I’ve been using this tool since it was first released in April 2014. <\/p>\n
The tool helps me get to sleep faster than I normally would. It also helps me get to sleep at odd times. I’m an emergency pediatrician who work shifts. Sometimes I need to sleep in the afternoon to prepare for a shift even if I don’t feel tired. The other sleep apps are all pretty much the same: They deliver white noise, music, other sounds, or meditation. There’s nothing special about that. None of them implements “the cognitive shuffle” (or SDI, serial diverse imagining).<\/p>\n
mySleepButton (it’s free, with in-app purchases ranging from $3 to $5) is truly unique. It’s based on cognitive science. This smartphone app (Android, OS X) reads you a word or phrase, one at a time, and gets you to visualize each one for 5-10 seconds. Each word or phrase is very different from the previous one. It might get you to imagine a pear, a lamp shade, a rock, fishing, trying on hats, skiing, whatever. This is meant to imitate and induce the first stage of sleep (“N1”), where your mind drifts from one “random” thing to another. The app keeps my mind off of daytime issues. And it just knocks me out.<\/p>\n