If you get the recommended 8 hours of sleep per night, by the time you are 80 years old, you will have slept for 26 years of your life. That’s a long time to be tossing and turning if your sleep isn’t the best that it can be.
Sleep is essential for our health and wellbeing. We don’t need an expert to tell us this. We already know it because we never feel our best when we’ve had a sleepless night.
Sleep is also the time when the body repairs and regenerates. This is exactly what we want when we’re trying to heal our skin so it’s not a process we want to interrupt too often.
Quantity and quality of sleep are equally as important.
A quick survey around your friends or colleagues and you’ll realise that too many of us are getting too few hours of sleep. We should be getting between 7 – 9 hours of sleep per night. It’s not uncommon for people to regularly have 5 hours of sleep a night. If this is you, there’s a good chance you have forgotten how good it feels to have had a proper night’s sleep.
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Boost the quantity of your sleep
There’s a really easy way of getting more sleep. Just go to bed earlier. Like many things though, this is easier said than done.
If going to bed an hour or two earlier feels impossible, I have a solution for you that aligns with my start small habit change philosophy. Commit to going to bed just 5 minutes earlier every day. Within 12 days you’ll be getting an extra hour of sleep. How amazing does an extra hour in bed sound?
If you go to bed earlier and find yourself unable to drift off, think about how much daylight you’ve been exposed to throughout the day. With many people now working from home, it’s not uncommon for some of us not to leave the house for days at a time. If this is you, it will be interfering with your sleep.
Good quality sleep starts in the morning. Dr Satchin Panda, in his book The Circadian Code, observed his sleep patterns during different circumstances, including an outdoor camping trip, working in a lab with large windows and home working in a room with limited natural light. At home, it took him longer to fall asleep, and he woke more frequently in the night.
Exposing your eyes to daylight helps to regulate your inner clock so your body can better recognise when it’s time to get up and when it’s time to go to sleep.
Boost the quality of your sleep
If you’re running around making packed lunches, doing laundry, cleaning up, writing presentations or replying to emails before bed, you may fall into bed exhausted but you won’t sleep well. Your mind will be buzzing and you’ll wake up tired.
So how do you boost the quality of your sleep?
If you’re a parent, you know where I’m going with this. You need to develop a bedtime routine.
You already know that a bedtime routine works for your children, but do you have one for yourself? I’m not talking about a candlelit bath and a massage with lavender oil. Whilst I’m sure that works a treat, it’s not something most of us can realistically do every night.
I’m talking about practical, easy to action, tips. Try some of these and see how much your sleep improves:
- Get outside in the morning. Exposing your eyes to natural light tells your internal clock that it’s morning. This fires up your body for the day ahead and sends the right sleep signals later in the day to help you get to sleep faster. If you only do one thing, do this.
- Write tomorrow’s to-do list. When I struggle to fall asleep it’s because I’m thinking about all the things I need to do the next day. Writing these things down means I’m not worried about forgetting anything. Download this free daily planner to help clear your mind so you can drift off easier. Or check out the daily planning system that I use here.
- Turn off all electronics at least 30 minutes before you want to go to sleep. The lighting interferes with the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin. Whether it’s TV, the Internet, emails or texts, it’s all stimulation at a time when you should be winding down.
- Wash your face and massage in a moisturising serum or facial oil. Removing the day’s make-up, sweat and pollution is essential to allow your skin to breathe and repair itself overnight. The oil will replenish the moisture levels in your skin. Doing this consistently will also train your body to recognise these activities are pre-cursors to sleep.
- Read something. Becoming engrossed in another world is the ultimate relaxation. It helps your mind to calm down and forget about the stressors of the day. If you’re using an e-reader, use the night settings to minimise the impact of any screen glare.
- When you turn out the light, close your eyes and focus on your breathing. Pay attention to your stomach rising as you breathe in and falling as you breathe out. Don’t worry if thoughts creep into your mind, this will happen. Just acknowledge them then return your focus to your breathing. You’ll be asleep in a matter of minutes.
Follow this bedtime ritual to train your mind and body to calm down and prepare for sleep. You’ll wake up well-rested and energised.
My final sleep tip relates to those nights when sleep is just not happening. We’ve all had them. If you’re not falling asleep, don’t obsess about it. Just get up and do something different until you feel sleepy again. This also applies if you wake up in the middle of the night and are struggling to get back to sleep. Get up, read another few pages of your book and you’ll be nodding off again in no time.