Do you believe everything you read on the internet? Join Mattman as he tackles the menace that is misinformation. 

Mattman maximizes his sleep every night for the chance to wake up and do something great in here every day. Want to learn how? Mattman has the answers!

Mattman attends the (hopefully last) virtual bedding conference, also known as BedCon, hosted by Furniture Today! Listen in on this special edition episode as Mattman recaps BedCon and the special guest host--Dr. Oz!

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!

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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!

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.

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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!

Yes, the mattress industry can come to a reasonable standard for the best practices on comfort returns. Yes the customer can be threatened with return fees if they choose the wrong mattress with zero care of the consequences. And sure, we can cook up some crazy tech to monitor usage to guarantee cleanliness on returns to recycle the mattresses if they are brought back.  All of these are great ways to address the symptoms. But ladies and gentlemen of retail, it’s up to us to help that customer diagnose their ailments correctly. We’re the “doctors” in this analogy.

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.

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.

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. 

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.”

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).

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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!

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.

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.

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.

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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!)

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.

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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.

In his Master Class, “The Science of Better Sleep,” Dr. Matthew Walker, a scientist and professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley, explains that most fitness plans that say diet, exercise, and sleep are equally essential to high performance are wrong. Diet and exercise are pillars but sleep is the foundation on which those pillars are built. And sleep isn’t just the foundation to the pillars of fitness, it’s the bedrock for forming habits and making decisions that help you achieve goals.

When it comes to fitness and weight loss, when Walker explained the importance of sleep I immediately thought of the joust battle from the 1990’s show American Gladiators. Growing up, my little brother and I loved watching the Gladiators on Saturday night! The joust challenge has one a Gladiator on one pillar facing an opponent on the other. Each warrior gets a giant Q-tip to do battle. The first warrior to knock the other person off their platform wins. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, it’s worth a Google or Youtube search for the haircuts alone!

Imagine you are the gladiator and you’re holding that jousting stick in your hands. The left puffy ball is your diet and the right puffy ball is exercise. Beneath you, the platform on which you balance to remain in the game is your sleep. When that opposing gladiator (which represents life) starts swinging their stick at you, how will you use diet and exercise effectively without a solid foundation beneath you?

Keeping your balance is the single most important thing when fighting the joust. And you can’t just take hits. You’re supposed to strike back! In your daily routine, you need to be able to make good nutritional decisions and it is easier to make the right choice when you are well-rested. You need to have energy and drive from a solid sleep schedule to be more likely to choose the gym or your workout routine over the old habit of choosing not to. And sometimes, you need to push your own limits and start using the Q-Tip and make your opponent be the one-off balance!

So now, I’m asking you to try again. 2021 is just getting started! Pull yourself up and get back in the fight.

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