The Adventures of Mattman

I am constantly talking about sleep and sleep habits. My wife, family, and friends expect it and roll their eyes quite a bit and I am okay with that. There is something at work that is bigger than me so I just keep going one day at a time.

The reason I mention this is because I am often told I have a lot of passion, energy, and drive. After a few encounters, you will come to understand this is not a mask. There is no smoke and mirrors. I live this way because I began down a path of maximizing my sleep. One of my hallmark sleep sources is Shawn Stephenson’s book Sleep Smarter: 21 Ways to Maximize Your Sleep. It’s my American Express, I never leave home without it. In his book, Shawn points out that old school “healthy” was an equation that identified diet, exercise, and sleep as three equal pillars. Let’s say you do a great job with your diet, exercise, and sleep on a given day; then each pillar could have a value of up to 5.  Eat poorly, score a one. Eat healthy, score a five. You tracking me?

So here is how the old school equation looks in mathematical terms: Diet + Exercise + Sleep = Healthy. So if you score high on all three pillars, your equation looks like this:5+5+5=15. The number 15 I call your power level because it sounds cool.

Ladies and gentleman, it is now 2023! And in proper Sleep Superhero fashion, I do not intend to make snooze-year resolutions! I love the process of sitting down at the New Year to identify new important but not urgent goals that I want to accomplish. This year is a special one as well! I am calling this year the year of the viking!

Vikings are warriors! They are strong, honorable, adventurous, treasure seeking, and passionate! They live by these principles in order to prepare themselves for the next battle! And let me tell you, I have a few battles to fight in 2023.

Sleep superheroes all have shared abilities of the body, like regeneration, faster reactions, creative thoughts and problem-solving, nightly weight loss, and my favorite HGH Growth hormone to get strong and stay young!

I think most people if given a choice, would choose all of those benefits if they were as easy as swiping on their phones or pressing a button on a TV remote.

On the heels of releasing consumer data that suggests 65% of present-day consumers are willing to pay between 1%-20% more for a sustainable mattress, the International Sleep Products Association (ISPA) kicked off its first-ever Sustainability Conference in Charlotte, North Carolina on November 11th, 2022.

The month is November and for now, many of the sleep villains I fight against are at bay although I’ve seen a new bad guy popping up. Wrestler Leg Syndrome. I’m back to the drawing board at coming up with ways to defeat The Syndrome. He is a bull in a china shop type sleeper. Spinning, flipping, and keeping everybody in bed awake! While I plot and strategize, I wanted to take a moment to slow down like I do every Thanksgiving and try to live from an attitude of gratitude.

One thing better sleep over a long period of time has taught me is when we are exhausted, we are at risk to take things for granted. Lots of different things! I have also learned through my service in the Kiwanis and Exchange Clubs that not everybody gets to sleep in ideal conditions. Far from it. There are many people who have sleeping conditions that guarantee no sleep will occur. And I have learned how much harder people’s lives are compared to my own. For instance, I delivered a mattress set to a local veteran who had lost both of his legs in the service. This was many years ago as he is now an elderly man. And as we set up his mattress set and some basic furniture, I could see how difficult it was for him to do chores. Picking up items on the floor, dusting, doing laundry, and the list goes on. Then I turn around and procrastinate doing my own chores because of some lame excuse like I feel like I deserve to relax more and shrug my chores off.

But now it’s different. I no longer procrastinate. I view my chore list with gratitude. I get to do my laundry. I load it up into a hamper, march it over to the machines, and two-ish hours later it’s all folded and put away. Same with the dishes!

The holidays are coming up and the year will come to an end. New year’s resolutions are coming for those who seek change in their lives by using the sun as their metric of time. I will make some resolutions myself! I’ve achieved two out of three of mine this year. I learned to sew! Accent pillows, capes, customizing top sheets to fitted sheets, you name it! Sewing isn’t that hard when you have a sewing machine. The machine does all the work! And I also had my best year of performance in 5k’s.  Even if I didn’t get the sub 30 minute 5k in the Mattsuit, I ran sub 30 on my own more than once. Improving is enough for me and I don’t intend to stop the habits that got me this far. Instead I will make new goals to add more habits to do even more!

