Introduction

Pzizz plays you a Sleep-optimized mix of music, voiceover, and sound effects that changes each night, that will quickly quiet your mind, put you to sleep, keep you asleep, and wake you up feeling refreshed.

We combine the science of psycho-acoustics, clinical sleep interventions, and personalization through learning algorithms to give you great sleep. It’s relaxing, incredibly effective, and clinically proven.

Quick Start

Just pick a module and play. All you need to do is listen to Pzizz and be guided to sleep. You can wear headphones/earbuds for optimal effectiveness, or just listen to it over speaker if that’s more comfortable.

Settings

After you choose a module, you can adjust various settings by clicking the upper right gear icon on the timer screen or the gear icon in the playback controls.

Audio Controls

While you are pzizzing you have the ability to adjust the voice volume and gender, as well as the music volume directly on the playback screen. If you pause the session, the ‘skip’ button will change to give you the option to ‘restart’ your pzizz. Additionally you can access the ‘settings’ through the gear icon.

Dreamscapes

‘Dreamscape’ is our word for the specialized background sound effects and music that help put you to sleep. We compose every Dreamscape ourselves with our in-house staff based upon effective principles in psycho-acoustics (the branch of psychology that deals with sound perception and its physiological effects).

Dreamscapes have four sections: an ‘introduction’ which captures your attention enough to calm your mind; a ‘falling’ sequence (short for falling asleep) that draws you deeper and deeper into sleep; a ‘sleeping’ sequence that keeps you asleep; and a ‘waking’ portion that takes three minutes to gently bring you back up from slumber.

Uniquely, Pzizz’s algorithm can mix and match different sections from different dreamscapes to give you a unique experience each time (shuffle mode), which is very important in ensuring Pzizz stays effective.

While playing a session, you can choose to ‘skip’ if you’d like to hear a different dreamscape.

If on the other hand you don’t like the dreamscape you are listening to and never want to hear it again click the ‘thumbs down’ button and it will exclude that dreamscape section from future playback.

A full list of the dreamscape sections you’ve thumbed down is available in your settings menu.

Narrations

Our voice scripts are based on a variety of techniques: progressive relaxation, hypnosis, breathing exercises, guided imagery, meditation, mindfulness, heart rate variability breathing, cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I), autogenic training, neuro-linguistic programming, storytelling, and poetry.

It’s truly a mixture of different aspects of art and science, and just like the dreamscapes, many of the narration scripts have multiple variations, so every time you use them you’ll hear a different sequence, automatically.

If you’d like to learn about the science behind the narrations, check this out.

Playing a Specific Dreamscape

The list of dreamscapes is available in the settings under ‘Dreamscapes.’ You can sort them alphabetically or by release date by clicking the upper right icon. Clicking any particular dreamscape will play you a preview of the intro section, as well as display a description.

A word of caution when using Pzizz to play a specific dreamscape (instead of random or shuffle): for some people playing the same dreamscape night after night can cause it to lose effectiveness, so definitely allow yourself to explore and experience different dreamscapes over time.

Favorites

At the end of your pzizz, you can ‘favorite’ it, which will save it to your favorites list and allow you to listen to that exact pzizz again. Your favorites are accessible through the ‘favorite’ icon on the bottom right of the homescreen (which will only show once you favorite at least one session). You can delete a favorite by swiping left, which will reveal the delete button. Additionally you can also favorite from the history menu by clicking the star icon next to a session entry.

History

In the sidebar menu, you can access your ‘history,’ which is a list of your completed sessions ordered by time. You can easily view the rating and favorite any entry, and if you tap a particular session it will allow you to play back that exact pzizz again.

Ratings

At the end of your session you’ll have the chance to rate how well it went. We use your ratings to continually improve the experience for you, so please take the quick moment to give the feedback! Ratings can be disabled in the settings.

Sleep Headphones

If listening to Pzizz over the phone speaker isn’t effective for you and normal headphones/earbuds bother you during sleep, you can try various types of “sleep headphones.” We wrote an in-depth article looking at different options. Click here to read it.

Science

Is there real science behind Pzizz? Yes! Read all about it on our blog. We spend a lot of time researching, designing, iterating and testing the content to make it as effective as possible.

Focus Module

The focus module is music designed to help you get more work done.

Built around ‘focuscapes,’ we’ve created environments of sound that help you get in the zone and be productive, backed by the same thorough research we use to create our dreamscapes.

Each focuscape has a ‘focus’ section which gets you into full concentration and a ‘cool down’ section which brings you back out gently.

Pro tip: in the settings for the Focus Module there is the ability to choose how often you want to ‘switch,’ meaning how long you want a focuscape to play until it switches to another focuscape. Some people like to listen to the same thing for hours, some people like to change it up more often. Experiment and find what works for you.

Misc. Info

• If you select a session that is less than 10 minutes in any module, the ‘waking’ or ‘cool down’ sections will not play.
• On iOS, you can force touch on the alarm notification to choose to snooze or stop the alarm right from the notification. For devices that don’t have force touch, you can left swipe and tap “View.”
• We publish new dreamscapes, narrations, and focuscapes on an ongoing basis that get included automatically in the app. Check out the ‘product’ section of our blog to see the list of updates

Frequently Asked Questions

Want to learn more about Pzizz or how your sleep works? Check out our FAQ page.

Get Help

If you have questions or need support please contact us at [email protected], or just click the ‘contact us’ button in the menu. We take pride in our customer service!

How to use Pzizz (Instructions) was originally published in Pzillow Talk on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.