I do definitely notice the extra ambient stimuli can cause me to have a lack of focus. I'm wondering if practicing with the stimuli in the background is beneficial at all. I often will put in earplugs when trying to be really focused on something such as reading, doing the brain games and puzzles, or writing.

As far as sleep goes, I get 9-11 hours of quality sleep each night. I'm very fortunate. However, I wonder sometimes if that is too much sleep and if I should push myself some more by waking up earlier. I usually wake up on my own without an alarm. I definitely feel better on these days.

Another thing I've noticed is that I no longer remember my dreams. I used to have very vivid dreams every morning that I would remember. I just searched up the medicine I'm taking (Abilify), and it is common to have short-term memory loss. Now that I think about it, the decline in memory and muscle endurance, and increase in apathy all happened around the time I upped my dose.

Everything is really a balance and has lots of trade-offs.