How to Get More Time to Sleep
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Do you get enough sleep?
If six hours is a normal night’s sleep, and you’re addicted to coffee just to wake up in the morning, the answer is probably no.
What I often find surprising is how many people miss sleep, without any need to. Some people have a legitimate reason for not getting enough sleep. New parents will have a hard time sleeping eight, uninterrupted hours a day. But for most people, there is an opportunity for sleep, but sleep is made a low priority.
Example: The All-Night Exam Cram
It’s December, and that means exams for many students. And with exams, comes the Red Bull induced, 4 a.m. study sessions. Some students take this approach to an extreme, staying up all night to study for an exam the next day.
This isn’t productive. Studying isn’t manual labor, it’s brain work. Sleep is connected with the learning process, and missing hours of sleep doesn’t help you study. Worse, if you’re skipping sleep the day before an exam, the tiredness will hurt you more than missing a few hours of studying.
Make Sleep a Priority
All of this lost sleep is the result of a myth. This myth says that the work you accomplish is a direct result of the amount of time you put in. While this kind of thinking might apply to twisting bolts in a factory, it’s completely wrong when you need to use your mind.
Mental work is a result of your energy levels. If you are exhausted from lack of sleep, completing the same amount of work can take twice or three times as long. Cutting sleep for a day or two can help in a crunch, but it doesn’t last.
If you need more sleep, start making it a priority. No suggestions will work if you still treat sleep like an afterthought to your day. The truth is, if you can’t regularly accomplish your work with eight hours a night, there’s little chance you could do better on five or six.
How to Make More Time for Sleep
- Put work early in the day. If you’re working until 2 a.m. on a regular basis, it’s probably because you don’t manage your time well. Move work into earlier hours in the morning. This will put less pressure on you to stay up all night to finish.
- Set a bed time. Sounds childish, but it works. If you currently go to bed whenever you feel like it, there’s a good chance you’ll keep pushing your day later and later into the night. Humans didn’t evolve with electric lighting, so you can’t just trust your body for when the best time to sleep is.
- Get rid of the caffeine. Caffeine is a band-aid. It helps you stay awake, but it prevents you from healing the underlying problem. If you can’t sleep on caffeine, avoid it. If you need it to wake up in the morning, here’s some tips to wake up early without the drugs.
- Eliminate your stress. Okay, so it’s a pretty trite suggestion, but stress can impact your sleeping. Your life needs to be set up to manage the stress that builds up. Think about adding some garbage collecting routines to your life to take the mental trash out each day, so it doesn’t build up.
- Do less work, and do it smarter. You’re current time isn’t probably being used with 100% efficiency. The popularity of productivity blogs is a statement to how bad most people are at handling procrastination. Boosting your productivity should give you more time for sleep.
- Set no-work hours. When planning your schedule for the next few months, set a few hours at the end of each day where you aren’t allowed to work. This will force you to get work done earlier in the morning, and make it harder to skip sleep to get things finished.
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Chris (from Lifestyle Project) said,
December 3, 2008 at 6:35 am
I’d add that I have found that if I am doing something that ‘engages my brain’ such as blogging, working etc late means my mind is still active so once I am actually ready for sleep I can’t drop off as I have too much going on in my head.
For this reason I don’t work late and just read some fiction or watch some easy TV for half an hour before bed, so I can get to sleep quicker and therefore get more quality sleep.
What’s Up Wednesdays: Fitness Regimen || Beyond the Rhetoric || said,
December 3, 2008 at 12:51 pm
[…] society puts so much pressure on us that we may not be getting enough sleep. Scott explains how to get more time to sleep without sacrificing your career aspirations or time with the […]
Tabs said,
December 4, 2008 at 4:24 pm
Great list we should all simply add this to our bedtime routine, or I should say, I will create a bedtime routine from this list. I suffer as a night owl who needs to function during the day. I enjoy the 2am hour more than most but would love to be up by six or seven so, I have to decide which one benefits me the most right now. I don’t need a crystal ball figure that one out.
Tabs.
Richard said,
December 5, 2008 at 5:47 pm
I find I don’t work well in the morning, so do tend to work later in the day, but do have set ‘no work’ hours.
Gedankenstrich & links und rechts! - 06. Dezember 2008: Den Fokus-Muskel trainieren | blatternet.ch - Büro-Organisation, Produktivität, Zeitmanagement und Simplify said,
December 5, 2008 at 9:19 pm
[…] Ich schlafe in letzter Zeit eindeutig zu wenig. Etwas, was mir Sorgen bereitet. Vielleicht hilft mir ja der Artikel von Scott H. Young: -> How to Get More Time to Sleep […]
Making Time for Sleep « Medliorate said,
December 8, 2008 at 1:15 am
[…] How to Get More Time to Sleep [Scott H Young] […]
Nicolas said,
December 10, 2008 at 7:18 am
Hi,
Getting up early in the morning is very important. Your productivity is higher because you get less disturbed and in the evening you will be tired and sleep easily.
However, I know many people who find it difficult to get up early in the morning. In my Time Management Master blog I wrote an article on how to get up early in the morning - just follow the link.
http://memytime.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/get-up-early-in-the-morning-2/
rupss said,
January 7, 2009 at 11:53 pm
nice post Scott.
too bad most of us high school students are forced, by schedule, to do our work in the evening/night!
Gedankenstrich & links und rechts! - 06. Dezember 2008: Den Fokus-Muskel trainieren said,
January 31, 2009 at 8:32 am
[…] Ich schlafe in letzter Zeit eindeutig zu wenig. Etwas, was mir Sorgen bereitet. Vielleicht hilft mir ja der Artikel von Scott H. Young: -> How to Get More Time to Sleep […]
ukproducer said,
February 15, 2009 at 10:24 am
I like “Set no work hours” bit. I think that will drive me to be more productive at other times.