Sleep, natures Nootropic. It is the single most important thing that you can do to help ensure optimal mental and physical performance. Unfortunately, with an entire world to conquer, and only 24 hours in a day, we often sacrifice sleep in the pursuance of our goals.
Even worse, there is a growing trend amongst entrepreneurs and young professionals to run on 4 hours of sleep for long periods and then brag about it.
We get it, to succeed you have got to grind, but if the only way you can get everything done is to only sleep four hours per night, then, in all honestly, you probably need to take a course on time management…but we digress.
While it may not be ideal to sacrifice sleep, especially for long periods, when you are DTRMND to succeed, sometimes it is unavoidable.
So let’s talk about sleep, and then go over 4 actionables that will help you maximize your sleep so you can perform your best every day.
INTERRUPTED SLEEP IS WORSE THAN NOT GETTING ENOUGH SLEEP. [1]
8 hours of sleep is often cited as optimal, but new research from Johns Hopkins found that
after just two nights of poor sleep, subjects who were woken up several times throughout the night had worse moods compared to those who slept for less time overall but weren’t interrupted.
Actionable 1.) Focus on getting solid, uninterrupted sleep before you focus on sleep duration,
CERTAIN TYPES OF EXERCISE PROMOTE BETTER SLEEP [2]
Being active is important for sleep, however, more intense forms of exercise are more effective. Research at the university of Pennsylvania found that intense workouts like bicycling, running, or weight lifting lead to better sleep than low intensity activity like walking.
Actionable 2.) Engage in 30 minutes of intense exercise daily. This will not only improve sleep, but intense exercise has been shown to increase grey matter within the brain, so you will not only sleep better, you will be smarter.
UNPLUG IN THE EVENINGS [3]
The reality is, it is near impossible to escape our devices. From the laptop, to the smart phone and the tablet, these are the tools of today. While our devices have opened a new frontier in learning, entrepreneurship, entertainment, they have also wreaked havoc on our sleep, and potentially our health.
Numerous studies show that the short-wavelength blue light, emitted by the screens we watch, has a negative effect on the duration, and more importantly, the quality of our sleep. However, studies have also found that watching screens that emit red light does not negatively effect sleep duration, and sleep quality after exposure to it was similar to normal sleep.
Actionable 3.) Cut off the use of devices with screens that emit blue light two hours before bed. And since thats not going to happen for most of us, instead you can use night shift/ night mode on your devices. This is a function that will alter the look of the screen by filtering out blue light and only allowing red light to be visible.
MEDITATION PROMOTES BETTER SLEEP QUALITY [4]
Meditation is practiced by many of the worlds top entrepreneurs for its performance and cognitive enhancement benefits, but new research published in in the JAMA demonstrates that individuals who meditate also sleep better. Not only do they show fewer symptoms of insomnia, but of depression and fatigue as well.
Actionable 4.) Practice meditating daily. Start with 10 mines per day and work your way up to 20 minutes. If you arent sure how to get started with mediation check out headspace.com and the headspace app for mediation made simple.
You can’t always get 8 hours of sleep, but you can get more efficient sleep, and better mental and physical performance with these 4 actionables.
BE DTRMND TO SLEEP WELL SO YOU CAN WAKE UP KICK THE DAY IN THE TEETH.
[2] https://www.pennmedicine.org/news/news-releases/2015/june/yoga-running-weight-lifting-an
[3] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4734149/
[4] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/fullarticle/2110998
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