So if you are like me, why wait until the new year to start trying? I see so many people sleep walking through their days. They’re literally zombies. And so I ask you a very important question. What’s it going to take to wake you up?

Well, everybody, today is a very special day! There is a special announcement to make in just a moment. But before I break the news, I have to take a minute to stress the power of the pillow!

I try not to take for granted the weight that a pillow supports every night. Our spine is a vast network of fibers, tissue, fluid and bones balancing precariously day in and day out. Even half an inch this way or that can mean the difference between pain and comfort.

And that reminds me of a fantastic statistic: pillows support 30% of your spine while you sleep!

There are 24 bones in your spine that are flexible (not fused together) and your pillow supports about seven of those. That means 30% is a huge deal!

Think about it like this. If I come over and mow your lawn and I do a great job for 70% of it but that last 30% is rough — missing spots, meandering lines. How would you feel?

We are headed into the fall and winter seasons of 2022., and wouldn’t you know it, midterm elections are on the horizon.

I am not here to talk about politics or convince you to vote one way or the other. What keeps me up at night is the stress the election cycles create. The election cycle steals from your sleep cycles. But it doesn’t have to!

These sleep cycles are being stolen by Miss Information and her pet energy vampires. Miss Information is responsible for a lot of negativity on the internet. Her pet energy vampires feed their negativity by leeching your positivity. Don’t be a victim! I’ll give you three ways to protect yourself.

Part of my superhero duties are to teach and preach the Game Plan for Better Sleep.

The Game Plan consists of five steps of addressing the sleep issues people are immediately fixing with their mattress at home.

With the folks walking through the store we start with step one, the mattress. Step two, the power of the pillow! Step three, the Gamechanger. Step four, cool and comfy linens. And finally, step five, your habits!

Step five is a rabbit hole — it’s like portal to another dimension of existence really. Your habits can have a huge impact on the quality of your rest. The million dollar question and feedback I get after jumping into the step five event horizon is:

How do you learn to make a new sleep routine stick?

Hello, Superpower Seekers! I come to you from my office which I dub Sleep Source One— the amazing place I have maximized, much like my sleep, for high levels of productivity and entertainment!

Today is going to be a fantastic day and I wanted to tell you about one of the most important aspects of sleep I have yet to discuss in depth. It’s so important, it’s the start of my creedo. The power of the pillow!

I’m looking out my window at an expansive view of the Apple iCloud. It’s massive, I’ve never seen anything like it. Up here, it’s known as The Big Apple. Between the iCloud, other clouds, and technology in general, today’s gadgets are more like magic every day. It takes a good night’s sleep just to keep up with the pace of improvements all around us. Some improvements have been predicted by movies and TV shows.

The range of predictions is vast. We don’t yet have a Jetson’s flying car in every garage, but we do have Rocket Man jet pack capability for those who dedicated their lives to the research and development of it.

Another prediction is playing out before our eyes as we wake: Sleep trackers. I have a future episode planned to discuss sleep trackers in greater depth. But in the meantime, what do you think of when you hear the words sleep tracker? Are you using one? Do you sell an adjustable base that comes with one? Yeah, I’m talking to you Tempur retailers!

I've been running from house to house at the speed of snore helping elevate the heads and lives of the good citizens of Lake Norman. These days the Tyrano-snore-us rex, king of the dino-snores, is out there gaining strength. While I wait for the next snore signal, I have a moment to tell you about how I recently defeated the Caffeine Chameleon!

With the guidance of my favorite sleep sources, I learned the true nature of the Caffeine Chameleon. He takes on many forms and sneakily saps your sleep cycles one by one. He appeared to me as a delicious cup of coffee! With his caffeine camo, I drank too much coffee on a daily basis and I didn’t know it. After I became aware, I set my sleep schedule and attempted to form a new habit. A morning routine coffee free! Take that Caffeine Chameleon!!

