I’ve been struggling with this for years, and the only thing I’ve found that works when nothing else does is hard exercise. The other two things that I’ve found help the most:
Let the sun hit your eyelids first thing in the morning (to halt melatonin production)
F.lux, a program that auto-adjusts your monitor’s light levels (and keep your room lights low at night; otherwise melatonin production will be delayed)
EDIT: Apparently keeping your room lights at a low color temperature (incandescent/halogen instead of fluorescent) is better than keeping them at low intensity:
″...we surmise that the effect of color temperature is greater than that of illuminance in an ordinary residential bedroom or similar environment where a lowering of physiological activity is desirable, and we therefore find the use of low color temperature illumination more important than the reduction of illuminance. Subjective drowsiness results also indicate that reduction of illuminance without reduction of color temperature should be avoided.” —Noguchi and Sakaguchi, 1999 (note that these are commercial researchers at Matsushita, which makes low-color-temperature fluorescents)
No, the items I’ve given will only make you more sleepy at night than you would have been. If that’s not enough, I agree it’s akrasia of a sort, also known as having a super-high time preference.
I’ve been struggling with this for years, and the only thing I’ve found that works when nothing else does is hard exercise. The other two things that I’ve found help the most:
Let the sun hit your eyelids first thing in the morning (to halt melatonin production)
F.lux, a program that auto-adjusts your monitor’s light levels (and keep your room lights low at night; otherwise melatonin production will be delayed)
EDIT: Apparently keeping your room lights at a low color temperature (incandescent/halogen instead of fluorescent) is better than keeping them at low intensity:
″...we surmise that the effect of color temperature is greater than that of illuminance in an ordinary residential bedroom or similar environment where a lowering of physiological activity is desirable, and we therefore find the use of low color temperature illumination more important than the reduction of illuminance. Subjective drowsiness results also indicate that reduction of illuminance without reduction of color temperature should be avoided.” —Noguchi and Sakaguchi, 1999 (note that these are commercial researchers at Matsushita, which makes low-color-temperature fluorescents)
That all sounds awfully biological—are you sure fixing monitor light levels is a solution for akrasia?
No, the items I’ve given will only make you more sleepy at night than you would have been. If that’s not enough, I agree it’s akrasia of a sort, also known as having a super-high time preference.
Does that imply that HIDs are safer for long drives at night than halogen headlights?
If you use Mac OS, Nocturne lets you darken the display, lower its color temperature, etc. manually/more flexibly than F.lux.
For Linux, there’s Redshift. I like it because it’s kinder on my eyes, though it doesn’t do anything for akrasia.
There is also Shades, which lets you set a tint color and which provides a slider so you can move gradually between standard and tinted mode.