Getting your sleep right is perhaps the best thing you can do for your health, but it’s hard to get quality sleep. Not only does it take a long time, but it’s easily disrupted because we’re so vulnerable while sleeping. If we could’ve evolved away from sleeping, we would have. Instead, most adults require 7-9 hours of quality sleep to maximize their health, especially mental health like mood and focus. This post focuses on routines for quality sleep because sleep depends on the circadian rhythm and, thus, reliable patterns.
Rule 1: I wake up at the same time each day (within an hour).
Including weekends. If I’m being honest, this rule doesn’t require any discipline most days. The benefit of prioritizing sleep quality is that I now wake up feeling refreshed and alert at about the same time each day. Sometimes I’ll sleep in for about 30 minutes if I had a hard day, but then I’m itching to get up. If that sounds annoyingly awesome, it is. But it all falls apart without the other rules.
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