It wasn’t easy. Throughout the process I did a little grieving for the habit that once held me. My family and my coworkers enjoyed their morning cups around me. The smell brought on cravings but thanks to being well rested, my personal fortitude was stronger than some silly urge. Plus, I gave up coffee for Lent. The Big Buy upstairs was holding me accountable and I didn’t want to let him down! According to my Google Mini, Lent ended on April 1st, so on April 3rd I woke my wife at the crack of dawn for coffee! Being the wife of a sleep superhero has its challenges and on this Saturday, I was one of them. But she's a good sport and all roads lead to a delicious cup of coffee so she struggled out of bed and accompanied me to our favorite spot.

Lo and behold, my first cup of coffee was underwhelming and overwhelming all the same time.  The underwhelming part of it was the flavor was not as I remember it. Not exactly. Maybe in a few weeks after another cup or two I'll know whether or not I got a bad batch of coffee. Or perhaps just the memories of how good it was are exactly what they are, memories. My palate has changed since all I’ve had is tea with no sweetener or dairy. A customer of mine sent me some jasmine petals and it’s phenomenal. I enjoy that every morning instead!

The overwhelming part was how caffeine gripped my system for the next few hours. Holy smokes. On that first day, I remembered exactly why I wanted to stop in the first place.

You see, I can go from zero to “we're going to win” on a normal day with no caffeine in as quickly as I just did. No problemo. It's one of my super powers! High bursts of energy and voice volume. And with a great night's sleep I can harness that power and usually keep it in check. Add a cup of coffee to that superpower, throw in a busy showroom with customers asking questions a mile a minute, supply chain issues to wade through at 101 mph and it’s too much.  I don’t have the emotional control to keep as cool as a Tempur-Pedic Breeze bed wrapped in bamboo sheets in a perfectly maintained 68 degree bedroom on a hot summer night.

A typical day in Mattman’s morning routine is to wake up, prepare a warm tea, and do some stretching. I spend half an hour doing various tasks like chores, research, and reading. Then the final part of my wake up routine is spent smashing monsters for loot!  It’s my daily victory to accomplish this and it’s the first thing I do when my feet hit the floor. It gets me on the path of action! And the last couple of days, I have been listening to The FAM audio stories while I stretch. Among them, Mike it Up with the Goodbed boys Mike Magnuson and Jeff Cassidy.

They offer a lot of knowledge. Have you ever seen the pictures around Thanksgiving with tables overloaded with turkey, sides, deserts, and the like? Each episode is kinda like that picture! Or maybe it’s like visiting your wife’s Italian family on a Sunday for dinner and the food just doesn’t stop coming! Or… ahh. Okay. You get the point.

I’d like to shine a spotlight on their 7th and 8th episode in particular because it strikes a chord with me. It’s about pollution. I’ve already discussed light pollution and how that can affect our sleep habits. This is about landfill pollution. Wall-E style pollution. Real pollution and when you hear how many mattresses contribute to our carbon footprint and also to landfills, that information keeps me up at night!

After a hard day’s work, I take off the Signature Super Sleep Superhero Suit to put my feet up for some downtime. I adhere to my bedtime routine every night to help me fall asleep as quickly as possible.

Even though I have a sleep system that is customized to my habits, it’s still not enough. And I came to realize this over the winter and I wanted to share a story that taught me this lesson.

In a previous episode, I mention the fact that I am a gamer. The Super Sleep Suit comes off when I get home, and yes I do take it off from time to time, like when I’m playing video games on my computer.

I hang out with my internet friends on Discord, an app that is kind of like an old-school party phone line. Except instead of you and ten of your neighbors on the call, it’s me and ten buddies from across the globe and we’re all playing video games together. In case anybody is curious, our main game of choice is called Path of Exile and we play the Hardcore League.

I love my online community which I’ve hung out with for four to five years now. We all work full-time jobs. We all have a family life. And we all like to smash monsters for loot. One day in January, we had a younger buddy, we’ll call him Dan, ask for some help.

