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+# sleep strategy
+
+> **note:** this page was accidentally overwritten during a wikilink repair and reconstructed from related pages. the original content was richer. contributions welcome.
+
+sleep is the highest-leverage energy intervention. every other strategy — [[exercise-as-reset]], [[circadian-rhythm]], [[food-and-focus]] — works better or worse depending on sleep quality.
+
+## the core insight
+
+sleep is not a luxury to optimize away. it is the foundation. skipping sleep to work more produces less total output than sleeping well and working fewer hours. this took me embarrassingly long to accept.
+
+## what actually works
+
+1. **consistent wake time** — more important than bedtime. the body anchors to wake time; bedtime follows. see [[circadian-rhythm]] for why.
+2. **morning light** — 10-15 minutes of outdoor light within an hour of waking. the single strongest signal for circadian entrainment.
+3. **no food after ~7pm** — late eating shifts peripheral clocks and worsens sleep quality. see [[food-and-focus]].
+4. **exercise during the day** — [[exercise-as-reset]] improves deep sleep, but not too close to bedtime.
+5. **wind-down routine** — same sequence of actions each night. consistency over "relaxation."
+
+## what didn't work
+
+- forcing an earlier bedtime without changing the morning anchor
+- melatonin as a crutch (helped initially, stopped working)
+- "sleeping in" on weekends to recover (destroys consistency)
+- screen time rules that were too rigid to follow
+
+## the sleep debt trap
+
+you can't fully recover lost sleep hour-for-hour. the body prioritizes deep sleep on recovery nights, so one good night recovers more than expected — but chronic sleep debt accumulates in ways that a single good night can't fix. the strategy is not to recover from bad sleep but to prevent it.
+
+## connection to work
+
+"sleep early" as a [[habit-formation]] target kept failing because the identity didn't feel true. what worked instead: anchoring to wake time and letting tiredness naturally pull bedtime earlier. the habit was the morning, not the night.
+
+---
+
+*see also: [[circadian-rhythm]], [[napping-and-recovery]], [[exercise-as-reset]], [[food-and-focus]], [[resets]]*
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