ļ»æ00:01 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Are you an aspiring leader who knows you have more to offer but you can't seem to get ahead? Do you frequently feel overwhelmed and under-supported? Listen to the Overcome to Become podcast as we talk about actionable tasks and mindsets that you can apply to begin leading yourself. Hi, I'm Dr Angela Buckley, your host and author of the Strength in Nature Leadership Series and Likeable Leadership Reflection Journals. I'm a mother, consultant, triathlete and coach In Overcome to Become. I share with you the science-backed and experienced proven lessons I've learned in my own leadership journey to beat burnout.
00:38
Hello and welcome to today's episode nine of season three, in which we are going to be talking to our guest, Paul Calver. He has spent over two decades coding apps for startups in the tech industry, a sector where burnout is often seen as a badge of honor. Ultimately, he experienced burnout's impact firsthand Today. As a sleep coach. Paul helps high performers harness sleep as a tool to boost productivity and profit. Join me in welcoming Paul Calver. Paul, thanks for joining us today on Overcome to Become.
01:14
This is a podcast that really works closely with the Overcome the Overwhelmed class, and so we are just giving some elements of what you would be experiencing if you were going through the classwork, and then I like to take one or two episodes each season to talk to experts in the field on the topics that we're talking about, and this week, this month, really the entire focus has been on sleep, and so when I came across your profile on LinkedIn, I was super impressed. I had never heard of a sleep coach. I know about sleep centers and maybe doctors, but never really a sleep coach, and so I am intrigued, and I think that many of the things that I talk about as a layperson are very much in line with what you're, what you are really evangelizing, right, and so I would love to hear your story how you came to be a sleep coach and how your skills can help my listeners well, first of all, thanks for connecting and having me on your podcast.
02:26 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Um, yeah, so my, my story, um, I've primarily been um sort of developer coder. Um, since graduating university, I worked a lot in startups, um, on the mantra from way back in the day, with startups is kind of like burnout is a badge of honor kind of thing, and work harder, hustle harder, all this kind of thing. I probably totally believe that was the way things were. Um, so, probably four or five hours sleep at night, getting up early, working late, uh, all that kind of stuff. It was okay for a while, quite a few years, until it wasn't anymore.
03:08
My health suffered as a result of well, this is a compound bad nutrition, bad sleep, anxiety and stress the whole perfect storm, if you will. So my path into what I'm doing now was as a result of figuring out how to get my own health back. So I started off primarily in nutrition. I studied with precision nutrition and a couple of other sort of nutrition coaches and I had, like, liver conditions, cholesterol issues, all kind of. If you look at the evolution, the cartoon evolution cycle of a man, um, I was reaching the one where the belly comes out, starts to scoop and sort of sort of decline which I which I thought was the way things were meant to be, but through my studies realized uh, it wasn't, um.
03:58
So, yes, so I studied nutrition, applied. Those rules, got my health back quite quickly, um, with surprise, the doctors were quite surprised only took a few months. I've never wanted to put me on statins and go that kind of route, so I managed to avoid all that just with sort of nutrition. But as a result of my nutrition, my sleep got better. I was kind of suffering, I guess, with sleep apnea not diagnosing it to the doctors, but I was being. My girlfriend used to wake me up several times in the night when I stopped breathing, all that.
04:28
But being a typical guy, I suppose, is uh, being in denial, um, but um, lost a lot of weight and that kind of solved itself out. Um, and the effects that my better sleep had on me as well, and my anxiety, the effects that my better sleep had on me as well, and my anxiety, my thinking. Everything was so transformational that I then studied sleep stress management and recovery as well. Um, which kind of leads me here. So I followed all the precision nutrition sort of um certifications, now like a master health coach, but I'm specializing more in sleep and kind of stress management as they're sort of inectably tied together as a big feedback loop between the sleep and stress. That was my path. I still work in startups, I still code, but I also try and help startups develop a culture of you know, sort of well-being, I suppose, to use that umbrella, realizing you know that sleep is kind of like a performance tool in that respect.
05:39 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Yes. So I like to say guard your energy.
05:44 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Like it.
05:45 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Yes, right, like to say guard your energy, and also guilty. I mean I remember in college hanging out with friends and we're like, oh, you can sleep when you're dead.
05:56 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Yeah, right Like completely the attitude.
06:00 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
I played competitive sports through college. I played on the college team. I took two degrees. At the same time, I worked 30 hours a week. I mean sleep was, you know, the absolute last oh yes, I was there too.
06:19 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Sleep was a waste of time when you could be out partying or whatever it just got in the way of like a decent life is, yeah, totally just a shut eye.
06:29
It was like a, a time of just dead space, like a waste of time yes I don't think anybody really, apart from you know, the sleep scientists that were just coming up actually realized well, basically the brain is pretty much as active as the conscious brain when we're sleeping. But we have no idea about this at all until you know. It's getting like quite recent really, but until then, yeah, it's just dead space for all of us.
06:51 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
It's a waste of time yeah, I mean, we really, we really looked at sleep for the week, right, and the people that needed eight hours or 10 hours and and that's. It's such a fallacy and so, um, I would love to understand how, like, what are the techniques or what are the things that you share with people to try to get them out of this, this mindset, right, like it's really a cultural mindset?
