How to Improve Your Sleep with Scott Donnell & Jim Kwik

Welcome back, Kwik Brain. Your question for today is, how do you improve your sleep? Now, we are actually shooting this at the biohacking conference where my guest and I are speaking, and I'd like to introduce everybody to the founder of Happi, which is a wearable device that helps you everything with— everything from focus to the topic of sleep, Scott Donnell. Thanks for being here, buddy.

Good to be here, man. Thanks for doing this in a Random suite in the Hyatt Regency in Orlando.

Well, you, you did amazing on stage, and so I'm looking forward to going deeper in your brain about sleep. And, you know, being a serial entrepreneur, having, you know, being at the head of multiple companies, you know, some that have gone public, you know, it's easy for somebody to struggle with burnout. That could really affect your sleep. Have you had challenges in the sleep area?

Yeah, I mean, kind of embarrassing to talk about, but yeah, very much sleep. People think like when you're exhausted, you can sleep, but if you're stress exhausted, Yeah. it's almost like a downward spiral. Your sleep gets hit and, you know, sleep is the best nootropic ever created. And so, you know, when there's a lot of stress, you know, I think a lot of people can identify. I was thinking about work, thinking about all the companies when my head hit the pillow, and it was so difficult for me to, let it all go. I didn't have any rhythms. This was a year ago. I had terrible rhythms and no prompts, and my mind would spin. And so maybe I'd pass out and then wake up an hour later, and I'd just be up, and then I'm going and going and going. And even if I wrote it down, I would— I was spiraling. And then when you wake up the next day from a bad night of sleep, right, you're right back in the cycle, right? And so I'm brain fog, I can't be productive. So sleep, I would say, has been one of my toughest challenges as an entrepreneur. But even with little kids, you know, we got 3 little kids under 5. Someone cries and then I'm thinking about work, even though I am asleep for 2 hours, all of a sudden I'm up, right? So my wife and I have this kind of joke. It's like, well, if the baby cries after 2 or 3, it's like, I'll take care of it 'cause there's no way I'm going back to sleep.

Mmm.

So there's so many tips and habits I've had to learn kind of out of survival mode just over the last couple years. So yeah, it's a big deal.

I'm looking forward to going into those tips and also talk about the technology. Some people are watching us on video, and I recommend also people tune into YouTube because we put the full extended version there. Underneath your shirt, this device actually looks like Iron Man.

That's right. That was the inspiration, was Robert Downey Jr. in Iron Man. You can turn the light off, but You want to make sure you have a cool glowing light.

Yeah. Well, I want to talk about the incredible technology and then the 40 or so patents that you have around it to help people to choose the way that they feel, that they actually could choose focus, they could choose calm, they could even choose to be able to relax and then have deeper sleep. And so what are some of the things— before we go into the technology part, what are some of the things that you found worked for you, because sleep for our community is very important, because without sleep, you don't have long-term memory. Without sleep, you're not getting, you know, cleaning out the beta amyloid plaque that leads to brain aging challenges. Without sleep, you're not getting into those dream states where, you know, we can be creative and coming up with inspiration and inventions and things like that.

Yeah, I think people talk about education and the best way people can learn well and learn quick Is good sleep.

Yeah.

There is no better drug you can take. There's no better system or strategy you can deploy other than having really good sleep habits.

And when you and I were talking, like, your habits are pretty simple.

Yeah.

You know, certain things. So where would you recommend our listeners, where would you start?

Okay, so there's different levels, right? Like, there's sort of the setting, your environment. There's things you're gonna ingest or not ingest, be very careful of. And then there's the mental side too, right? Like, you have to, have a rhythm and a routine that puts you in sleep mode. Like, it's time to sleep, Scott, right? Like, so when it comes to the simple setting, light is a big one.

Mm-hmm.

Trying to block out everything. I mean, we've, we've blocked out any green light. Like, you know, the old-fashioned red alarm clock on the side of your bed, or the blue alarm clock, or green lights. I always— I do this right in the hotel room. I literally just, whenever I get to a hotel room, I put the clock on its face. or unplug it so there's no light coming in. Get as dark as you can possibly get it. Black shades are fantastic. Sleep masks work for a lot of people. So light is a big one. Sound is also huge. There's a little bit of controversy around like white noise or pink noise, but something that can help trigger a parasympathetic safe response for noise is very, very important. So, you know, like we live in Phoenix, there's a lot of people around. We are like 5 houses down from Camelback Road, so there is traffic and sometimes there's lights and alarms and sirens, but we've found that having a little bit of noise, like a little bit of white noise, helps a lot, especially if there's like a kid that cries on the other side of the house, but it's only a minute cry and then they're fine, right? Sleep training, we can talk about that for babies, but sound and light are 2 of the biggest ones.

