How To Get Better Sleep

For the month of September the challenge is to get better sleep. 

If you’re like many people you probably have trouble sleeping or you never feel like you get enough sleep. Sleep deprivation is a common problem. Whether it’s due to work, school, kids, or even unhealthy habits, people just aren’t sleeping as well as they need to.

That’s why we are gong to take a month to understand and optimize our sleeping habits.

What is good sleep?

Sleep is an incredibly complex topic. When learning about sleep there are many topics and nuances that I am not going to get into much detail on here. Some of these sleep topics are: sleep stages, circadian rhythm, sleep timing, hormones, wakefulness, etc. A deep dive into these topics is beyond the scope of this article, but if you would like to get more information regarding these sleep topics you can check here

 https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-hygiene/what-is-healthy-sleep

Now I will talk about how I define good sleep. I would define good sleep as enough sleep to wake up feeling rested, clear-headed, and alert. You want to be getting enough sleep that your body recovers from the strain that was placed on it the day before, you also want to have enough energy to get through the day without being groggy. Essentially, you want to wake up feeling great and go to sleep feeling drained. Actually being tired at night is important, when your body and mind are ready to go to bed, then you will fall asleep faster and have better, more restful sleep. 

There are many sources and studies detailing how much sleep humans need, but these are varied and don’t account for individual differences. Generally sources say humans need about 7-10 hours of sleep, while infants require much more since they are growing so rapidly. 

Good sleep is having enough mental clarity and energy to get through the day and accomplish your tasks without sleepiness lowering your ability to do so. 

The challenge

For the challenge I want you to do a few things:

  • Go to sleep as soon as possible once you feel tired at night
  • Wake up naturally in the morning when possible
  • Wake up at the same time every day
  • Track the amount of sleep you get each night and how rested you feel the for the day
By doing these things and tracking the results we should be able to find our minimum and optimum amounts of sleep that our body needs. Everyone knows that getting better sleep makes you feel better, but there is still a huge disparity between the amount of sleep people are getting and the amount they need.

For an additional resource on sleep hygiene you should check this site out. It has tons of information about how to get a better nights sleep. 

https://www.sleepfoundation.org/sleep-hygiene

That’s it for this month. I hope you enjoy some much needed rest this month and see how much better you feel when you are getting adequate amounts of sleep. 

Don’t forget to leave a like if you enjoyed this post. Leave a comment below about how much sleep you generally get. 

You can check out last month’s challenge here

Stop Wasting Time: Time Tracking