Daily life has its satisfactions. The perfect reply to a friend’s text message. The first after-work drink. The sound of another government U-turn. But do any really compare to the joy of going to sleep? That moment when the clutter of 21st-century existence disappears into the non-judgmental embrace of a mattress?
Somehow we have pushed this pleasure to the back of the queue. A third of American adults report sleeping less than the recommended seven hours. Many of us feel under-rested.
For some, the problem is modern life: emails, to-do lists and screens. Reed Hastings, Netflix’s co-founder, said in 2017: “We’re competing with sleep, on the margin.” The rise of coffee-drinking probably hasn’t helped either.