And even when you travel, you can control what You control the controllables. I actually travel with these little black clips, and then it helps to close some of the curtains.

Yeah, that one little light that's in the middle of the curtain that always hits me if I don't do it right. You're right. So light and sound are 2 of the biggest ones. When it comes to, well, I'll talk about the ingesting of what not to ingest and what's good.

Yeah, and we could talk about, you mentioned temperature also.

Yeah, temperature. The temperature of the bed. We just got delivered these chili sleep pads from our friend Todd Youngblood.

We like them, we love them.

I love them.

We have a number of units in our home.

Yeah, temperature regulation is so important to be comfortable when you're going to bed and throughout the night. Sometimes your body can heat up. Sometimes dreaming changes your temperature of your body, right? You ever woken up in a cold sweat? Like, that's because that changes throughout the night. And so Chili's an amazing one, especially for couples or partners where, you know, my wife loves all the covers on and like, and I'm like, I just wanna sleep like in my boxers with nothing on. And so the pad and the temperature really helps us both regulate. Like, I'm a cold, you know, in the 60s on the ChiliPad. So having a cooler temperature does help get better sleep. And so that's a big one.

'Cause it allows you also to create melatonin. It's interesting because the 2 triggers for that, you think about, you know, even as hunter-gatherers, you know it's time to sleep when there's a drop in light. and a drop in temperature. But today in modern society, we have temperature control and light control, and our devices that create light, you know, and so we have to make conscious choices.

Yeah, in fact, this week, this brings up another topic of travel, right? Have you ever done a red-eye? Or like an over the Pacific or Atlantic flight? Happy helps a ton, but getting yourself a great sleep, a mask, get your temperature right, with the air, do whatever you can to sleep well because on average they say it takes a day per hour change to get yourself right if you're taking a long trip. And so there's a lot of little hacks that we use with Happy and the sleep mask. There's even some cooling things that we use on a flight just to get ourselves comfortable to get really good sleep. We just took our 10-year anniversary trip to Bora Bora. It was, we just went for it. It was amazing. And on the flight there, I stopped all the caffeine. I stopped— no nicotine or no nothing. And we got on the flight, we did all the 5 little tricks with the happy and the thing, and we both slept perfectly. It was awesome. We got 8 hours. It was also because we were relaxing going on this trip, but we both wrote down what we were so thankful for right before the flight. And we just were talking about all the things we were grateful for. And that kind of goes into the mind frame, right?

Yeah.

Every night, I wanna say 3 things I'm thankful for, not just for the day that were accomplished, but in life, what I'm grateful for.

And allow yourself to feel it too.

Feel it, yeah. And what it did is it just sort of put us in this very safe—

Parasympathetic.

Parasympathetic response. We were ready to go to sleep, and we both just slept like babies. And we got there, and it was tons of hours, I don't remember the hours of difference, but we felt perfect when we arrived.

I think everyone can relate if they've had a good night's sleep recently, that it's the best feeling in the world.

Oh, nothing beats it, man. Man, it's— and it's— and then your day is amazing, right? I actually wake up after a good night's sleep with more ideas than ever. That's— there's no perfect flow creative state. If you're tired, you're not gonna fix anything else.

If you want to win the day, you have to win the night before, for sure. Yeah, well said. The perfect morning routine starts definitely the evening before.

Yeah.

So what about— you mentioned ingesting and not ingesting.

Yeah.

And, you know, some people with Caffeine, certain things stay in your system longer than others, which is why I love your technology.

Yeah.

But talk about the foods that, what should people eat or avoid or not consume or drinks?

Well, everyone's different on diet, right? I love the Bulletproof Diet, I love plant-based, I love vegetables, good foods, good proteins, all that is good, but there's a couple of things you gotta be really careful of, right? Like a strong nootropic, like a metformin or a caffeine or a nicotine, or those things are all nootropic. They have positive, amazing benefits for your brain and your neurons in your body, but be very careful of that. Like, I have a lot of friends who complain about bad sleep, but then they have a cigar, like, before going to bed. I'm like, that doesn't actually get you ready for bed because nicotine's a nootropic. It's a stimulant at the end of the day. That's what that buzz is. It's a buzz of relaxation and stimulation.

Mm-hmm.

And so You have to be very, very careful. A good tea is good with a little bit of stretching, right, or a little bit of yoga. Absolutely writing down gratitude sets your mind right. That's— I would put that even above anything you're ingesting or not ingesting to get your mind in the right space. For me, just because I'm always thinking about a million things, I can't shut off my brain.

And I find for me it helps you to mitigate like the rumination, you know, like where you're thinking about the bills or you're thinking about, you know, and what's going on in the world, those kind of things, 'cause you have to maybe empty that cup to put the positive things in.