07:23 - Paul Calver (Guest)
we have the hustle culture primarily it's as an education piece. I'll sleep. Matt walk is why we sleep is I kind of feel that people need to know. You know the impacts of sleep deprivation, love of the long term, of your health, but I also then stress that it's within our control. There are things we can do. You're not doomed to these effects. There's a lot you can do with very small changes. Small hinges move big doors. So you can make relatively small changes, not change into habits, but it's just knowing. I think it's the education. Sleep isn't a waste of time. There are long-term health effects by abusing sleep, if you like, but there are things we can do and it's to take the anxiety out of that.
08:13
It's probably the biggest thing. The two biggest areas for my coaching have been sort of mindset and environment, so we focus on those two areas. Those are the biggest sort of needle movers I've found and within those relatively simple changes can be made and have huge impacts.
08:37 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
So I love talking about mindset. I can talk mindset all day long, so can you share with me what is the negative mindset that people with me, what is the negative mindset that people have and how, and what is the positive mindset that you're trying to move them into relative to sleep?
08:54 - Paul Calver (Guest)
it sort of stems from my own, uh, experience. Um, I, it's essentially. I guess what we call now is like the fixed mindset um, so it's. It's basically, I deem myself as a bad sleeper. By doing that, you kind of tie your identity to your sort of issue, so everything then becomes around that. That's, I am a bad sleeper, there's nothing I can do. It's just. You know my family were bad sleepers. There's nothing I can do, it's totally helpless.
09:25
But when you realize that you can untie yourself from you know the issue you're having, your identity is not your issue, so it's more a case of you know I am, I'm poor, but I have a few issues with my sleep. So you, once you separate them, I take a lot of anxiety out of it. And and also knowing that you can make changes, you're not doomed to a life of poor sleep and struggle. There are a lot of things you can do. You can get good sleep, whether it requires medical interventions or habits and techniques that you can employ yourself at home. You're not doomed to the issue you're having. Even if you've got chronic insomnia, there are ways, like I said, medical interventions, cbt-i that there are things you can do to improve your sleep. You're not doomed to it. It's disengaging your issue from your identity is probably the biggest thing.
10:22 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Okay so, growth mindset, looking forward to good sleep and understanding that there are things that we can fix and look for in order to have a good night's sleep. What defines what is good night's sleep? What defines that?
10:43 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Yeah, that's quite a big one. What defines that? Yeah, that's, that's quite a big one? Um, absolutely, there's.
10:50
The values are quoted that come out of all the research that's on between seven and nine hours is a good amount good amount of sleep but also also define sleep is consistency and regularity. So you may well get seven to nine hours of sleep a night, but if you're sleeping, going to bed and waking up at different times throughout the week, you can end up suffering what we call social jet lag. And I think it's like it all comes down to your circadian rhythms. Unlike the fact that every cell, every major organ has its your circadian rhythms, unlike the fact that every cell, every major organ has its own circadian clock and it's all driven by sunlight and your sleep patterns. So if you start changing your, you know having irregular patterns with your you know you're going to bed and waking up. That has knock-on effects. Then, with the rest of all the clocks inside you, like your stomach doesn't know when it's to digest, your heart's unsure, um about the blood pressure, your, your hunger hormones are offset. It totally causes the body lots of internal confusion, um, so there are a lot of.
11:56
There are a lot of plates to spin to get good sleep and one of the biggest needle movers is getting consistent. One of the biggest needle movers is getting consistent, waking up at the same time every day, including weekends, unfortunately, and knowing that you can't catch up on lost sleep by sleeping in the weekend. So take that behaviour out, because that will then lead to more social jet lag and you're basically wasting your time by doing that. Consistency is key. There was a study, I think, this year at Oxford University and their finding was that sleep consistency, the wake-up time, was the biggest indicator of all-cause mortality, even more so than the length of your sleep. So it's consistency rather than duration which is a big surprise to everyone, but not the specific time, just the consistency of the length of your sleep. So it's consistency rather than duration which is a big surprise for everyone.
12:46 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
But not the specific time, just the consistency of the time.
12:50 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Yeah, absolutely, but depending on your chronotype, of course, your perfect time to wake up sort of has its own natural sort of time, but obviously with societal demands such as you know, start a school, to start to work, this kind of thing.
13:09
You're pretty much you're a night owl, you're. You're pretty much have to operate within the early bird world, if you will. So everything's tied up for early starts and we can either we can force ourselves to sleep at kind of the wrong time for us, like I did. For example, I suffered with something that I call sleep delay, procrastination, where I was working so hard I felt I had no control and basically deciding when I went to bed I wasn't allowing to be determined by the fact I have to go to work at a certain time, so I would stay up far too late, expressing my control over that area of my life. So that probably made me think, ultimately, that I was more of a night owl than I actually am. So I'd think, yeah, I can't go to bed till 2 am because that was my habit, but then I'd still be up at 7 am.
14:06 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
You called that sleep delay, procrastination.
14:11 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Yeah, yeah.
14:15 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Okay, and can you explain that just a little bit?
14:17 - Paul Calver (Guest)
more for everyone that's listening. Yeah, sleep delay, procrastination I didn't know it had a term. It was me um forcing myself to go to bed later, um basically putting off the fact, putting off going to bed because work controlled my life.
14:33 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
So it was a way of trying to take back a little bit of control.
14:38 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Exactly.
14:38 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
I don't have to go to bed just because you think I should go to bed.
14:43 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Work doesn't run me, okay, that kind of thing. Yeah, I didn't know how to term. I've suffered with this for years, thinking it was just me. It's only through my studies and engaging with more people in the sort of arena but I found out it's an actual psychological sort of condition and it's pretty much self-inflicted. And it's the whole thing about, you know, work, well-being, boundaries, the whole thing. Really, there's so many aspects to it, but it all comes down to elements of control that we feel we do or don't have.
