night, that’s the real challenge, and also why the competition rewards the person who can get the high score night after night.
Potentially with a bit of nerves coming into play, I only managed to eke out a 93 on the final night, and I wasn’t sure if that would be enough to take the win from a man with a history of scoring in the low 90s. To add to the suspense, the competition takes place around the world, and living in Australia, we’re the 2nd country to be awake, so I had to wait a day to get the final results!
It was a close final, but I managed to win out by a mere 2 points! Though I don’t feel a strong need to give an acceptance speech or thank my sponsors, I do want to thank Damian and Todd for organizing the event, and to all my fellow competitors.
The most important result here for me is that we had a fun way to test out the SoundMind tech, and see it in action as more than just another score or another great night sleep. As I’ve been using SoundMind it’s been interesting to see how quickly I’ve adapted to just accepting that a good night sleep is what happens. I almost forget what it was like being awake all night, and the agony which comes with that.
We’ll have more updates, and be sharing more data as we progress, and sign-up to the wait list to reserve your spot and get one of the first headbands so you can have amazing sleep too!
Soon we’ll all be sleeping well with SoundMind.
