“Early to bed and early to rise makes
a man healthy, wealthy and wise.”_Benjamin Franklin
‘Sleep is
for suckers!’ This is a slang of the industrious class in some quarters.
However,
with time, I believe it will soon be replaced by ‘sleep is for winners.’
Now, many
active people consistently deprive themselves of sleep, assuming that, it is an
optimal way to live a more productive life. And for a long time, I engaged in
that line of thinking.
Until
recently, I used to think that to achieve more you need to sleep very little on
a daily basis. This misguided pattern of thought caused me to go through my
days with a high degree of cumulative stress.
Having
learned better, it is now clear to me that quality sleep is necessary for our
mental, emotional and physical vitality.
We can’t
cheat nature. Our Creator has made sleep essential for us to live and function;
God alone is the only One who is always at His best without sleep, without slumber.
This article
is a call for us to make sleep a priority again in our lives as did our
ancestors. In modern culture, the basic human need to rest has been dismissed
for far too long, making missing sleep an erroneous sign of superiority.
Hundreds of
ambitious people now use their precious nocturnal hours for ‘superior
activities,’ throwing their wellbeing in the rear. This, however, has not been
without a huge cost, both in financial and non-financial terms.
For example,
in America alone, research from the Rand Corporation reveals that inadequate
sleep is costing the States more than four hundred billion dollars a year.
Imagine the
cost on the entire world economy!
You see, sleep
deprivation will backfire in the long run.
No matter how strong you think you are; you need quality sleep to stay
healthy and function at your highest level.
In this
direction, Matthew Walker, the author of ‘Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of
Sleep and Dreams’ discovers that:
“Routinely
sleeping less than six hours a night demolishes your immune system.”
In case you
don’t know Walker, here is a brief introduction. He is currently a professor of
neuroscience and psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. And he
was previously a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. His sole
focus is to help improve our overall health through quality sleep.
As evidenced
by his research, sleep deprivation will eventually tell on our physical, social
and economic health. We really can’t afford not to sleep well.
If you are
among those who brag about working or studying late into the night, I hope this
piece will cause an instant change in your thinking.
As it turns
out, nothing is more critical to our wellness, vitality and effectiveness than good,
quality sleep.
To be clear,
I am not arguing that sleeping excessively will make us perform better. But my
argument centers on the fact that the right amount of quality sleep is a sure driver
of peak performance, and it is essential for good health.
Note that
while we sleep, our system flushes away the toxins that were accumulated all through
the day. Deep sleep enables us to wash away the scraps of stress that can slow
us down the next day.
Undoubtedly,
quality sleep is necessary to boost our immune system, replenish depleted
energy and enhance our brain power. Studies have shown that sleep deprivation does
the exact opposite, making us more susceptible to fatigue, sloth and illness.
Now let’s
dive into what we can start doing today to make changes on how we can get
better sleep.
Six Tips to Get Quality
Sleep
To improve
the quality of your sleep, adhere to the following tips on a daily basis:
Maintain a
good balance between nutrition and exercise during the day.
Establish a
pre-sleep routine
Maintain a
comfortable sleeping environment
Don’t eat
too much or too soon before bedtime (or leave a two-hour window between your
bedtime and supper)
Maintain a
regular sleep-wake schedule
Reduce or
eliminate bright light when you are ready to snooze.
Please note
that these tips have been carefully extracted from the wisdom of foremost
experts and sleep psychologists around the world; so don’t ignore them.
Further peep
into the book, ‘Why We Sleep’ reveals the paradox of overworking.
Walker
writes: “The irony
that employees miss is that when you are not getting enough sleep, you work
less productively, thus need to work longer to accomplish a goal.”
And he continues
with an allegorical question: “Why try to
boil a pot of water on medium heat when you could do so in half the time on
high (heat)?”
In other
words, sleep deprivation is not really a smart way to maximize your time.
The key
lesson here is this: whatever your workloads, try not to make a habit of
prioritizing them at the expense of your sleep.
Yes, to make
the most of time, you need to cut-off distractions and eliminate non-essential
things in your day. But try to make sleep a priority, because it is.
Indeed, quality
sleep is a good investment for our long-term health and effectiveness.
Finally, I
hope these lessons will prod us to start making better choices with regard to
how we sleep per night.
