I don't think the point of the article was actually about sleep at all. It was about where to apply willpower to effect any kind of habit change.
It's just an example in his case that the habit he wanted to build was going to sleep earlier, which he tried to do by just lying still in bed at the time he wanted to sleep, and resisting the urge to do anything else, first for two minutes, then for four.
But he applies the same principle to exercise and other things, which is actually the point. This isn't a sleep prescription article.
Willpower isn't all or nothing. I can't will myself to go to sleep an hour earlier, and if I set that as my standard, I'll fail.
But can I will myself to lie still in bed for two minutes? Much more likely. And, having succeeded and begun the building of a habit, can I lie still for 2.2 minutes the next night? Yes, I probably can.
I thought the point was to rethink how and where we apply willpower and set ourselves up to succeed more often by moving the "succeeding" bar within the realm of our current willpower, rather than holding some standard of "success" that our willpower can never meet.
Where there’s lack of sleep, willpower is one of the first things to be affected. So the authors advice only applies in a narrow set of cases. Exercise, for example, might be a better way of getting out of the vicious loops caused by lack of sleep.
willpower is a vacuous self-help concept as you have as little control over your 'willpower' as you have over your sleep. To pick OPs example, people with ADHD often have executive dysfunction. They're unable to follow these kinds of routines because their brains don't work like this.
And ordinary people too just vary in their conscientiousness (which unlike willpower is a real, measurable trait), and that is going to determine how effective these kinds of regiments are for you. But you cannot simply change your basic psychological markup. For someone who simply cannot conform to a normal sleep schedule it may be much better to adjust their life to their sleep, not the other way around.
> people with ADHD...because their brains don't work like this.
You might be surprised to find out that there is actually no proof of this.
The biggest thing impacting people with ADHD symptoms is the diagnosis. It implies they have a brain disorder, and cuts short any exploration into environmental causes of their symptoms.
And an environmental cause may in fact be, simply not trying some simple advice from this article. Resolved by education.
I would be very surprised because that's complete nonsense. ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder with changes in both neurochemistry and structural development of the brain [1]. This is why drugs like Adderall are highly effective in treating the symptoms of ADHD. You cannot cure disorders of the brain by reading blogs on the internet, and it is this kind of ignorance that has given people with neurological issues a lot of grief and shame in the past.
You will find a lot of research, but there are no meta-analyses of brain imaging or gene studies showing any correlation to those diagnosed with ADHD. Even the diagnostic manual, the DSM-5, explicitly states that no biomarkers for diagnosis exist. The descriptive diagnostic criteria for ADHD were simply made up by a group of psychiatrists in the 1980s from their observations. So the definition of ADHD is entirely recursive.
So all we know is people have some basket of symptoms, and an impairment in their ability to live their life, but an entirely unknown cause.
You may also be surprised to find that there is no proof of the link between depression and serotonin either - which is the main theory for treatment.
It's just an example in his case that the habit he wanted to build was going to sleep earlier, which he tried to do by just lying still in bed at the time he wanted to sleep, and resisting the urge to do anything else, first for two minutes, then for four.
But he applies the same principle to exercise and other things, which is actually the point. This isn't a sleep prescription article.