"Every hour you spend on
your rear ends (at night) saps your energy and ruins your health"—Tom Rath
Sleep is not
trivial.
In contrast
to what I have heard some people say that sleep is a form of time wasting necessity
in which nothing meaningful is being done. Actually, sleep is what enables the replenishment
of our mental and physical energy. And energy is what we need to be functional during
our waking hours.
In
cumulative sense, sleep deprivation can weaken our immune system, put our vital
organs at risk, and make us vulnerable to various kinds of serious ailments.
When we
sleep well at night, we are setting ourselves up for maximum efficiency in a
stress-free way, the following day. However, if we buy into the idea that we
can freely cut-off time from sleep to do more work each night, we will expose
ourselves to groggy feelings and inaccurate thinking all through the day.
According to
the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and The National Sleep Foundation and
the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a matured person needs quality
sleep for health and vitality.
In addition,
Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at University of California,
and a former professor of psychiatry at Harvard University writes in his New
York Times bestselling book, ‘Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and
Dreams,’ that:
“Routinely
sleeping less than six or seven hours a night demolishes your immune system.”
And he continues that, “Humans need more than seven hours of sleep each night
to maintain cognitive performance.”
And he
concludes with this: “After sixteen
hours of being awake, the brain begins to fail.” With the foregoing, I expect
you thinking, ‘Wow! Sleep is this important!’
So, if I
have convinced you of the importance of ‘mere’ slumber, it is high time to get
started on making a positive change for sleeping better. Quality sleep doesn’t
just happen, it needs to be designed and planned for.
That’s what
we are about to do now with three simple tips:
1} Wake Up at the Same
Time Each Day
The way to
train your body for a good slumber habit is to sleep and wake up by your own
design, every single day.
To
accomplish this, set an alarm for the same wake up time, every day and resist
the temptation to snooze, on any day.
You should ascertain
the hours your body needs to be well rested each night, and discipline yourself
to keep those hours on a regular basis.
2} Go to Bed at the Same Time,
Each Night
One of the
secrets of the most extra-ordinary people is that they wake up at the same
time, everyday.
Is it
because of their gene, you may ask? No. The secret is: many of them go to bed,
the same time, every night, without fail. As a result, it became natural for
them to wake up at the exact same time, every morning.
Now, Mathew
Walker has something important to say at this point. He says that if you can
take away the following bit of advice from his book, you will be way ahead of many
readers who read the book without put the nugget into action.
And it is
this:
“Go to bed and wake up at the
same—everyday— no matter what.”
It is simple
enough, right? But only if, you actually do it.
Furthermore,
make sure your bedroom is adequately designed to support quality sleep. And build
yourself a good pre-sleep routine to prepare your brain that the time for
slumber is near, then go to bed when it is just that time.
3}
Keep in mind that, Sleep Is Not Trivial
There is a
proverb that says “A wood cutter doesn’t lose his time by sharpening his axe.”
So don’t deny yourself the benefit of complete renewal through quality sleep by
assuming you can force yourself to get more done at the expense of necessary slumber.
Quite the
contrary, when you sharpen your axe, you can cut far more trees in less time.
But with a dead axe, you will end up spending a lot more time, a lot more
energy and whole lot of additional stress, cutting fewer trees.
Finally, living
a healthy productive life involves the way you sleep, and the quality of the
hours in which you sleep. In a nutshell, for anyone who cares about sound health,
efficiency, creativity and maximum impact in this life, sleep is never a trivia.
I hope I
have done my job in making this crystal clear by now.
Thanks for
stopping by.
