How to get to sleep when you are a hyper/stressed business owner

You have to sleep to stay sharp as a business owner. Sometimes this is damn impossible. Either stress from bills or lack of customers or stress from to many customers. Sometimes you are so hyper from a new idea you just can turn off that internal monologue to get the fuck to sleep…lol (reference to the children’s book). This is an issue I struggle with all the time.

While I can work for months with just 2 hours sleep. I function a lot better if I can get a good 4-5 hours sleep every night like clock work. However when I am in the zone I find it impossible to sleep. My mind just keeps chatting away to itself coming up with new ideas, making plans for projects sometimes years in advance.

Sleeping pills are not the answer. Sleeping pills can be highly addictive and worse still actually have a negative affect on your cognitive function, which basically cancels out the point of sleeping in the first place.

I still at this point don’t have an answer to how to sleep, excluding working like a meth addict until I crash weeks later. So what I thought I would do is run some experiments based on information for bio hackers and see which was the most successful. I’ll start with probably the most famous bio hacker in pop and silicon valley culture of the moment the CEO of Bulletproof.com Dave Asprey and I’ll contrast his ideas with the Author of 4 Hour Workweek Tim Ferriss, who may be a little more practical. Both of these guys can be a little snake oilie, but I’ll cut through that BS and just concentrate on what actually happens to me.

Dave Asprey
https://www.bulletproofexec.com/tips-to-sleep-better-quality-fat-protein/

Tim Ferriss:
http://fourhourworkweek.com/2008/01/27/relax-like-a-pro-5-steps-to-hacking-your-sleep/http://fourhourworkweek.com/2015/10/17/5-tools-i-use-for-faster-and-better-sleep/

[edit 20/5/2016] So far the best working method seems to be breathing in and out and holding it for 5 + seconds. Though my back is out at the moment which makes it very painful for me to do. I’m not sure on the switching to fiction instead of my usual non-fiction at bed time…so far it is just aggravating me, even though its one of my favourites by James Joyce.