That's right, yeah. So one of my favorite things about Happy is really able to not have to have that half-life, right? Because what's the caffeine half-life?

Yeah, I mean, they recommend usually at least stop it by around 2 o'clock. And different people have different sensitivities to it, right? Some people could have an espresso at nighttime Right. But for most people, I find it could stay in your system for hours.

Yeah, that's honestly one of the biggest issues. If you've had— if you overeat at dinner, right, or if you have too much carbs, they're gonna process sugar, you know, glycogen stores are being reloaded. That stuff gives— it's a stimulant, it gives you energy. And sometimes you have to be careful about that because it can affect sleep. Digestion actually can hit sleep very, very hard. It's like number 4 on the list.

Yeah.

And so it's not just like, well, I'll have— no matter what I eat or drink, I'll just have some tea or something to help me before bed.

Even alcohol. A lot of people use alcohol and it'll knock them out, but they're not getting good sleep, quality sleep.

Yeah, it's not— your liver produces formaldehyde when you drink alcohol. That's the byproduct. So imagine sleeping all night as you're digesting and pumping out formaldehyde from your liver. Does not help with good sleep. It might make you pass out for a little bit, but it's not—

Which is different than getting REM sleep.

That's right.

That's right.

Sleep is a— it's a skill, as our friend Dr. Jay talks about. You have to think of it as like fitness. Sleep is a fitness routine, and it's very different passing out from exhaustion or bad diet or alcohol in your system or a ton of caffeine late at night and getting really, really good circadian rhythm cycles with plenty of deep sleep. You know, do you— what's your deep sleep each night? Do you track?

Yeah, I mean, it's a— I get my deep sleep stuff To a couple hours.

Couple hours. See, that's amazing. A lot of people we talk to with Happy, they start tracking with an Oura Ring or they'll track with their metrics and they're at like 10 minutes, 20 minutes.

Well, this has been Happy, which I have one if you're watching this on video also as well. I mean, the technology, people ask us all the time. They're like, Jim, how do I focus? How do I have mental energy? How do I become more alert? And they just, the strategy is hope. And we know hope is not, strategy, a very effective strategy. With the companies that you run, we have clients all the time similar to you that are struggling with burnout. You give them great speed reading memory techniques to be able to overcome overload and everything else, but if they're not getting sleep—

Right.

I'd love to do another episode and talk about flow states, but how does this technology work? Because I'm a big believer that we aren't victims. We could actually choose. and being able to choose the way you feel. When I discovered this technology and I started to test it, and for people who are watching this or listening to this right now, right, so every molecule has a magnetic imprint, if you will, right?

Mm-hmm.

And you've discovered with your army of PhDs and scientists and all of 40-plus patents, whatever, that you could actually capture it in a device, and people could put it on and just wear it, and then it could transfer into your physiology as if you, you know, have caffeine to melatonin.

Yeah, CBD and a bunch of other ones, yeah. So this technology actually cures the half-life issue, right, for us. And so what we've found is up in the basements of Seattle, we laugh about it all the time, we have a team of PhDs and doctors, including Dr. Kenneth Ferguson, he invented Cialis, this whole team, they found a way to basically extract the magnetic signature of certain molecules, like melatonin and caffeine and adenosine, which we've— that's the deep sleep or the bedtime signal before deep sleep. But the idea as it relates to sleep is it can give your body, it literally makes your body feel like you ingested or took a certain drug.

Right.

Without anything in your body. So you turn it off, you're back to normal in 15, 20 minutes. There's no half-life, or it's within a few minutes of a half-life. And so we have people that are able to use the alert signals and the focus and the productivity signals, but then when it's coming time for bed, they want to use more of the calm signal, the adenosine and the melatonin signals to get their body in a state and get their cells in the right state to feel tired, to begin to feel like, okay, I'm ready for bed, it's part of my routine. So that's really what Happi's great for. They play it 20 minutes before bed usually, the adenosine, which is a hormone that builds up that makes you tired.

This is the signal, and it's just an app on my phone that we have. And this is something like, you have like bedtime.

Bedtime, yeah, we call it bedtime.

I love it, it's so straightforward, bedtime. And then from there, after I'm just relaxed, 'cause some people have a challenge, as you talked about, you know, turning off that monkey mind and still thinking about your business and the family and everything else. And then I'll switch from there and go into deep sleep. And I'll set it for like 8 hours.

Right, and that's our melatonin signal. And so, you know, usually people don't wear it around their neck when they're sleeping, they put it under their pillow. So there's like, there's a foot and a half space around it that the signal is actually being driven onto your body. And it's basically triggering your protein receptors in your cells to make you feel like you have the melatonin. And so, yeah, put on your pillow, and people just start to get into this deep sleep mode over the next few minutes.

