Do you often sacrifice sleep for more work hours? Don’t worry, we’ve all done it. So you’re a functioning human being, congrats! Still, I’ve got bad news for you: you’re not optimizing your time. Not sleeping enough, and not sleeping well enough are two factors that have a drastically negative impact on your productivity throughout the day.
Research and polls show that time of sleep needed by adults averages between 7 and 9 hours a night. Sleep debt has tons of negative effects on our mental and physical health, such as memory impairment, decreased alertness and increased response times. Extreme cases can lead to serious health issues such as strokes, heart attacks and failures, obesity… For your own sake and the sake of your productivity, you should sleep more, and you should sleep better.
But here’s the good news: you can hack your way into a perfect night’s sleep. Since I joined Solid, I’ve tried and tested 15 ideas that helped me sleep better.
Before getting into the details, you have to know a little bit about how sleep works.
How sleep works
First of all, understand that when you sleep, your body goes through repeated cycles. They can be broken down into 2 main ones: REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep, and non-REM sleep. REM lasts about 70 minutes and is when dreams happen. It’s also at that time when your sleep is the lightest, which means you’re most likely to be awakened. Non-REM is when you rest. It’s a phase of deeper sleep, where your body recharges its batteries. Waking up from non-REM sleep will leave you feeling heavy and disoriented for several minutes. In short: aim to sleep well and peacefully during non-REM sleep, and aim to wake up during REM, when your slumber at its lightest.
So, to sleep better, there are 3 moments you can address: improving your sleep environment, working on what you do before going to bed, and working on how you wake up.
1. Creating the perfect sleep environment
Have you ever had a dream where suddenly, a very annoying alarm started ringing inside your dream, fully incorporated within the environment and story… Only to wake up a few seconds later to realize that it actually was the noise of your alarm clock? That’s because your body remains alert and conscious of surrounding events when you sleep. So, here are a few things to do to prevent external events from waking you up.
Sleep in a pitch black room. Invest in shutters, block-out curtains, or check out this hack using aluminum foil.
Cancel all the noise. Try earplugs or playing white noise if you must. Like preventing light, canceling noise is important for a successful night’s sleep. That is: abrupt, unwanted noises such as cars on the street, or thunder. Playing white noise will even out the difference between perceived silence and sudden, louder noises, resulting in a smoother night.
Temperature and Humidity: turn down the heat. Even if falling asleep results in a slight drop of temperature for your body, you should aim to sleep in a colder room than what you’re probably used to, simply because the blankets already provide the warmth you need. Research has shown that the right room temperature is between 15°C to 18°C (60F to 67F). There are a few apps to help gauge temperature, but they use your device’s internal censors which are prone to heating along with your device’s parts, so their accuracy is to take with a pinch of salt. Nothing beats a good old thermostat.
Accept that it’s OK to wake up during the night. Research for historian Roger Ekirch of Virginia Tech points out that our ancestors embraced a bi-phasic sleep schedule. They didn’t have a long night’s sleep like we do, but instead slept in 2 sessions, separated with a waking phase during the night. A 1993 study had subjects going through sequences of 10 hours of light and 14 hours of night each day. After completing long, uninterrupted nights at first, all subjects settled for an average of 8.5 hours of sleep, divided in two sessions. So, if you wake up in the middle of the night, don’t stress over it! Good doctors will tell you to grab a book or even get up, go for a walk, and allow yourself to go back to sleep only when you feel like it.
Track your sleep to improve. There are tons of apps out there that allow you to track your sleeping patterns, among other things. I’ve been using Sleep Cycle for more than 3 years now. It uses the movement trackers inside my phone to gauge the mattress’s movements to deduct how deep asleep I am. After some nights using it, you’ll see patterns in your sleeping habits and immediately know what you can improve on. For me, going to sleep earlier has been my main area of improvement.
Oh, and one last tip: don’t mistake your bedroom for your living room. Do yourself a favor and train your brain to associate your bed with sleep.
2. Falling asleep
As I said, the going to sleep part was where I was really messing up. It’s also been the one that had the biggest positive impact on my productivity once I fixed it. Here are tiny behavioral changes that will help you sleep more, and sleep better.
Shut off all electronic devices 30 minutes before bedtime. After a certain hour, bright screens and artificial light keep you awake. This is for two reasons: (1) They prevent the apparition of melatonin, which you need in order to feel sleepy. (2) It impairs your circadian rhythm: your internal clock that dictates your energy levels. If you must use a device, try to dim the screen lights. Many of us at Solid like to use f.lux which automatically reduces the input of blue light from your screen after a specific time.
Don’t try to force yourself into going to sleep. I like to read until I feel too tired to continue. Then I put the book aside and let myself go to sleep. For the same reason we just discussed, read from a real book or Kindle instead of an iPad.
Play soothing background noise or music. Try websites such as this fan noise generator, soundstosleepto.com, or the “Relax” settings on Noisli.com. All of these are great resources to start from. Play it at reasonable volumes: anything too loud would negatively impact your sleep. The music you choose should be relaxing and consistent, otherwise it just will bring more unwanted noise.
Be careful what you eat and drink. 4 to 6 hours prior to bed, avoid drinking caffeine, alcohol, and eating sugary treats. Even if they may help you fall asleep, these will mess up your sleep and especially your REM cycles. It may result in waking you up several times in the middle of the night.
3. Getting up
Once you have healthy routines when going to bed, manage to sleep for long enough in a healthy environment, getting up should already be a piece of cake. Still, here are a few tips that will help you kickstart your day. Reddit user jdarbuckle has some strong opinions on what you should do, including taking a 5 minutes cold shower. Rest assured you can get a productive start thanks to less extreme activities.
Be consistent with your wake up times. Ideally, wake up every day at the same hour. If you stick to this schedule, soon enough you won’t need to set an alarm clock, because your brain will take care of waking you up. You can also use apps like Sleep Cycle to wake up during your light sleep phases (REM), which is typically easier.
Don’t hit that snooze button. I know it’s not an easy thing to do, I’ve fallen into this trap myself. But once again, it’s only hard if you didn’t sleep well enough. If you are an extreme snoozer, there’s an app that will donate money to charity each time you snooze.
Define a morning routine. This is the biggest favor you can do yourself right now. Pick a morning routine and stick to it. Why? It just removes the factor of choice from your wake-up phase (which nearly extends to 2 hours by the way). If you get up like a zombie, you may be a zombie, but at least you’ve gotten up. Some people include writing down 3 things they are grateful for or writing down their to-do list for the day. Others follow a 5-minute routine aimed to boost their self-confidence and energy levels. You can also add up the following:
Drink a full glass of water. Your body is dehydrated when you wake up. Drinking 1/4 a liter upon waking up fires up your metabolism and helps you flush out body toxins, among other benefits. And doing this will get you closer to the advised 2 liters of water intake per day.
Write down your dreams. I do this religiously. At first, it was just a way to remember my dreams and log them instead of forgetting them as the day progressed. But with time, it just became a habit and is now one of those things I do to tell my brain that I’m awake.
All these hacks are affordable and easily manageable, especially if you adopt them gradually. What will you try first? Tell us in the comments.