Sleep

We hear it all the time! Sleep is so important. So, how do I write on a topic that we know about, and for some reason, most of us still do not take it as seriously as we should.

And I am speaking for myself here because I know I certainly could be more serious about it.

How serious?

I nearly fell asleep writing those few lines above last night (6:30pm) and now I am writing these lines full of energy, after a night’s sleep of seven and half hours. This is nothing new though – we know how much better we feel with sleep as opposed to without.

So, how do we incorporate it more into our lives? This is done by two main ways: Prioritizing and Sacrificing.

First, prioritizing.

We have a lot of responsibilities and kudos to us for attending to these responsibilities. Now we must look at a certain number of hours of sleep as a responsibility. The number of hours is dependent on the person – we all are different.

Some factors to look for when deciding how many hours of sleep we need are:

1. After waking up in the morning, could you fall back to sleep at ten or eleven a.m.? If yes, then you need more hours.

2. Can you function optimally without caffein before noon? If no, you need more sleep.

3. If you didn’t set an alarm clock, would you sleep past that time? If yes, more sleep.

4. Do you find yourself at a computer screen and/or book reading and then rereading the same sentence? You guessed it; you need more sleep. You guessed it; you need more sleep. You guessed…. Just kidding, just checking ;)

With this basis of assessing, one can experiment with hours of sleep to find that sweet spot. This now becomes one’s responsibility. Of course, I am no one to say what is someone’s responsibility, but I do believe this is the basis to get optimal sleep. And then, more than likely, this will result in getting optimal performance.

After we found the right number of hours, which tends to be more than we are currently doing, we must sacrifice to make up for the extra time in bed that we are going to spend.

Time to sacrifice.

We set an ideal time for closing our eyes and opening them up. Once we have those two times set, we must think of what will lead and keep us from achieving these two goals, aka responsibilities. Again, I am no one to tell you what you should be sacrificing. However, I do believe that a bit of extra sleep, can help make up for the 30-60 minutes of work, exercise, play that you are giving up, by making it more meaningful in the coming day.

Once we have our things that we sacrificed, we must experiment. Change is always good, so why not see if this new mode of a days’ life is something that sticks and brings way more value to you moving forward. Whether you ultimately implement the new hours, sacrifices and priorities, or not, you are sure to learn something about yourself. And that is always a positive.

So, if you are reading this start of morning or midday, consider an earlier bedtime. And if you are capping off your day with this read, good night.

Walker, Matthew, PhD. Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. Pages 34-35. Scribner, 2017.