vitals.run

Protocol 001

Sleep is the most important appointment in the calendar. Not a suggestion.

Everything downstream, mood, focus, appetite, how fast you recover from anything, is gated by this. You can out-supplement almost nothing you break here. The schedule below is what actually runs, adapted from Blueprint's sleep habits, not copied from them.

12:00 PMlast caffeine, half-life ~6hrs, so this is a hard cutoff, not a guideline
4:00 PMlast fluids taper begins
5:00 PMno arguments, no conflict, the nervous system doesn't clock out on command
6:00 PMlast meal, 4hrs clear before bed, lowers resting heart rate overnight
8:00 PMlights go amber and red only, blue-light filters on
9:00 PMscreens off, reading, bathing, meditation, journaling, family, nothing that argues with sleep
10:00 PMlights out, every day, plus or minus 30 min, weekends included
~6:00 AMwake, morning light in the eyes within 30 min, unconfirmed exact time, adjusting

The rules behind the schedule

Every rule carries the honest strength of its evidence. What the grades mean

  1. 01
    Sleep is the #1 priority.Established
    Not something you get to if the day allows it. The day is built around it. Sleep loss degrading cognition, glucose handling and immune function is about as solid as human physiology gets.
  2. 02
    Same bedtime, every night.Associated
    10:00 PM plus or minus 30 minutes, weekends included. Regularity predicts outcomes in large observational cohorts, sometimes more strongly than duration does. Observational, so causation is not proven, but the signal is consistent.
  3. 03
    60-minute screen-free wind-down.Associated
    Starts 9:00 PM. Trials find real but modest effects on sleep onset. The honest read is that removing the argument, the feed, the inbox, the notification, matters more than the photons do.
  4. 04
    Last meal by 6:00 PM.Associated
    Four clear hours before bed. Late eating tracks with worse sleep quality and higher overnight heart rate in human studies. Much of the trial evidence for eating windows is confounded by the calorie reduction that comes with them.
  5. 05
    No caffeine, alcohol, or stimulants after noon.Established
    Caffeine's half-life is roughly 6 hours, so a 2 PM coffee is still working at 8 PM. Controlled trials show caffeine taken 6 hours before bed measurably disrupts sleep even when people report feeling no effect. This one is not a preference.
  6. 06
    Amber and red light only after 8:00 PM.Mechanistic
    Blue light suppressing melatonin is real and demonstrated in the lab. The jump from that to a meaningful change in how you actually sleep is where the evidence thins out. Kept because it costs nothing, not because it is proven.
  7. 07
    Room at 60-67F (15-19C).Established
    Core temperature has to drop to initiate sleep, and that thermoregulatory requirement is established physiology. The specific degree range is a sensible convention built on top of it, not a measured optimum.
  8. 08
    Dark, quiet, clutter-free.Associated
    Dark and quiet have real evidence: light and noise fragment sleep architecture measurably. Clutter-free is honestly aesthetic preference wearing a lab coat. Keeping it, but not pretending it is data.
  9. 09
    Morning light within 30 minutes of waking.Established
    Light exposure setting circadian phase is core chronobiology, demonstrated repeatedly in humans. This is the highest-confidence item on the page and the one most often skipped.
  10. 10
    Track it, every night. Adjust weekly.Associated
    A protocol you don't measure is a hope, not a system. This is a method rather than a health claim, so its grade reflects the tracking-improves-adherence literature, not sleep itself.

Live in calendar since 2026-08-08 as five recurring daily events. This page is kept in sync with what's actually scheduled, if they ever disagree, the calendar is probably right and this page is stale.

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