15:17 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Okay, I never heard that term, but I do know people that they say they're tired and then they're not going to bed and they basically put themselves in this procrastination loop and they eat them up.
15:33 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Oh, yeah, yeah, totally. But the body sort of senses that if you're staying up a bit later than it kind of wants you to, it can give you a second wind and sort of wake you up, which I found. But then the body then also does all sorts of weird little tricks by then making you more hungry, because it knows you're gonna you're gonna be awake for longer, so you think you need more energy.
15:58
So that's when the the late night snacking then comes in because, and the next day also because the body's then trying to catch up, uh, on the energy it needs for this longer awake time, but it's it's like a domino effect.
16:16 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
I imagine there's probably some cortisol release too from the stress of staying up later and then probably impacts your overall metabolism.
16:22 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Oh yeah, totally That'll be the second wind, Because obviously, when we're trying to sleep, cortisol is going down and melatonin is coming up.
16:30
Should be yes, yeah, ideally.
16:31
But if you're forcing yourself to stay up, trying to sleep, cortisol is going down and melatonin is coming up.
16:32
Should be, yes, yeah, ideally, uh, but if you're forcing yourself to stay up, the body helps you to sort of stay up, um, so it'll then release more cortisol, perking you up if you will, but then of course, that will then knock down the melatonin and if you try to sleep with elevated cortisol, you're gonna have trouble getting to sleep, because, as I found out so I used to deal with that with red wine I found I would basically knock myself out with alcohol as a result. So that's why I'm with Domino's you start applying these sort of behaviors to yourself, and then you probably have to start embracing other, I'd say negative, behaviors to sort of behaviors to yourself, and then you probably have to start embracing other, I'd say negative, behaviors to sort of counteract the other ones. So, yeah, so I was knocking myself and getting very poor quality sleep when I did sleep. It was years of having this random approach to sleep sleep at the waste of time, wasn't it?
17:28 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
so it's just right down time wasn't a focus. That's interesting. I feel like I have a teenage son, and so there's definitely these nights where he should be in bed and then isn't interesting.
17:43 - Paul Calver (Guest)
You mentioned your somebody, a teenager, um, mentioned chronotypes before that's. That's one of the the unusual things about chronotypes is that they change throughout a lifetime okay um, and teenagers, they're not all default. It's not a thing that they're just staying up to be awkward, it's the fact that their chronotype becomes late type yes so it's not all their fault.
18:05
So when I used to complain to my daughter the whole generations of these organs and households it's not their fault that their body's changing to that later sort of type, which, of course, the negative impact being they're probably on their phones.
18:20 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
He's on the computer right Blue light. We have blue light conversations on a regular basis.
18:27 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Yeah, that's another interesting topic actually blue light and, of course, the sort of content. That's another interesting topic actually, blue light and of course, the sort of content. It's a whole area of conversation. It's like teenagers and they're sleeping because one of the worst things people try to do is force them off their phones.
18:51 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
It's kind of weird, because that's their new social network.
18:53 - Paul Calver (Guest)
They're engaging with their friends yep, and it's a whole world that they're living in and by trying to cut them off from doing that. But that doesn't really help anybody. It's not a specialist area of mine, but I've seen a lot of conversations around. You kind of have to embrace the fact that they're on it, um, and they will be on it a little bit later than you'd like, but you can't disengage them from this community that they're kind of living in now.
19:18 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
It's a special world I, I agree with you and so I've. I've taken a different approach. I think it's a conversation for a different day, right? But um, I do recall, even as long ago as when I was in college or in high school, there was research based on the teenagers going to sleep later and needing that morning sleep.
19:43
Because our school district was having a conversation, they didn't do it, but the way our school district works, because everybody in the United States, they use the same buses, so what they do is the high school kids start first and then the elementary kids start later. And there's an active conversation about switching the school start time because the teenagers in fact need those morning hours of sleep and the little kids are already up at 630 anyways in general. So there was an active conversation about switching and still accommodating the buses to get the kids to school, where the elementary kids would start much earlier and then the high school kids would start later. I do know a few districts that did that. None of the districts that we've ever worked with or been involved with have done that, but they were trying to at least talk about and acknowledge the different sleep patterns for teenagers. To your point, the chronotypes change as people go through different phases of life yeah, totally that's.
20:55 - Paul Calver (Guest)
That's maybe one. One thing that I was about is the fact that obviously, teenagers go to bed, go to sleep at a later time and then, getting up early, they're not getting the full amount of sleep that they need. So if they're meant to be learning, um, the actual sweet parts of memory consolidation occur at the end of the sleep. So if they're meant to be learning, the actual sweet parts of memory consolidation occur at the end of the sleep. So if they're trying to get nine, 10 hours sleep but they can't because they're getting up early for school, they miss that chunk at the end where the real sort of consolidation and neural pathways sort of created. So we're setting them up to fail, if you like.
21:29 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Well, that's interesting because during COVID their start times were a little bit later and he was taking school from home, so he basically rolled out of bed in time for the first class or even ate breakfast during the first class, and so he did have a lot more sleep during covid, and quite a few people have commented that the kids that were in sort of that time period, that were teenagers, um, they grew a lot like. He grew two or three inches during the covid isolation period and a lot of us parents like again, layperson, we think it had a lot to do with the extra sleep availability oh, totally yeah, that's when we grow.
22:19 - Paul Calver (Guest)
We grow when we sleep, whether it's mentally, physically, mentally and physically. That's when we grow. Yeah, this is when we sleep.
