My story - from the Originator of TNT Sleep

I started writing computer software during my last 2 years of my Bachelor of Science degree at the University of Melbourne in 1968 and 1969 and have been involved in software development activities ever since.

Many years later, when in my late-20s, I had responsibility for a computer project at BHP-Billiton (now Onesteel) in Whyalla, South Australia and, because of important deadlines, I often found myself writing software into the very early hours of the morning, or even right through the night. On eventually arriving home, it would be important to get to sleep quickly so that the significant gains made by working through the quiet of the night were not immediately lost through a lack of deep and refreshing sleep.

In this situation I often resorted to a strong shot of alcohol to assist me to fall asleep (although, as I and others have experienced, alcohol can often diminish the quality of your sleep). While this sleep-assisting method was sometimes effective, there were still those occasions when it wasn’t and, unfortunately, I had no ‘Plan B’ to fall back upon. When I look back, I think it was probably my youth, physical fitness and general good health that made up for those occasions when my lack of quality sleep left me quite sleep-deprived for my next day’s work.

Over the years, my working habits did not improve – in fact, they became worse once I became self-employed and started working from an office in my own home. I would notice, when lying in bed sometimes only 5 or 10 minutes after I had ceased a long day’s work, that my mind would still be ‘ticking over’ and not at all ready for sleep. I would find myself reviewing many of the day’s difficulties and achievements and considering the challenges that still lay ahead of me. Unless I stringently avoided thinking about any work-related subject for more than just a minute or two after my head hit the pillow, my chances of falling asleep could be ruined and sleep would then take 2 or more hours to achieve.

Of course there were times when I would still be trying to fall asleep as the early-morning birds began chirping, the daylight was starting to filter through the bedroom curtains and daytime noises were beginning to emanate from other members of the household and from the neighbourhood in general. At this point it became almost impossible to fall asleep.

As a consequence of the problems I often had in sleeping, I gradually discovered then developed a method that I could reliably use when sleep initially eluded me. I didn’t have to use this method every time – just on those occasions when I felt it was really necessary. I later explained my ‘home-grown’ method to my teenage daughter, for use on the rare occasions when she had trouble sleeping, such as on late nights when ‘swotting’ for high school examinations.

Over more-recent years, I’ve refined the method to make it very much simpler and more interesting to use. It is now suitable for almost any person, from late childhood age onward, in that it is easy to understand and to regularly put into practice. As it is purely a MENTAL ACTIVITY, it requires no external equipment, drugs or other aids, making it useable anywhere and under almost any circumstances. It doesn’t require costly training courses or specialist medical advice and can be learnt simply by reading or listening to a relatively short description of the technique.

From my own experience, the knowledge that I can call on a reliable method to achieve sleep, means that I no longer worry unnecessarily about falling asleep and, consequently, I can generally fall asleep without even having to use the method at all. In other words, the confidence I have gained from successfully using the method a number of times seems to break the ‘anxiety cycle’ that often triggers longer-term insomnia.

On those few occasions when I do have to use my method (perhaps after being woken suddenly and unexpectedly in the middle of the night), I find that it is effective very quickly. In my view, this success is probably because, through repeated use, the method is itself a form of ‘sleep ritual’ and, as the ‘sleep experts’ seem to consistently recommend, the performance of your own regular sequence of pre-bedtime activities (i.e. your personal ‘bedtime ritual’) can lead your brain in the right ‘direction’ for sleep.

As a further example of my own sleeping issues, I found that competing in organised sporting events late in the evening (squash and badminton, in my case) would often lead to difficulties when I tried to get to sleep maybe just an hour or two later. Apart from the physical, sleep-precluding problems such as a mildly elevated heart rate and metabolism, I would become aware, as I lay in bed, that I was going over and over my night’s sporting event, replaying certain particularly good or bad moments, depending on whether I had won or lost the game. This mental activity had the side-effect of physically ‘hyping’ me up, as if I was playing the game all over again. However, once I realised that I needed to banish such thoughts and get to sleep, I found that my TNT sleep method, in combination with other simple physical relaxation techniques, would be effective reasonably quickly.