Obsession With Sleeping Better

Hi, this is my first sentence in the blogosphere. My name is Paul and I am a very light sleeper. For years I had trouble falling asleep, or waking up early, due to loud noises or distracting light. This made me miserable during the day. While in college it got so bad I bought some ear plugs to spare me from the guys who had a penchant for lifting weights at 2:00am on a tile floor directly above my dorm room. I also needed some help because I had 6 roommates, all with different schedules, waking me up (or keeping me awake) at all hours. The ear plugs changed my life.

Soon I also bought a sleep mask to block out the morning sun and the light slipping through the crack beneath my door. The sleep mask helped me make another quantum leap forward in sleeping better and not being so cranky during the day.

Over the next few years I purchased some blackout blinds to eliminate even more light from my bedroom, plus a white noise machine (or sound conditioner) to further reduce the noise level.

The annoying thing about shopping for these products was that I had to go to a different store to purchase each one. I thought: why isn't there a store that sells all of these products -- that does nothing but help people sleep better by improving their sleep environment? Sleep is one of the most basic of Maslow's hierarchy of needs -- right up there with food, water, and even sex.







Entire industries revolve around satisfying these and other basic needs, yet the "sleep industry" seemed very fragmented. In fact, the only well-known products dealing with sleep were (and still are) mattresses and sleeping pills. But mattresses are expensive and not portable; and sleeping pills are potentially unhealthy and the best ones require a prescription.

So I looked in the mirror and asked: why don't I do this myself? Why don't I start a business specializing in products that help people sleep better (excluding mattresses and sleeping pills). Several years later, I started an online business doing just this called The Complete Sleeper (http://www.thecompletesleeper.com/).

These days I sleep much better than I used to. Every night I use ear plugs, a sleep mask, a sound conditioner AND blackout blinds. Whenever I travel, the ear plugs and the sleep mask (an sometimes the sound conditioner) come with me. If I forget one of these, I panic and usually do not sleep very well.

Anyway, I decided to start a blog on how to get better sleep -- and about sleep in general. I hope you find it useful. And yes, there is a commercial angle to this, as I will be referring to the products that I sleep in my store. These are the type of products that have really improved my life. And I hope they can improve yours, too.