22:30 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
So if you are a sleep delay procrastinator, what? Are two or three techniques that you could use one to identify that that's you, and two maybe to take some steps in the right direction.
22:49 - Paul Calver (Guest)
I guess this is the case of determining what your habits are in the evening. Basically, nobody needs to go to bed at 2am. By doing the hours I was keeping, I'd pretty much be classed as a shift worker Because I was going to bed so late and getting up early. If you read Matt Walker's book, there's a lot of documented serious illnesses that are more prevalent in shift workers, so we don't have to go into that just yet. Just that it heightens the effect.
23:29
If you're regularly going to bed after midnight, and there's probably something you need to look into sort of your behaviors, that's not a natural sort of time for a majority of people.
23:41
Obviously, there could be some outliers, as there always are, but it's probably unlikely. So is it a fact that you are you binging on Netflix? Are you gaming? Are you binging on Netflix or you gaming, or you've engaging in sort of activities that crank you up, whether it's, you know, gaming or chatting online, because that's that's been one of the biggest issues for me with realizing that you don't have to auto watch the next episode on Netflix. You can ration yourself a little bit. It's quite tricky. You have to be aware of, like your sort of behaviors, and I think the biggest thing is like you have to want to change initially, otherwise you're not going to look into these things with the right kind of perspective. But I think the big clue is the fact that if you're waking up tired, if you need an alarm every morning, if you're pressing snooze five, six times to get out of bed, then you're not getting a good amount of sleep.
24:44 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Okay. So one indicator is if you're a heavy snooze user, your sleep is not ideal.
24:53 - Paul Calver (Guest)
But that's kind of a primitive one. But yes, once you start um dialing in your sleep habits I'm going to consistent weight time your body kind of knows that. It's magic, I kind of like, even even though I used to be chronic with the snoozing um, the snooze button was my best friend, but now I pretty much wake up without an alarm clock. Um, but nearly every morning at the same time I do still have it um, have an emergency alarm time set, the very, very latest, but it really ever is needed um, but that's just in case something happens for some reason, or have a terrible night's sleep, or because these things can still happen. You can be on your best, you can set yourself up, but you can still have a bad night's sleep. Um, but but that's one of the things we talk about. It's not the end of the world, you can't do it.
25:47 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
I mean, I have an alarm set but honestly I also wake up like thankfully I've always been a little bit early to bed, early to rise, but I feel that if I hit the alarm clock or hit a snooze I'm probably getting sick. Like, for me it's an indicator that something's happened in my life right, and viruses are what viruses are but it usually is an indicator for me that my body's out of balance.
26:22 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Yeah, that's perfect. Yeah, that would make sense because obviously you're trying to recover from something. You probably need more sleep. But yeah, I mean you're aware. So it's good that you. That's a textbook example of like knowing my patterns are changing. That's not like I've been getting sick. I normally notice that in the gym if all of a sudden I'm sort of bench pressing more than I have been doing, like I get a new personal best. For no reason I've learned from that. That's I'm going to be sick like quite soon because my body's actually setting up Without me actually feeling sick. The internals are setting up lots of chemicals to fight these Critters that are inside me, which is what's giving me more strength and more power, but I will be sick in a couple of days.
27:08 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Interesting. So you and I talked about exercise. I'm an endurance athlete. You said you go to the gym, and we earlier talked about different trackers, right? So we came into this. I am an absolute Garmin fan. I've been using Garmin now for 15, 20 years and have really appreciated all of the technology that comes along with using one of the high-end Garmin watches. What are the techniques? What are the tools? What are the indicators that you use that someone might be interested in to learn more about whether they're under stress or anything like that?
27:50 - Paul Calver (Guest)
I think what you alluded to there. I think the biggest one is your HRV. A lot of these devices show your heart rate variability.
27:59 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Thank you.
28:01 - Paul Calver (Guest)
The higher it is, I guess the fitter and more in condition you are. But if you notice like a downward trend, I mean that'd be interesting Next time you find yourself reaching for the alarm clock, if you're gonna take a look at your HRV and see if there's a downward trend or anything like that, probably underlying what you already know.
28:21 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
I do, I do so. I completely look on a regular basis at my HRV. I look at it at least twice a week and I look at the seven day trend.
28:34 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Excellent. Yeah, that's exactly what I'd recommend is for most of us. I mean, you're an endurance athlete, you perform at a high level, so you're it's of course you're going to look into the data a lot more Lay people like me and for the majority of us I'd say follow the trend, don't get obsessed with the numbers of us outside. Follow the trend. Don't get obsessed with the numbers. You're a professional, you can, you know you can just crack yourself and not get too obsessed. You know there's a reason for you to look into the data, but us, follow the trend.
29:03 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Essentially, it's a lot employer so what are some of the tracking devices that people use if they're not spending a lot of money on expensive watches for endurance racing?
29:18 - Paul Calver (Guest)
The cheapest option is probably a Fitbit. It's been a couple of years since I've used a Fitbit. That was my first wearable. I have to admit I was one of the. I encountered the the data obsession bangs the dark side of wearables yes and you're a coder, so I'm.
29:38 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
You know that fits doomed.
29:40 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Doomed to fail. I think fit bits probably, but the one I know. That's probably the cheapest entry. The aura watch is probably cheaper as Urawatch. The Urawring is probably cheaper than the base model iWatch. I think Galaxy have just released their own ring and they're coming out with their own wearables. I haven't really evaluated those. Whoop yeah, they're all around the same sort of money Urawoop.