Yeah.

And yeah, like you said, we— you can play them up to 8 hours. So, you know, we have thousands upon thousands of people using it mostly for sleep. Right, those are the 2 areas. It's flow state, but sleep is such a big one. And so they're putting on their pillow, they're showing us their Oura stats. We're doing a huge study on it right now, watching people's deep REM go up, their sleep scores are going up. I've personally tracked, right, like my wife puts under my pillow and I'm like, don't tell me if it's on or off for the next several weeks.

Yeah.

And I'm watching my, my deep REM change up to 30%. Yeah.

Yeah.

So, no, well, it's really cool.

I know a number of our guests on, on the podcast Everyone from Dr. Gundry to Dr. J, who's an amazing dentist that helps with snoring and everything that can disrupt your sleep, have raved about Happi. And I want to thank you also because before this, we set up a site where people could actually get a discount, all our listeners, as a thank you. So if you go to happi.com/kwik, you just have to spell them both right, H-A-P-B-E-E dot com forward slash K-W-I-K. You could get your discount there and get all the details and just do your own research, you know, to see the science behind it.

Yeah.

The team behind it and some of the people who really are—

Yeah, I wish I could say I invented it, but a team of doctors and scientists have been working on this for 18 years. In fact, they're doing a ton of clinical research and FDA trials for brain cancer and pain and all these other medical applications. We're basically the consumer side that helps you get better sleep, more energy, relax, more productive.

And who doesn't want that? And what I like about it also, it allows you to have choice. You know, you don't have to hope that again that you have focus or that you're gonna get a good night's sleep. It's something that's proactive. And who doesn't want to just reclaim their ability to choose, right? And it's passive.

That's right.

It's not something you have to think about, right? You could just set it and just Forget it.

That's right, yeah. And I've been so— it's changed my life, right? My favorite story, my grandma, Grandma Joyce. She just passed away recently, a couple months ago. She was the sweetest, happiest lady ever. She struggled with a lot of pain and soreness for the last 20 years of her life, and she was the first person to ever try our— actually, our CBD Relax Signal. And I didn't tell her anything about it, but it was right when we got our first prototype. I wanted to see if it worked on Grandma Joyce. And she hadn't slept more than 5 hours a night since the '90s. And my grandpa, he's like, let's try it. So we put it on her, didn't say anything. I said, just put it on, see how you feel. And within 10 minutes, she was bouncing around. She felt great. She's giving hugs. She's like, I feel amazing. And that night she played it again with the sleep signal, and then she actually took it off. She didn't play it all night. She just wore it for half an hour before bed, and she slept 11 hours.

That's amazing.

And the next morning, my grandpa gave me $100,000 for this business. He's like, we're old, we're gonna die soon, and whatever you did with Grandma, you need to do with a billion other people because you just made her life incredibly much, much, much better for the last several years of her life. And so this was a couple years back, but that's my story. I was like, all right, I gotta do this.

I'm in. Well, I know your team and yourself, you, you're, you're, you're, that's your mission.

That's it.

You know, and, you know, in terms of similar to ours where we want to you know, build better, brighter brains, you know, and, and no brain left behind. You know, there's a— there's power in that. So I want to thank you for coming on our show. We have to have—

Yeah.

I want to record another one also and talk about flow states, because that's something that people need to— and go through, go look into some of Scott's great tips on sleep, because sleep again is the best nootropic that there is out there. And if you'd like to find out more about Happy, Go again to— we'll put a link in the show notes, of course. Go to happii.com/kwik. H-A-P-P-I-E-E.

I wish we could have gotten the actual spelling for Happii, but the logo's a bee, so Happii.

It makes sense. And you get an exclusive special discount there and also find out more information. So if you'd like to try it, and if you do end up doing so, please post your results. You know, and tag us both on social media so we get to see them, and I'll of course share some of my favorites. And Scott, thanks for being on the show, buddy.

Thanks for having me.

It was great. Hi, Kwik Brain.

It's your brain coach. I want to thank you so much for watching this video. 3 things to do. Number 1, make sure you share this, because when you teach something, you get to learn it twice. Update your learning so you can update other people's learning as well. Number 2, make sure you subscribe To this channel, so you don't miss a thing. Because if you miss a video, you miss a lot. And finally, make sure you hit that bell so you're notified and you find out when we put out the latest and the greatest. One extra thing: if you want really close attention, then text me. Here is my phone number: 310-299-9362. Did you remember that number? 310 299-9362. Shoot me a text and we'll stay in touch. Ask me your burning question. And I wish your days be full of lots of life, lots of love, lots of laughter, and always lots of learning. I'll see you in our next video.