Riz Ahmed has a great hack for getting a good night’s sleep—though it is tough to pull off in rainy locales like his native London. The actor, rapper, producer, and activist says he recently tried going outside for a daily dose of natural light first thing in the morning and another hit at sunset. It is a practice he picked up from neurologist Andrew Huberman’s Huberman Lab podcast. Huberman, an associate professor at Stanford University, says that morning sunlight—not artificial light—helps release cortisol, a hormone that can act as a wake-up call. Evening light can help set one’s levels of melatonin, a hormone associated with sleep.
“I tried that for a bit when I was in California. I gotta say, it worked for me,” Ahmed says, adding, “Getting outdoors, as soon as I got up . . . that’s not a very enticing prospect most of the year in the U.K.”
When he has trouble sleeping, he admits, it is often because he veered off his daily routine. “I didn’t exercise. I didn’t meditate. I didn’t [write in my] journal.”
Rather than toss and turn in frustration, Ahmed says he has come to terms with the occasional sleepless night. “I’m kind of making peace with it as [an occurance] a couple of nights a month,” he says. “Maybe a way forward is an acceptance of that.”
Read more about Riz Ahmed’s productivity secrets, and check out Fast Company‘s Winter Issue cover story, which explores how Ahmed is working to increase Muslim representation in film.
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