30:10 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
I guess the base model iWatch what are those Like the Whoop, maybe that's running the 150 or 200?.
30:17 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Yeah, I think that's right, plus the. For me, their subscription model is a bit pricey.
30:23 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Oh yeah, the WHOOP has a subscription model right.
30:27 - Paul Calver (Guest)
However, its data is outrageous. It's it's excellent for for athletes it's always.
30:34
Uh has a lot of data and it's sufficient um if I was, if I was an athlete, I'd probably want, I think, the whoop sort of dashboard kind of thing. I haven't seen. You know, the, the elite garmin, that that you, that you use. But I'm sure, I'm sure there's just so much data, so much in the dashboard. But for for that, for the lay person, I'd like to keep it simple. I'd probably suggest, if you, if you're an apple, if you already got an iwatch, yeah, you probably don't like this data now.
31:04 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Okay.
31:04 - Paul Calver (Guest)
So the Apple has sleep tracking.
31:07 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
It didn't use to have the sleep tracking.
31:10 - Paul Calver (Guest)
No, what did I use? I think the Fitbit did, but the iWatch didn't, which was quite surprising. But as Apple do, they catch up, they see what people are using and eventually they'll.
31:22 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
I mean, they have the hardware built into the watch. It's now just building the algorithms to use it well yeah, technology is increasing as well.
31:30 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Now they can actually um the. What they can actually measure is is is now well, it's a lot more accurately used to be right, I think. When I first used them, probably eight, nine years ago, I think, the data was so um approximate I the only word I can think of. Yeah, that's okay. They were pretty unreliable, but now I think they're within 10%, 15% of sort of high-end medical devices, medical devices but again, even if the numbers aren't exact, the trend will still be.
32:05 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
The trend is really important, right? So I think it's important to take two or three months and get familiar with your body with the piece of technology that you've chosen to work with. So jumping around from Ring to Watch to the different Watch platforms, that's probably not healthy. You really want to be able to like have the same one and work with that, and if you're working with a coach, work with a coach that's familiar with that technology yep, totally.
32:40 - Paul Calver (Guest)
um, I know a couple of people who uh run aura and garmin or on several of the wearables and they're pretty much these days all in the same sort of area with a slight variance, but the volumes are pretty equivalent across all the platforms now.
32:59 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
And as you say.
32:59 - Paul Calver (Guest)
I said they were like learning your baseline. That pretty much goes across from any form of sort of change in coaching, even when I was doing nutrition coaching. It's like know your baseline but your journal. You don't make any changes. You journal where you are now to get a better idea. It's the same with sleep stress monitoring, or I think you don't. You don't just jump in and try and make big changes immediately. You get to know where you are. I'll just say you learn that. Get the data from the wearables, see your patterns, um, and I said that then you can see like you know what times you're sleeping, what time you're waking up. You can see all these variances and basically just journal and keep tracks of where you are. Then you can start making changes. So that was really good advice.
33:38 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
I think the reason I like my watch is because I don't have to write it down and I still have all the tracking and if I forget or I'm not paying attention for a while.
33:54 - Paul Calver (Guest)
It's all there when I go back to look at it later and so I spend my time journaling on other things.
33:58 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
I'm not looking at that data until I look at it kind of retrospective yeah, the date was great, but also what?
34:06 - Paul Calver (Guest)
I guess the one thing that a lot of these things are missing out on which is what I'm trying to build into my own app is our subjective feelings.
34:17
That's also quite something that we often forget.
34:22
Another one of the downsides of the dark side of wearables is that if you become, if the first thing you do in the morning is to look at your device and see where you are like I admit I've done this quite a lot first thing I look at is my aura sleep rating.
34:37
Um, I could wake up feeling quite refreshed, uh, but if I see that the numbers down, that number could then affect the rest of my day, because it's totally changed, okay, how I feel about it. So it's, that's a dangerous thing is letting the numbers run your day you could be feeling great, but if you let that change it but on the flip side also, you could, um, feel a bit crap when you wake up, see good stats, and that could probably boost you in the right direction. It's just that there's like a, there's a sort of bi-directional thing between the data and, um, what you, what you feel subjectively does. So when you say, when it comes to journaling. It would be a good idea, like when you, when you're starting, is to possibly get the, get the data on the device and then start feeling, think you know, feeling how you feel. Those are probably on words describing how you feel describe, describe how you give yourself a rating.
35:30
Yeah, because if you're coming through this area from not having, if you're not in touch with your feelings and emotions say, if you're like a middle-aged guy, like I was when I was coming into this um, you don't really think about how you're feeling enough. And you, if you're making any change, if you make big changes, it'll be hard for you to identify if things are working or not. You're not in tune with yourself. That's where journaling comes in. It gets you used to thinking how am I feeling? What emotions am I feeling? Do I feel great? Do I feel anxious in my gut? This kind of thing. So when you wake up or throughout the day, get some subjective notes getting made and then you get into the habit of doing it and then eventually, if you see a bad stat on your device, you know it's not going to affect you because you feel pretty okay actually. So the that's the one thing that the data can't read, yet it is how you're actually feeling.
36:23
So it can give you, like your hrv, your sleep length yeah you're grading according to their algorithm, but it can't say how you're feeling.
36:31 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
That's pretty much sort of down to you you know every workout, at the end of every workout, the garment asks me how it went, how I feel. But it doesn't ask me that in the morning, when I wake up, the morning is a tricky time, obviously you're.
