“1 in 3 Adults Don’t Get Enough Sleep”
“Doctors Agree: 8 Hours of Sleep Is Key To Staying Healthy”
“You Are Worse Than Pinochet If You Don’t Sleep 8 Hours a Night”
I just watched this four minute talk by Arianna Huffington about sleep. She says that if you want to be more productive, you should sleep more. It’s an interesting thought, especially considering that we always hear how little sleep Americans get. [Note: only two of the three headlines above are from real news stories]. But, how much sleep do you really need? Eight hours? Are you sure? “I could sleep 10 hours, every single night if I didn’t have to work or be productive. Don’t I need that much?”
Even though the National Sleep Foundation says that the amount of sleep any individual needs is highly variable, they still say that everyone should sleep between 7 and 9 hours per night. Why? Well, people who sleep 4-5 hours per night live significantly shorter lives than those who sleep 7-9 hours. But it turns out, those who sleep too much have shorter lives too. Their hair also turns grey. So how much do you need?
I can’t answer that for you. But, I can point you to a great strategy to figure it out, and recover a substantial amount of your time in the process.
The Plan
- Wake up at the same time each day. I would recommend that you do this early, like 5 a.m., for a variety of reasons. But whatever time you want to wake up, set an alarm, and then get up at that time every single day, including weekends.
- At the end of the day, don’t go to sleep until you’re tired. The appropriate definition of tired is when you can fall asleep within 5 minutes. If you easily lose concentration and start to nod off while reading, go to sleep. This prevents you from getting into bed and staring at the ceiling for 45 minutes: that time is a total waste. When I get into bed at night, I’m out within minutes of my ass hitting the sheets. It’s fantastic.
That’s it. That’s the whole plan.
The beauty of this system is that it’s entirely self-regulating. Because sleep isn’t just variable from person to person, but also from day to day for any particular person, you don’t need the same amount of sleep every day. If you’re super tired one day, you’re going to fall asleep earlier. If you’re not tired, you’ll stay up later. If a late night on Sunday makes you a little extra tired on Monday, guess what? You’ll fall asleep a little earlier Monday night. In practice, I don’t find myself porpoising between tired days and alert days. My energy and awake-time is pretty evenly modulated from one day to the next, even if my sleep varies by an hour or two each night.
This system will also tell you exactly how much sleep you need. If you got 6 hours Sunday night, and Monday night you’re falling asleep at 7 p.m., 6 hours probably isn’t enough for you. But, what if you get 6 hours and feel fine the next day and don’t get tired until midnight? Well, congratulations: you only need 6 hours of sleep a night. If you had been sleeping 7 hours a night, you just saved yourself nine 40 hour work weeks a year. That’s right: sleeping one less hour per night nets you 9 extra workweeks of alive time.
You’re welcome.
(HT: Steve Pavlina, through which I discovered this tactic some years ago)
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