How going to bed at the same time every evening will enhance your sleep.
We spend about 8 hours a day asleep. This amounts to a total of 229 961 hours in our entire life we spend dreaming.
This fact alone should encourage us to think a little longer about how we can improve those 229 961 hours.
Good sleep will give you an awesome start to the new day. You will feel rested, energised and motivated. Additionally, you’ll feel eager to learn, interact with others and exercise.
Have I whetted your appetite? Excellent, let’s dive deeper into this topic.
Realise the importance of sleep
I recently came across this article. The author explains nine reasons why sleep is important.
I mentioned a few of them in the introduction, but some others really stood out: Adequate sleep can reduce the risk of heart disease, prevent depression and boost your immune system. Truly amazing benefits I wished I’d looked into earlier.
Whenever I used to think of sleep, I saw it as a necessary evil. It never crossed my mind, that it might be useful to get good sleep.
In my last years of school, I tried burning the candle on both ends: early mornings and late evenings. I had to get up at six to go to school and often stayed up later than 11 doing work or other unuseful things.
However, sleep deprivation was taking its toll. I was feeling more tired every day of the week. Slowly I was losing the necessary focus for learning about new topics in school.
I finally realised how important sleep really was.
Do you really appreciate your sleep? Are you aware of the perks of a decent nights rest? If not, now might be the time to look into these aspects.
Making changes to your sleep habits
Towards the end of my school life, I realised I had to make serious changes.
So I tried going to bed earlier.
It seemed so simple, but still, it wasn’t easy. I started the week off getting a good nights rest. Towards the end of the week, my nightly rest decreased drastically.
Weekends were the worst. All evening events were shifted back by an hour or more. This wasn’t a problem in its self, but it got worse over time.
I hit the pillow at Midnight on Fridays and Saturdays and slept until nine or later. This wouldn’t be a problem if I had to get up at six every Monday and therefore needed to go to bed at ten.
My problem was regularity. I didn’t have a feasible sleep habit.
Like any other habit, building up a sleep habit takes quite a long time.
I needed to make a plan. I wanted to have an app that could provide the necessary tracking. I was keen to learn more about my sleep and how to improve it.
Using Sleep Cycle to track your sleep
Introducing Sleep Cycle.
Sleep Cycle is a great app I have been using for a couple of years now. It tracks your sleep patterns with the microphone and wakes you in your lightest sleep phase.
Your mornings are saved. But there’s more. Not only is your sleep tracked, but you also receive additional data about your sleep.
One of the best ways to beat insomnia is through regular sleep. It doesn’t matter if we are early risers or night owls. The most important factor for good sleep is that we get the hours and go to bed at the same time every night.
That also includes weekends. (Sorry for the disappointment)
Putting the theory into practice
You won’t need the Sleep Cycle app to put this into practice. Try out the following, to improve your sleep regularity:
- recall the time you went to bed last night
- subtract 30 minutes to fall asleep
- note this time on a piece of paper
- now write down the time you woke up today
- calculate the time you were asleep
That is all you will need to do.
From now on, there are two golden rules:
- Stick to the assigned bedtime every day
- Don’t break rule number one.
If you can stick to these rules, you will improve your sleep very soon.
Wrapping it up
Let’s face the truth. Life gets in the way. And that’s okay. You might need to break the rule once or twice.
But my advice is to try your very best to stick with it for the first three weeks of this exercise.
Research has shown that you will need at least 18 days to form a habit. After around two months it becomes fully automatic.
Use these tips to get started and form a regular sleeping habit. And soon you will be able to share all the benefits of good sleep.
Thanks for reading.
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