36:46 - Paul Calver (Guest)
There's a lot of hormones at play cortisol to just kick you out of bed, or cortisol spike but you can kind of feel, get an overall sort of feeling probably. Maybe an hour after waking is probably a better time for this kind of thing, because then you know you're not being driven by the cortisol which is woken you up, essentially, and the, you know, the melatonin drop down becoming more, which you'd rather say don't get on your phone, don't, don't drink coffee or anything like that for at least an hour after you wake up, because your hormones have got a balance. So maybe didn't you wake up, have a go, but then check back in with yourself after an hour once, once the balance is, I I do not look at my aura first thing in the morning anymore. I do leave it. I do leave it because it just sounds like I don't get on the phone, I don't engage with the device, I don't go on twitter or anything like that first thing in the morning okay, what does your morning routine look like?
37:40 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
what if? If you were to, I describe an ideal morning routine for someone who's really trying to get their sleep under control and understand their energies. What does the morning look like? Sunlight before screen light essentially oh, that's a good one yeah it's nice, nice and catchy, isn't it?
37:59 - Paul Calver (Guest)
but it's. It sums it up. I'm not wearing, you know, sunglasses. I don't look directly in the sun, but, you know, look at a bright part of the sky, exactly. If possible, get outside and get on your skin. Uh, definitely, get in your eyes, because those are what we call the I don't speak german so I can't pronounce it properly probably vodkaibas, which are like the time keepers of our circadian rhythms. The biggest one is sort of light, um, food is another one, and temperature. So dampen your cicada. You've woken up, get some sunlight in, open the curtains. I think what we say if you wake up early, it's get sunlight in within an hour of sunrise or within an hour of waking up, whichever is the latest. So if you wake up before the sun comes up, depending on your latitude, you can't really do this, but get it in as soon as you can.
38:53 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Right. So you know what I put in the Philip Hue lights and you can tie them to the sunrise and sunset, or you can set them for a specific time and they will create a sunrise effect in the house.
39:14 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Yeah, that's awesome, that's.
39:15 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
I'm kind of going in that direction myself, slowly, and it has helped particularly my child um those early morning winter. Like we have dark, we have dark winters. They change the timelines here because of the school days. The kids are standing out at the bus stop in the dark and so it helps us getting ready, getting out of bed, getting moving to have sunrise. Instead of an alarm clock, the light will come on 20, 30 minutes before wake up time, so we have a more gradual wake up process.
39:53 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Well, that's great. I live in the UK and we have the same issue. We're just on the way out of summer now, so it's gonna be six months of gloom. So, yes, getting that sort of lights going on in the house, if you can, is ideal. I mean, they're not cheap, they're not in every anybody everybody's range not, not even gonna lie.
40:13 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
It was one light bulb per paycheck, like I had to. They are expensive, like I've got.
40:20 - Paul Calver (Guest)
I've got two light bulbs and I need about 12.
40:22 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
So exactly one light bulb per check was like my budgeting process. It was not an easy process, but once they're in, they last for 10 to 15 years. So you do have to make a little bit of a commitment, but once you're in, you're good and your electricity bill actually goes down.
40:43 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Yeah, I'm totally up. Like I said, I've got two in there. We've got a hallway that's automatic lights.
40:47
Exactly, I'm totally up, so I've got to know we've got a hallway that all automatic lights, exactly Evening I could dim the lights of where blue light blockers all this, but then I'd be walking down the hallway and then like it's full lights. So that's where that's my first use of the Phillips hue and it does work. They do help, but there's no substitute for natural sunlight. So I know it's. If you can't get it first thing in the morning, then get it as soon as you can, or sit by a window. You know that kind of thing. I guess you don't have the privilege when you're at school to go out for a walk, whatever you want. But yes, get the sunlight. The morning sunlight is most beneficial. It's the thing that's going to probably help you get better sleep at night is the morning sunlight. It's that particular combination of light wavelengths that then releases serotonin and then that becomes that's the precursor to melatonin later on in the day. So get morning sunlight. Even if it's cloudy, the sunlight is still around. But get some of that in your eyes. Get outside in the morning. It helps stamp those circadian rhythms and help you sleep better at night. So I think we're saying that's actually my morning routine. So that's one of them is to get the sunlight in as soon as possible.
42:06
I also do a light workout now as as well. I'm just trying to put in some more behaviors into my body knows for sure what time it is, so I'm sort of stacking the light gaibers. So just just a light band workout, get a little, get a little bit active. I'm gonna flush everything through and then that takes me time there and I'll probably eat about 45 minutes after waking up. I mean 45 to an hour, and then that's just like a high protein sort of breakfast.
42:36
It's just about patterns and I try and keep it as boring and as regular as possible. The body likes things to be predictable and boring. I mean my breakfast. I don't want to be thinking about things. My breakfast is like Steve Jobs' turtleneck. It's like I want it to do the same thing every day. So I know what I'm doing. So I'm half asleep. I just reach for everything. I can just do it. I don't need the stress of trying to figure out what's in the fridge and all that kind of thing. So basically, make my life as easy as possible in the first 45 minutes to an hour is probably what I recommend stress-free mornings.
43:10
Leave the phone alone for a bit, don't get on, don't get engaged. Um, be kind to yourself, eat well. Uh, obviously, try not to think too much about work, but just just get. Just get ready. Um, don't give yourself enough time to get ready and not leave things on the last minute. And have some sort of regular consistence or schedule. The body likes it that way.
