While I am a pretty happy guy most of the time, there’s one thing  that managed to make my life miserable over and over again: insomnia.

Like to many “mind workers”, I have incredible problems to put my mind to rest and just blissfully snore off. As soon as I lay down, my mind starts running in circles like a rabbit on speed and I just can’t catch it, whatever I do. And then it’s 3:30am and I have to get up at 6.

To make things worse, I know loads of people who claim to usually fall asleep within 5 minutes and never  take longer than 20 minutes. I’d probably sacrifice a finger for that particular skill.

In the beginning I tried the obvious: Relaxation, meditation, you name it. But my mind spun on. My dilemma’s that on one hand my mind needs something to occupy itself to stop spinning. But on the other hand if it’s too intriguing, it keeps me awake still. My mind truly loves distractions.

The key is boring sound.

I realized that when I fell asleep while watching the Olsen Gang. The sound and stupid dialogues just numbed my mind into sleep (as a matter of fact, after waking up and going to bed I lay awake till 4am).

So how to achieve that without watching stupid movies? I tried the obvious: relaxation MP3s. The one I tried was nice except for the end where the narrator “wakes” his audience up by yelling into the mike. Awesome.

Incidentally, after the wakeup came noise which I really enjoyed. So I turned to my second attempt that worked a bit better: brown noise. I bought the Android app and still extensively use it on my train to block off distraction while reading or at work for better focusing.

The final solution (for now) has been pzizz which claims to solve all my sleeping problems for a comparatively steep price. The nice thing about it is the variety though. I can have it to power nap (with a wake-up in the end) for as long as I want, I can meditate (well I can’t, but I can make sound so I could ;)) and finally I can fall asleep. Not in 5 minutes; but often enough within 30 minutes which is pretty much perfect for me.

Although they also sell audio tracks, I’m using their generator call pzizz Pro which creates exactly the track I’m in the mood in: With or without talking, various lengths...

I’ll probably never be a fast sleeper but static noise and/or pzizz helped me to overcome the worst agony.

(disclaimer: I’m in no way associated with pzizz and I also get no money if you click the link)