I went from sleeping 4 hours a day to 8 hours a day.
Some of you might know that I work for a Startup. Working at Startup is hectic especially in the initial days of it(or at least that’s how it is perceived). Engineers develop this habit of sleeping late from hostel days doing all sorts of random shit. Obviously there are some benefits of it and some demerits but that’s how it is for most people(during hostel life). I too developed this habit during my hostel days and used to sleep around 5 am in the morning(most days except when semester exams started) playing volleyball, table-tennis, watching movies and making college practical files.
Why people are sleep deprived?
Let’s just try to understand how people develop insomnia. Smartphones are one of the primary reason for people to sleep late. We get addicted to mobile through various apps viz Facebook, Instagram, Netflix, YouTube, WhatsApp, Twitter. It can be anything that’s fascinating, catches your attention and gradually you develop addiction to it. All these platforms have an algorithm working behind them which creates recommendation for next video, blog, content based on what you have consumed(or consuming) earlier trying to understand your behaviour and interests. And you end up being sucked up for long hours and becomes one of the primary reason for sleeping less.
Study suggests that smartphones have contributed to sleeping less up to 3 to 4 hours on average.
I got addicted to reading, mostly about technology products, Startups blogs, entrepreneurs stories, and philosophy and most of the source is usually from Twitter. I am a Twitter addict to be honest and spend around 4 to 5 hours daily on Twitter.
Changing habits:
Before I start on how I trained myself to sleep more and early, let’s just understand why I did this in first place. I turned 30 this Feb and one of my goals is to be fit and inculcate a habit/schedule which is scalable and going to work really well in long term. Health includes both body and mind and I started practising Yoga a year ago and improving my eating habits. But these are just not enough if you want to be fit(mentally and physically) when you reach 50 years of age. I started reading about it(fitness) more and figured out that sleeping well is one the critical factors to keep your mental and physical health in check. It reduces stress level and relaxes mind and body. I came across a book with Title: Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams by Matthew Walker and learned about the benefits of sleeping early and at least of 8 hours.
Few Excerpts from the book:
Lack Of Sleep: Stress and sleep disorders can take a toll on your skin’s elasticity making it appear saggy and large.
Adequate sleep is intimately tied to the fitness of our cardiovascular system, lowering blood pressure while keeping our hearts in fine condition.
Sleep reforms the body’s metabolic state by fine-tuning the balance of insulin and circulating glucose. Sleep further regulates our appetite, helping control body weight through healthy food selection rather than rash impulsivity.
Sleep enriches a diversity of functions, including our ability to learn, memorise, and make logical decisions and choices.
Routinely sleeping less than six or seven hours a night demolishes your immune system, more than doubling your risk of cancer.
Inadequate sleep — even moderate reductions for just one week — disrupts blood sugar levels so profoundly that you would be classified as pre-diabetic. Short sleeping increases the likelihood of your coronary arteries becoming blocked and brittle, setting you on a path toward cardiovascular disease, stroke, and congestive heart failure.
Conclusion:
This book made me realise that if I have to be fit & want to improve my sleep habits, I need to do something about it. I immediately cut down on videos & blogs that I used to consume post dinner(mostly mental junk). It’s very hard when you have been doing it for years. I replaced videos & blogs with talking to mom & my younger brother or picking up a book which has difficult language(English) or concepts(just to make it boring for me) and I started to fall asleep while talking and reading. This is how I started to train myself to sleep early and I was in this mode within a week. One of the immediate benefits of sleeping is that you get up very early if you are used to sleeping only 4 hours.
I used to sleep around 10.30 pm and get up by 3 am in morning. In order to sleep more it was important for me to exhaust my body and mind more during the day. For this, I started to spend more time at office(late hours) trying to finish most of the pending tasks, preparing plans, writing documentation for processes etc, basically all kind of stuffs which I hated. This ensured I was fully exhausted. Gradually, I started sleeping more and now I sleep somewhere between 7 to 8 hours daily.
This improved my decision making & took all my mental and physical fatigue. I was able to plan better and align tasks in a more organised way eventually improving the overall efficiency.