43:33
I always think about the circadian rhythms as like hundreds of plates on sticks that you're trying to spin at the circus, and as soon as one starts going a bit wobbly, then then the guys all over the place and they all start going out of sync. But if you've got a nice little rhythm going backwards and forward, just spinning them all, nice, the whole body works as one. You know, all the individual clocks are all, all the plates are spinning totally in sync with each other. If you do your stuff the night before, that'll help you in the morning. That's. That's always good. You're an athlete, so it's all about preparation and figuring out what obstacles are coming. So if you can look ahead and see what the obstacles are coming, then you can sort of prepare yourself for them Overnight. Oats is always a good one, but then kids are fussy eaters. They probably don't want to eat that.
44:24 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
No, you know it's funny, I was thinking the same thing. It's one of my favorite tips is overnight oats with blueberries and walnuts, right. So let's get some antioxidants in there, let's get some protein in there, a little bit of healthy fat, that for me, and then I like to add cinnamon as well. That's good for your blood sugars, and overnight oats oh man, that saves, that saves so much time.
44:56 - Paul Calver (Guest)
It's just well, I'm glad I'm doing something right, so I could actually say I eat like an athlete these days. Good, that's, that's pretty much my breakfast too, from my issues with cholesterol okay, um I, I embraced oats. I found it. But one thing I said about oats, it has to be the other um the steel cut with the steel cut. The rolled oats are still cut. Yep, or was it the grits? I can't remember they call this.
45:20 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
There's the grains grit is something different. It's a different thing.
45:24 - Paul Calver (Guest)
I can't remember it's called, but the more raw oats is probably best, but I don't think I'm that brave. But steel cut rolled oats for the ones, because obviously they get digested slower, so there's no spike to your blood sugar. Yeah, blueberries 100. They're my favorite cinnamon. I also have black seed in there, mixed nuts I don't know if you've ever heard of zoe, uh, over here it's um personalized sort of nutrition startup. If you want. They're getting quite big one of the doctors there for us to eat 30 plants a day, and it's sorry, 30 plants a week, 30 different plants a week oh yeah we're probably digressing a bit, but I found that a bag of mixed nuts gets you quite.
46:07
Get five different types of seed, or something into your breakfast. That's five out of the way, right there.
46:12 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Gotcha, gotcha. So that is fun. And you are right, we are digressing a little bit from sleep, but it is important to understand how much nutrition is tied to sleep and sleep is tied to nutrition when you don't have enough sleep, you naturally reach for the coffee and the sugar when you are having less nutrition. Your body, you know, and when you have the sugar it interrupts your sleep because your body is spiking with the cortisol. They are definitely tied together 100%.
46:49 - Paul Calver (Guest)
It's all the plates. It's nutrition is some of the plates. The. The stomach has its own circadian rhythms, but the hormones, hormone production, is run on circadian rhythms, circadian clocks yes so you have to keep everything by getting the consistent sleep, the consistent sleep time, wake time, the consistent wake time is the biggest needle mover. I'd say that's number one, your bedtime, as long as you go to bed around the same sort of time, that's, I guess, the secondary needle mover.
47:26
Because your sleep need varies from day to day. You could have worked out more. You may have used a lot of cognitive energy at work, so some days you'll probably need more or less sleep depending on what you've done in the day. So there could be a little variance with your bedtime. But as long as it doesn't have 45 minutes each way kind of thing, it doesn't really matter.
47:47 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Right.
47:48 - Paul Calver (Guest)
It's your consistent wake-up time that's the biggest needle mover, and that's another thing to reduce your stress is the fact you don't have to go to bed at the same time. Go to bed when you're tired, so when your eyes are dropping, try and go to bed at that stage to make sure that you're going to go to sleep.
48:10 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
You know it's unintentional, but when you say that to me because I always had swim practice early in the morning and then I work in manufacturing as an engineer I've always had consistent wake time because I had to be at work or I had to be at the pool. And so consistency it wasn't a choice, it just was a requirement in order to be successful in what I wanted to do. And then I basically plowed through the day until I was tired and then collapsed into bed, right so, and sometimes that was earlier than others. It's it's interesting to hear you describe it, because I didn't create it I, but it's worked for me.
48:59 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Some people are just more in tune with how things should work than others. I spent a lot of my adult life fighting it.
49:05 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
I think I just was lucky. I don't think that I was in tune, I just was lucky.
49:10 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Well, 100%, I mean your athletic performances, uh, probably attest to the fact that you knew what you were doing. You listen to your body. I guess that's part of being sort of elite, elite athletes you listen to your body, so you know what you need well, yeah, thank you, I appreciate your compliment, so okay.
49:30 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
So let's go to the other end of the day. We talked about early morning being consistent, trying to get the sunlight, good, healthy food, moving your body, maybe putting off that first cup of coffee for an hour. Routine for winding down. Um, even if you're not going to bed like, say, you had a really great day and you had great sleep the night before, maybe you're not going to bed at your the early part of your time what are you doing to like send the message to your body that sleep is coming?
50:09 - Paul Calver (Guest)
oh, pretty much. Um, when the sun goes down, uh, start having start dimming the lights is the biggest one. Um, we've only got a couple of light settings in our apartments. Are there daylight for its? Um, evening sort of lighting, so it's when it's put clearly. So when it's becoming dark outside then then I'll swap the light into like sort of dimmer lighting After we've finished all our tasks, we've eaten and put everything away. Pretty much, as I said, light is the biggest sort of timekeeper. Temperature also, we like to one of the biggest indicators to start, maybe drop the temperature a little bit. So it's. These are the signs that the body recognises like it's getting dark, the temperature's dropping, and that's when the melatonin starts coming out. It's always getting close to bedtime because it recognizes, you know, that the temperature changed, the lighting changed, but the serotonin then starts getting converted into the melatonin to just get to drive that sleep need to get you into bed.
