One suspicion I have is that we will increasingly learn that sleep is a superpower and to optimise for physical health, mental health, intelligence, learning efficiency and energy levels we will have to learn to prioritise and improve sleep. If we can understand sleep from a first principles perspective, understand what its components are, how they come together and what each one aims to achieve; we can build tools and techniques to begin modifying our sleep to get us into the different sleep states more readily or deeply.
That’s quite far away but one easy change we can make is to understand our sleep phenotypes better. Are we a morning or night person? Do we like pitch black rooms or rooms with a bit of light? How sensitive are we to caffeine? When should we be done with meals for the day? Do we prefer a slightly cold room? What kind of firmness do we prefer in a mattress? What kind of pillow is optimal for our head shape, neck shape and general comfort preferences?
And importantly, would we sleep better in our own bed? I think the era of two people sleeping in the same bed may be a short one. Will we return to the historical norm of one person per one bed? Ensuring there is ample space between people to ensure one does not wake or influence the other during their sleep. I suspect we will probably move towards sleeping pods that will help create a more personalised and ideal sleep habitat.