How Not Knowing This About Sleep Makes You a Rookie
Are you one to toss and turn all night long? Do you dream about sleeping a full night through? Or have you given up and convinced yourself sleep was a waste of time? Who needs it anyway? We need it more than anyone cares to admit. Anyone looking to uplevel in any area must attend to it. Here are some tips.
A story of insomnia. Have you ever lay in bed staring at the ceiling, gone through another cycle of deep breathing and acceptance with not luck, so you turned Netflix back on, and when you finished the episode, got up to eat something, fret about your next day’s performance, punched the pillow with rage, until you ended up crying your way into a few hours of restless dreams, only to wake up exhausted?
Are you tired of tossing and turning into the wee hours of the morning? Or perhaps you clock out immediately when your head hits the pillow only to wake up at three o’clock in the morning and roam the house the rest of the night, the wheels of your mind spinning.
It comes as no surprise that people sleep less now than they ever did, with all-night TV binging and social media, not to mention the anxiety of deep-reaching change happening worldwide.
What Sleep Deprivation Is Doing to Us
According to Deloitte, from an organisational point of view, sleep deprivation directly impacts performance, one’s ability to learn, to concentrate and to retain information. Insufficient sleep makes people more emotionally unstable, puts them in a bad mood, and could be linked to agressive behavior, forgetfulness, and unethical actions. These factors negatively impact both teams and individual performance.
And we feel like crap, so rather than dreaming big dreams for a positive future, we put our energy into longing for a full night of sleep, begging for it, coveting our neighbor’s slumber.
As the study clearly points out, “sleep is the ultimate performance enhancer.” It makes us more resistant and alert. We need it for everything.
How to Get Better Sleep
Counting sleep in number of hours a night, although useful, ends up being far less interesting than exploring the quality of the sleep you are getting.
First of all, more is not necessarily better. A 2010 study looked at 1.1 million people’s sleep patterns and couldn’t find any statistical health-related reason to sleep longer than six and a half hours per night.
It’s the quality that counts. They’ve got to be top notch.
A New Perspective on Sleep
I’ll admit to many nights roaming around the house bleary-eyed, desperate for a little shut-eye, years of sleep deprivation, certain that I was beyond help.
It took a step-by-step approach, setting clear priorities, and testing all kinds of hacks to reach what is now an average of just about 7 hours of sleep a night with a good 20% REM sleep, and occasionally upwards of 15% deep sleep.
I began this journey with a mindset shift: I knew I needed to spend a third of my life a sleep. I decided I should make the most of it. Get it right. Make it count. I turned to viciously protecting those few hours before sleep.
Prioritizing Sleep
Determined that sleep took precedence of everything, I eating for sleep and leaving parties when I felt the sleep train coming in. At home, I’ve asked guests to let themselves out.
I also designed my sleep space for ideal recovery—making it very dark, very comfortable, very quiet, cold and undisturbed. You should see me “sleep-ready” hotel rooms!
I then stopped using an alarm clock, set an ideal bed time that would leave me enough time to wake when I needed to get up in the morning. It’s a rare soul who can sway me from it.
Track Your Sleep
I also started tracking my sleep. First I used the app Sleep Cycle, and then got an Oura ring. The actual data has been less helpful than the gamification. It draws attention to sleep. And the morning messages become a bit addictive. “Looks like you’re well rested. Let’s do this.” Feels better than “Tonight’s a new night” (hear the sigh of disappointment), and “Take time to recover” relieves the stress of having to perform even when I’m tired.
Light and Dark and Sleep
Quality slumber requires paying close attention to light. Sunlight in the morning and at sunset will reset the circadian clock and help with sleep. But only if you don’t bath in blue light past dusk. This means you should lower the lights in your home, got off the screens, and wear blue-blocking glasses. Social media and email will also trigger a surge in cortisol, and the bright white light in the bathroom with tell your brain it’s noon, not nighttime.
Letting Go
What nobody tells you is that finding sleep again is hard. It’s one step at a time and the road can be long. Habits of insomnia come back in a flash—the anguish, the fear of future fatigue, the despair.
It helps to let go of the resistance to whatever is happening and accept that night is a magic time—asleep or awake.
Needle Movers
Here are a few hacks that moved the needle for me.
Restricting caffeine to mornings only—it’s basic, but who does that?
Banishing light in any form from the bedroom, paying particular attention to the little red, green, blue lights on all those electronics.
Shifting intensive sports to the end of the afternoon and following up, when possible, with a cold shower.
Eating a spoonful of raw honey before bed to fuel the busy brain when I’m waking up at 3 a.m.
Supplementing with magnesium and occasionally taking rhodiola roses.
For me, the day starts the night before, at least an hour before bedtime.