51:11
Um, I do try and avoid very engaging content. It's difficult sometimes, um, but in some we talk a lot about, uh, you know, getting off the devices and, um, uh, avoiding, you know, the, the blue light. So there's been some recent and it's still about it. I'd still I wear blue light blockers. A lot of people say they're useless, but I've read a lot of research is the fact that getting blue light in our eyes will affect the melatonin production. Um, some recent researchers said that the blue light itself for a lot of people doesn't affect your sleep onset. So it doesn't affect your the time it takes to go to sleep for a lot of people. But the fact that it affects your melatonin production is the reason why I don't want the blue light in my eyes in the evening.
52:01
Because melatonin is is more than just a hormone that gets you to sleep. Um, it's it's actually intimately involved in. It's a massive antioxidant, so it's involved in a lot of anti-cancer sort of um, regenerate, uh, clear ups during the evening, growth hormone, all this kind of stuff. So more melatonin here. It mentioned a lot, but it's more as the sleep hormone and it's it's more than just that. It's almost the presence of melatonin sort of tells the body that it's time to go to bed because melatonin needs to get to work. They sort of fix us up.
52:37 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Fix up. Yeah, Put all the Band-Aids on the things that happen during the day.
52:41 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Absolutely. Yeah, we've got to, you know, tidy up, you know, replenish the gut lining Any cells that are going to be wonky. We need to get their energy state sorted. So melatonin is like way beyond the sleep hormone, so that's why I try and reduce the sort of blue lighting devices. It's for that reason, okay, and I still, I still watch, uh, the iPad in bed, but I'll wear my I look like Bono from the 90s these funny glasses, um, and personally I I do do find they help, um, but I avoid the sort of engaging, high, high octane sort of content. Myself, I'm trying to stick the same, the same sort of time. So it's like dim the lights in the temperature, but my, my bedroom is, um, I keep it quite cool. The temperature range, your, your fahrenheit over there, aren't you?
53:31
we are but then we recommend between 65 and 68 fahrenheit for for a bedroom.
53:38
There can be some gender differences within that. Some. Some people like it warmer than others, so there can be a little bit of conflict, uh, with that. But keep it, keep it cool. Yeah, dark, um, and yeah, they keep the content not high octane. Don't get engaged and don't have netflix on auto, auto, next episode, kind of thing. Be, don't let that drive your bedtime. So be aware if you want to go to bed at 10, 30. Be aware that you know you're going to switch your stuff off at a certain time, not get get sucked into. You know managing an entire season.
54:18 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Oh, yes, yes that.
54:20 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Guilty guilty.
54:27 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Also right. It's hard, even for those of us who know and have good habits. Like I would like to say. I have good habits, but it's hard to do that. So, paul, we've been on just about close to an hour now. Where can people find you if they want to learn more about what you're doing and what you had to offer? How do they reach out to you?
54:42 - Paul Calver (Guest)
oh, I'm on LinkedIn. My website is new website is elite, sleeping calm, so that's where I'm putting out the kind of things I do the coaching corporates, I with hotels, all that kind of stuff. Okay, predominantly just I've done some assessments there, this kind of thing. But LinkedIn there'll be a link to my LinkedIn page on my website. That's predominantly where I am. I haven't reached out to my own podcast or YouTube channels or anything yet. Those are coming.
55:13 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Coming. Stay tuned, okay. So Paul Calver at LinkedIn, c-a-l-v-e-r is your last name and I'll make sure to put all those links in the show notes as well. So if people are interested in learning more and hearing more about you, they can follow you on LinkedIn as well.
55:31 - Paul Calver (Guest)
That'd be brilliant. Thank you very much. Can follow you on LinkedIn as well, that'd be brilliant.
55:34 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
Thank you very much, Paul. Thank you so much for sharing your insights and your personal journey and just how we can effectively wake up in the morning and also go to sleep and understanding what all those chemicals are that are in between to help us guard our energy and make sure that we wake up in the morning refreshed and ready to lead the day.
55:56 - Paul Calver (Guest)
Wonderful Thank you for having me.
55:57 - Angela Buckley, PhD (Host)
It's been a pleasure it has been such a pleasure speaking with Paul. He wanted to leave these three summary tips for the morning and the evening For really consistent energy in the following day look at consistent wake-up times every day, sunlight before screen light and waiting one hour before taking caffeine or engaging online. To optimize your evening routine, he suggests having your last meal at least three hours before bed, dim your lights and chill at least one hour before bedtime and go to bed tired. We are so grateful to have Paul join us today. If you would like to learn more about Paul's services, you can find him at elitesleepingcom, e-l-i-t-e sleepingcom and you can find him on LinkedIn, Paul Calver and his email is thecalver at gmailcom. And his email is thecalver (at) gmail.com. His last name is C-A-L-V-E-R. Thank you so much. Make it a great day and get a good night's rest.
57:05
Are you an aspiring leader who knows you have more to offer, but you can't seem to get ahead? Do you frequently feel overwhelmed and under-supported? Listen to the Overcome to Become podcast as we talk about actionable tasks and mindsets that you can apply to begin leading yourself. Hi, I'm Dr Angela Buckley, your host and author of the Strength in Nature Leadership Series and Likeable Leadership Reflection Journals. I'm a mother, consultant, triathlete and coach In Overcome to Become. I share with you the science-backed and experienced proven lessons I've learned in my own leadership journey to beat burnout.