He had some water coming through his floorboards in his room. As luck would have it, one of our other buddies, we’ll call him Mike, is a handyman. So Dan tells Mike what’s going. Dan used Discord’s live streaming feature to show Mike the water problem and see if he could tell him how to fix it. Turns out he couldn’t help him; Dan needed a plumber. 

I got a message from Mike the next day. He literally said he couldn’t sleep that night. Mike is a 30-year old dude married with two kids and he goes to church. All around a great guy. He cares for others, so when he saw Dan’s room he asked a couple of gentle questions.

The answers confirmed what Mike saw in the room. He learned Dan didn’t have a mattress. He had blankets on the floor. And this escalated his water issue to a whole other level. Mike knows I work for a mattress and furniture company, so he offered to buy Dan a mattress. In Mike’s words “I don’t want to do this because I pity him. I know he needs this like he’s my brother. The emotion comes from somewhere else.”

So I suited up! It’s not every day that your friends beam the Mattsymbol into the sky and call upon their superhero buddy.

I immediately gave info to Hannah on the Dream Team and she contacted Colter on Team Malouf. This was January 2021 when there were unprecedented supply chain disruptions. We were looking for a full-size mattress for a 22-year old dude of average size and weight. Something that would be awesome and long term.

Colter didn’t have regular stock, but he went to work with some inventory that wasn’t in production anymore. He activated an old SKU that was kind of off the beaten path. They got it all ready and three days later, Dan had a full sleep system. He had a mattress, a metal platform frame, protector, sheets, and a pillow!  BOOOOOOMM-Shakala!!! (Play some vuvuzela horns like somebody just scored a goal #LOL).

This was a huge victory. In a time of high volatility. Dan got a great bed! And for the record, I’m in North Carolina. Dan was in the midwest a few states over from us. This is an amazing time to be a part of the mattress industry! The internet is an interesting thing when you look at the connections it can create. And in today’s world, of all days, we could help!

It’s as if the moonless night sky was lending a hand to the thugs about to rob you down that dark alley. Don’t let the bad guys be the only ones teaming up with darkness! In the right environment, it can help you, too!

Our environments don’t choose to work for good or evil. Mother Nature never picks sides. But the reality is our technology culture can cause a natural disaster of its own. However, we can choose for our surroundings to impact us in a positive way with knowledge.

For instance, one fact from both Shawn Stevenson’s “Sleep Smarter” and Mathew Walker’s “Master Class The Science of Sleep” is the importance of getting outside and getting 30-minutes of light exposure as early as you can every day.

Don’t wear sunglasses! Soak in the sunlight! When your eyes are affected by the morning light, your brain will stop making certain hormones that cause drowsiness. But therein lies the problem. Artificial light from devices, phones, and light bulbs can do the same thing.

At 9:00 p.m., I want my body to be releasing sleepy time hormones like melatonin that make me drowsy and ready for bed. Most lights we use around the house hinder that process. And that is what is called light pollution.

I don’t know of a superhero out there that likes pollution. It’s in the contract. I, Mattman, do solemnly swear to fight against pollution. And light pollution is literally everywhere. When electricity came around, mankind sped into the future! Quality of life improved exponentially.  A century later, our environment is so well lit that we now see the consequences of our actions. Let’s dial it back to before electricity.

Oil lamps, torches, and bonfires were the TVs, overhead lights, and cell phones of the past, but their energy output is a different color. Fire puts out red light on the color spectrum and science has found it to be less disruptive with the brain’s ability to produce melatonin. When your brain makes enough melatonin, your body knows it’s time for sleep.

Back in the day, people didn’t have the same levels of distraction and light pollution that we experience. Who knew the old ways could be superior to our almighty smartphones and modern routines?

But I’m not going to give up my smartphone. Instead, I choose to change my behavior so that it enhances my productivity instead of hinders it. It’s bad enough I already spend too much time scrolling through Reddit.

Quick shout out to my favorite subreddit called /r/MasterReturns. It’s videos dedicated to dogs being reunited with their owners after an extended absence. I adore those heartwarming clips and before I know it, I’ve stayed up past my bedtime!  And if I just spent hours after sunset staring at a bright screen, it’s harder for me to fall asleep quickly.  That sounds like a long ride on the struggle bus tomorrow.

