Alexandra Price
Writing at Sleep Optimized
About
Marketing director, San Francisco. Thirty-nine. I fell asleep during a client presentation in March.
Not a slight drift -- an actual head-drop-startled-awake moment, in a conference room with eight people, mid-sentence during a campaign debrief. I went back to my desk afterward and sat there for about ten minutes. That was the moment I stopped being able to call the sleep situation manageable.
I had been running on four to five hours for most of my thirties. Long hours are part of the job in marketing -- quarterly launches, time zone calls at 7 AM, Slack threads that expect responses by 9 PM because someone in London needs an answer. I had convinced myself this was what the work required. My body disagreed, and the conference room was how it said so.
The six months after that were a genuine overhaul. I tracked everything in a notes app: what I tried, when I took it, how long it took to fall asleep (rough estimate), how many times I woke up, how the next morning felt on a scale. I tried magnesium combinations that did nothing I could measure. I tried a two-week no-alcohol experiment that helped more than expected. I tried melatonin in varying doses and discovered the dose actually mattered -- which sounds obvious and is not how I was doing it. I tried a wind-down routine I kept for three weeks and then abandoned during a product launch and had to rebuild from scratch. That one taught me more about what I actually needed than anything else.
Some things worked. Some worked conditionally (only if I also did the other thing, only during low-stress weeks). Some worked once and then stopped. I documented all of it.
Still working 50-hour weeks. Still checking email before bed more than I should. Sleeping dramatically better than I was a year ago. My therapist says progress, not perfection. She is usually right.
Not a doctor. Not a sleep coach. Not a wellness person in any professional sense. Just a marketing director who got tired of being tired and started paying attention to what actually moved the needle.
Recent posts by Alexandra Price
- Optimal Bedroom Temperature for Sleep During High Stress Work Weeks
- How to Lower Cortisol Levels for Better Sleep After Stressful Weeks
- Journaling for Better Sleep: My Routine for Late Night Thoughts
- Finding the Best Cooling Mattress Pads for High Stress Night Sweats
- Using a Weighted Blanket for Anxiety and Better Nighttime Rest
- My Experience With Mouth Taping for Better Sleep and Less Morning Fog
- Alcohol and Sleep Quality: How I Handle Work Networking Events
- Why I Wear Blue Light Blocking Glasses for Late Night Emails
- Melatonin Alternatives: Why I Switched to SleepLean for Better Rest
- Why I Use Magnesium for Sleep and Anxiety as a Busy Director
- When to Stop Drinking Caffeine for Better Sleep on High Stress Days
- How to Build a Sustainable Bedtime Routine Without Quitting Your Job
- Morning After Strategy: How to Lead Meetings on Four Hours Sleep
- Dealing with the 10 PM Marketing Brain Second Wind
- Resurge vs. The Boardroom: Why This Budget Sleep Hack Still Saves My Sanity in 2026
- Hotel Room Survival Guide: How I Actually Sleep on Business Trips in 2026
- Managing Late Night Cravings and Sleep Quality as a Busy Director: My 2026 Strategy
- My Honest Yu Sleep Review: Still the Best Fix for Executive Burnout in 2026?
- The 15-Minute Office Decompression Routine for Better Sleep
- Why I Stopped Taking My Laptop to Bed: A 30-Day Digital Boundary Experiment
- The Data Doesn't Lie: My Updated 60-Day Sleep Tracking Experiment as a Marketing Director
- Shutting Down the Marketing Brain: The 3-Step Transition That Saved My Sleep
- The Sunday Night Shutdown: Reclaiming My Rest Before the Monday Morning Status Call
- How Bad Sleep Almost Cost Me a Promotion — And What I Changed
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