Get ur 💩 together—Sleep

Steps to suck less at sleep

Step 1: Fully grasp how important sleep quantity AND quality is to everything.

Step 2: Elevate it on your priority list.

Step 3: Engage in behaviors that improve both quantity AND quality of sleep (and reduce ones that do the opposite)

Step 4: Feel amazing.

Okay, let’s unpack those steps…

STEP 1: Understand its importance

The first step in sucking less at sleep is to understand its importance.

Many people, myself included, have tended to rank it lower on the rung of priorities—"I’ll just wake up earlier to workout” you say. But then we don’t go to bed any earlier.

Some people even think of sleep as laziness—"I’ve got one life to accomplish my goals, I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” The catch 22 of that thinking is that if you sacrifice sleep, you’ll likely die or become disease-ridden before you accomplish your goals.

One more tid-bit: A human being will die from sleep deprivation BEFORE they die from no food or even no water.

STEP 2: Make sleep a top priority

This is literally as simple as making sleep a priority.

Stop thinking of it as something you can “catch up” on over the weekend. That’s actually not how it works.

When you restrict sleep during the weekdays, the damage has already been done. You can’t “undo” the damage by taking a nap on Saturday.

STEP 3: Actions and behaviors to do (and ones to avoid)

Behaviors to include:

#1 is increasing your time in bed

  • The goal should be to spend enough time in bed to give yourself an opportunity to sleep 7 to 8 hours

  • Note that most people are only “asleep” for about 85% of the time after they initially fall asleep

  • Let’s do math!

    • If you need to get up at 8am, you can’t fall asleep at 12am and think you got 8 hours

    • To back into the “time in bed” number we can use this formula: 8 hours divided by .85 = 9 hours & 20 minutes

    • That means you would have needed to fall asleep ~9 hours and 20 minutes prior (in this case that would mean you fell asleep at 10:40pm)

    • If you have to get up at 6am? Sheesh, you better be in bed by 9pm to even have a shot at 8 hours

Tactics to increase sleep quality:

Here’s just a few…

  • Have a consistent bedtime and wake up time every day of the week so your body can fall into a circadian rhythm that isn’t batshit crazy

  • Make the room temperature cold (like below 70)

  • Make the room as dark as possible

  • Wear blue light blocking glasses (like these) if you must use electronics at night

    • Or at least turn your phone settings or ipad settings to “night mode”

  • Maybe “go big” and get yourself an Ooler to cool the actual bed itself

Consider a sleep supplement such as…

Other things to try:

  • Take a hot bath or shower about half an hour before bed

    • Counterintuitively, that pulls heat away from your core and lowers your core body temperature which is what you need in order to fall asleep

  • Read a book or journal to get your “monkey mind” to chill

Behaviors to avoid (not a complete list):

  • Don’t eat too close to bedtime as it disrupts your sleep (try to cut off food 3 hours prior)

  • Avoid phones/computers/ipads because the blue light from those will suppress your melatonin production

  • More than one serving of alcohol before bed might help you fall asleep but don’t get it twisted, it WILL affect your sleep quality and in the short term—you won’t feel as rested the next day, and in the long term—you could do literal brain damage simply by never allowing your brain to fully do it’s thing at night

  • Be careful with too much caffeine, it also disrupts sleep (I personally need to cut it off by about 1pm)

  • Avoid stress-inducing activities (e.g., checking work email) because they spike cortisol which needs to fall prior to you falling asleep

  • Trying your damnedest to get OFF sleeping pills like Ambien and Lunesta (these are sedative hypnotics and don’t actually get you into your good sleep stages)

*I’m currently working on a more complete list. Stay tuned.*

STEP 4: Bask in the glory

Notice the mental clarity, the energy, and the motivation you have in a rested state.

Bask in that shit.

Then… take advantage of that state and apply it to other parts of your life that might have been suffering because of your lack of energy and clarity.

Finally, enjoy these possible improvements to your life:

>productivity
>sense of well being
>energy
>better workouts
>less mood swings
>better food choices
>more willpower
>more patience

Challenges

Best challenge to start with:

  • Wake up same time every day (details COMING SOON)

==> For more challenges check out Sleep Challenges