In “Sleep Smarter,” I learned one of the most surprising facts I didn’t know about our body’s sensitivity to light. It’s not just our eyes. Any surface of skin across our entire bodies can sense light.

Light shining on the back of your knee while resting in total darkness still sends your brain confusing signals. So the pollution isn’t just related to what you see but light exposure in general.  “But Mattman, if there’s light everywhere then I’m never going to get a good night’s sleep”  Rest easy! Don’t lose all hope!  Because we have… Super Sleep Solutions.

It was a somber moment because I realized I needed to drink less coffee in order to maximize my sleep. When you’re a grown man wearing a Superhero Sleep Suit, your face shouldn’t look as sad as mine did at that moment.

I read that caffeine hangs out in your bloodstream and in your brain for a long time after you drink it—much longer than I ever expected or would have guessed. Caffeine has a half-life of about 5-6 hours. If you aren’t familiar with the term half-life, let’s dive in.

Time for some quick maths.

Let’s say your workday is dragging on. It’s 2:30 p.m. and you’re on the struggle bus again. So the plan is to grab a cup of coffee or an energy drink at 3 p.m. to make it to the end of your shift. Fast forward six hours and it’s now 9 p.m. Fifty percent of the caffeine you drank is still swirling around in places that should be winding down. Fast forward a little further to 11 p.m., and 25 percent of that caffeine is still hanging out doing what it does best. And for the record, shots of tequila do not negate the effects of caffeine. (It’s actually much worse, but alcohol is a whole other episode!)

So, now that you know what I know, I will share that up until February 17, 2021 I drank at least two cups and sometimes as many as five cups of coffee in a day. It was built into my routine for years and previous attempts to stop had proved unsuccessful. However, I have some new tools in the tool belt. Both Matthew Walker’s Master Class “Science of Sleep,” as well as the book “Atomic Habits” by James Clear on breaking and building new habits. And now I am proudly on the other side of the fence. Coffee-free and feeling great.

I won’t lie. The first few days were miserable! I had a headache for two solid days. I still craved a warm cup of something, so I substituted it with caffeine-free tea. I cleaned up my coffee maker and put it in the garage, hidden away. Out of sight, out of mind! And while it was a rough start, I made extra sure to keep to a tight sleep routine schedule so if the moment came of weakness, I would make the right decision.

It had been floated before that Mattman without coffee was still a high-energy dude. It is a lot of fun proving that theory to be correct! I’m not one to drink a lot of energy drinks, soda, or much else with caffeine, so by quitting coffee, I nixed a good 95 percent of caffeine from my daily diet.

I don’t miss it as much as I thought. And the biggest difference I feel in my routine comes around 9 p.m. when I’m starting my wind down. My body is ready for bed! I recall forcing myself to sleep and now my mattress is calling my name! (Full disclosure I’m not on a first-name basis with my mattress, it doesn’t actually speak to me).

It’s no coincidence that Feb. 17th, 2021 is also the kick-off to Lent, a religious observance six weeks prior to Easter. The tradition is you give something up during Lent. So, now I share with my customers that I have given up coffee as an icebreaker. The replies I get are hysterical and passionate! I see a lot of my previous mindset in the quick “no way, Jose” Heisman-hand at the mere mention of somebody stopping coffee consumption. But the reality is some of those people are shopping to get a better night’s sleep and no matter what I say, their caffeine consumption is not going to change.

We’ve been in the new year for a while now. And 2021 has already been around the block! Lately, I have asked many of my customers, colleagues, and friends if they have stuck with any New Year’s resolutions.

I have heard a few yes replies and a few no replies. But what strikes me about the no response is a common add-on phrase uttered by most of the people I talk to: “I tried.” I’ve heard things like, “I tried to lose weight. I’ve tried to quit smoking. I tried to learn this discipline. I tried to break this old habit.”

Well folks, I have a theory about this common no response. You are exhausted. Your brain is so depleted, it can’t even spell the word tired right, and it’s incorrectly substituting tried for tired.