Sleeping is one of my very favorite activities, rivaled closely by preparing to sleep, or the pre-sleep time I spend laying horizontally with my hands folded on my chest, waiting for true sleep to capture me. When I am asleep, I dream of sleeping even more, usually in various natural landscapes. When I am awake, I am looking forward to sleeping and planning ways to make that sleep richer than the last. I am both Snow White and the witch, diabolically planning to sedate me, and then falling victim to myself.

In 2018, my approach is mechanical. I love my wild cherry melatonin just as much as every other millennial, but for some reason, ingestables are hit-or-miss—it’s almost as if the human body is sublime and unpredictable. Plus sleeping pills are upsetting to bring up in friendly conversation. There’s nothing like a SmartPillow to light up your casual office chatter, as well as your bedroom—if it’s set to infrared therapy. Sleep tech is the final frontier of the wellness economy, which, by the way, has already embraced bidets.

Does introducing new and unusual technologies into a human sleep cycle automatically make it more efficient, or does it complicate the process to the point of stress and, tragically even, sleeplessness? That's a great discussion question for later. For now, I'm looking to mechanize my dozing for an optimum eight hours while inching closer to my ultimate goal of sleeping forever. Don’t wake me up.

Sleep Cycle

Bar none, the best (and free-est) sleeping technology available as an app. It is so sophisticated that I have no idea how it does its job, but seven or eight hours after laying it face down on a nearby surface, I am served with a comprehensive dossier on what went on when I was out. It records when you wake up and how often, plus the depth of sleep you’re achieving as you cycle through REM. (My deepest sleep, for those wondering, occurs around 5 in the morning consistently.) You give the app a window of time and it gently chimes you into being when it perceives you at your lightest sleep cycle—in real life, this feels like your alarm going off when your eyes are closed but you’re not actually sleeping. (Free, or 29.99 a year for premium)

In addition to taking notes on you while you sleep, Sleep Cycle also presents you with 15-second recordings of your snores. Why is this? To embarrass me? Despite this, it is still very good. Docking one point for rudeness; awarding nine for each hour of sleep it gives me.

Sound Oasis Glo2Sleep Therapy Mask

Everything about the Glo2Sleep Mask is geriatric, from its blatant disregard for aesthetic value to its radical insistence on comfort, evidenced by the inch-thick foam padding pressing into your face. That and its bone-chilling value proposition ("Simply...... turn your mind off!" reads the dystopian product page copy) is why I only recommend this for people who are militant about their sleeping. It’s analog, but impressive: Glow in the dark panels within the mask lull your semi-conscious into a meditative state by offering a point of concentration. As they dull, so do you. If it sounds overly simplistic, I would agree with you, except it uncannily works. ($29)

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There is absolutely nothing this deranged battery-operated cushion won’t do. It will imperceptibly vibrate to stop your snoring. It will remain cold, forever, thanks to temperature-wicking technology. It will softly croon you to sleep without waking up the person next to you. It also provides a soft, comfortable surface for sleeping. If the $200 dollar price tag scares you, are you even serious about this? ($199)

Magnesphere

Will somebody please buy me this enormous sleep contraction, that uses resonance to literally rearrange the magnetic fields around your body, lulling you into equilibrium? And gradually tweaking your nervous system over time so you became less reactive to stress? On the forefront of luxury relaxation, there is Magneceutical's Magnesphere, a chair ensconced in an optic-white circular chamber that I desperately want to own. Currently, it's only available to relaxation professionals—chiropractors, pain management clinicians, and inexplicably, the New England Patriots—but it seems to me to be the final answer in sleep tech. If you or a loved one represents the Magnosphere, I am available to review it. ($3,050)

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