If Arnold Schwarzenegger Could Sleep Fast, You Can Sleep Faster
How to Manage a Tight Schedule While Sleeping Fast and Well
Arnold Schwarzenegger, once, broke the internet with the two following speeches :
When people say we don’t have the time. We have 24 hours a day. We sleep 6 hours a day. So it gives you still 18 hours.
There is someone shaking their head out there saying probably, “I don’t sleep 6 hours, I sleep 8 hours”. Right.
Sleep faster.
Look, everyone has a problem with time. But the day is 24 hours and you sleep six. Now I know there is someone out there that say: “Whoa! Whoa! I need 8.” But I say: “Just sleep a little faster".
Because the bottom line is, we have 6 hours of sleep, 24 hours are available.
So we have 18 hours now available to our work, our family, our hobbies, and also to learn something new or to do something new.
Another way to approach sleep
Some athletes don’t get eight hours per night, because they don’t look at sleeping in hours; they do it in cycles.
We can experience from four to six sleep cycles in a typical night (from twenty‐eight to thirty-five sleep cycles in a given week). The first sleep cycle is often the shortest, ranging from 70 to 100 minutes, while later cycles tend to fall between 90 and 120 minutes.
If you’re the average person, aiming to get around eight hours a night, that would be the equivalent of five cycles per night and thirty-five per week.
Be flexible, so you can deal with busyness
Life can get in the way: a project you work on, an evening kick-off, a book you can’t put down, a delayed train home, or a phone call from an old friend. Shift workers, airline staff, city traders, long-distance lorry drivers – they’re not regularly getting eight hours per night.
You can still have that inviting-looking coffee you crave. You don’t have to say no to another glass of wine when you’re enjoying a fine summer night with friends. Your lifestyle won’t have to suffer. Life’s too short to miss out on good times and great experiences.
In such situations, you need some flexibility in order to be able to still enjoy your life and get on at work without worrying about bedtime. It is possible to start manipulating cycles in the short term to free up more time for a specific event or period in our lives as part of a controlled regime change.
You can start to emulate an elite sportsman like Arnold Schwarzenegger preparing for games in making short-term regime changes for a specific set of circumstances.
Whether you are involved in a project that is making more demands in your life or you are training for a marathon and you have to fit in your training around your job, you can cut down on your cycles at night to make it work by moving down to a four-cycle (or even a three-cycle, if you’re really being pushed in the short term).
When you don’t have your ideal five cycles in a night, you can compensate for them by :
• Trying to avoid three consecutive nights of fewer than five cycles, by following one or two nights with your ideal one.
• Aim to achieve your ideal amount at least four times per week. (For example, you are asleep by midnight and 7:30 a.m is your wake time.)
Final Tips:
Worrying about sleep is an obstacle many of us face when trying to get what we need from it. Trying to emulate elite athletes through this topic, I prioritize sleeping in cycles per week, not hours per night.
There is a possibility for you to know your ideal night. If you think that your need for sleep is eight hours (which equates to seven and a half hours), start sleeping on five cycles and pay attention to how you feel after seven days. If you feel it’s too long, move down to four and see how feel after seven days again. If you feel sleepy, or groggy after moving down, move up to six.
You’ll know your ideal cycle because you should feel good once you’ve adjusted to it. Once you’re comfortable with what you think is your ideal night, then you can look at adjusting it to fit with the demands of your lifestyle. For instance, knowing that sleeping 6 cycles is your ideal night, you should look to follow two nights of four or five cycles with your ideal one. If your ideal routine is 5 cycles, you can do the same.
It is empowering for anyone to take control of their sleep like this. There is confidence to be gained in knowing that time can be unlocked, even if it’s only temporary.
