How to Sleep Better Tonight

At this point in time, most people are aware of the importance of sleep. There are hundreds of books devoted to the topic, covering the physiology of sleep, the horrors of not sleeping, and potential ways to improve sleep. Today's post if not going to try to outplay the experts but instead offer something very easy anyone can do to immediately add quality time to their sleep. The human brain is a machine that loves a good routine. Most people drink the same coffee everyday, drive the same way to work, and watch similar content on TV. These seemingly mundane routines might actually be working against your ability to optimize your  sleep. For example, the mid-afternoon StarBucks espresso coupled with late night texting may be destroying your ability to gain restful sleep.

Using the concept of routines to our advantage, we can develop a system that encourages our body to sleep a full eight hours and wake up feeling great. By taking an intentional look at our daytime behaviors  and those leading up to the time  sleep, anyone can create a routine that encourages a better nights rest, Below, you can find a few tips that can help you build a "Pre-Sleep  Schedule" that you can customize for a better nights sleep tonight. 

Building Your Pre-Sleep Schedule: 

Your Pre-Sleep Routine is going to help set you up for a successful nights sleep. It is important to plan out the right amount of time for your evening workout, meals, time on the computer, and estimate the point you actually want to sleep. Below is an easy checklist that can help boost your sleep.

Step 1: Define Your Sleep Goal: 

Before you move forward, creating a well defined sleep goal (using the smart goal technique will help clarify what we want to improve. See smart goals below for a quick refresher

Smart Goals 

• Specific 
• Measurable
• Attainable 
• Realistic
• Time-bound

Example 

"I want to fall asleep quickly, stay asleep all night, and get at least 8 hours of restful sleep. I want to improve my time in the deepest level of sleep and wake up in the morning feeling refreshed."

This sleep goal is highly specific and can be measured by time asleep and by energy level the next day.

Step 2: Use the Pre-Sleep Checklist

Start this checklist four hours before it is time to sleep.  

1. Stop exercising 4 hours before you are going to sleep. You need to let your muscles relax, your body temperature drop, and allow the epinephrine created from exercise dissipate from your system. The problem with this arises if you plan to work out at night. 
2. Stop eating 3 hours before sleep. Allow your body to digest your dinner prior to going to sleep. Digestion can disrupt your circadian rhythm, which will have substantial consequences on your sleep. The best thing to do is to plan out your workouts and meals so that they fall outside the 2-3 hour pre-sleep window. 
3. Start limiting blue light 2 hours before sleep. You can use the Flux or Night Shift function on your phone and most computers to limit the blue light emitted by these devices. One other thing you can try is using blue light blocking glasses. They can help cut blue light from devices and the light emitted from most indoor lamps. 
4. Try to limit your phone use to 1 hour before sleep. This is by far the hardest part of the sleep routine. Limiting your phone before bed and after waking up is a tough habit to develop. One trick I have found is syncing my iMessage app to my laptop. At night, I set my phone alarm and place my phone far away from my bed to charge overnight. I may still use my laptop for a while before bed, so that if I need to answer an urgent text, I can. The benefit is that my laptop has the Flux setting enabled and I am also less tempted to randomly scroll through social media. 

Step 3: Build an Optimal Sleep Environment 

The following list is a few different things you can try to upgrade your sleeping environment. 

Sleep Like a Hunter in a Cave 

Imagine you are a hunter looking for shelter. You come across a dark cave and decide to settle for the night. You fall asleep right after the sun goes down. In your cave, there are no signs of light and it's a bit chilly. You pull your heavy animal hide over top for comfort, then fall into a deep sleep. Let’s try to recreate this for yourself using a few tips and tricks that aid the sleep process. 

Rule 1: Purge your Room of Light 

You want to eliminate all lights from electronics and your windows. Use black out shades or black towels to cover up any traces of light. The ambient light can cause unwanted changes to your circadian rhythm (Like halting the body’s release of melatonin, which makes you sleepy). 

Action Step: Look around your room tonight. Try to cover up as many sources of light as you can. Shove a towel under your door, cover your windows with a blanket, and turn away all of the electronics that emit light. When you have time, try to purchase black out shades. Find a system that covers all light sources that works best for your room. 

Rule  2: Cool Down Your Cave 

Have you ever noticed that it's difficult to sleep in a hot room during the summer? As it turns out, your body naturally cools down by a few degrees when leading up to sleep. Overheating your body can slow this process down (Remember: exercising too close to bed is problematic, partially due to an increase in body temperature). For better sleep, try to keep the temperature in your room at around or below 65 degrees. We want to aid the body's natural process of cooling down before sleep. 

Action Step: Set your thermostat lower for a few nights, between 65-70 degrees. 

Rule 3: Grab your animal hide (Use a weighted blanket) 

Weighted blankets offer our senses a feeling of comfort and protection. Heavy blanks are quick and very affordable options for many people. Although we want our room to be cold, we still need to have blankets that keep us comfortable. 

Action Step: Purchase a heavy blanket from Target or Walmart and use it this week. 

Rule 4: Only use your cave when you need it. 

Stay out of your room until it's time to sleep, limiting any use of TV, phone, or other electronics in bed. You should view your bedroom as a place for sleep and sex, nothing more. If you spend time working in your room, you are conditioning your mind to work. We want to limit mental stimulation, hence the blacked out lights. Your place should be a place of rest, recovery, and physical enjoyment, not an entertainment center and second office. Ideally, you want to make your room as minimally stimulating as possible. Think of a minimalist approach. 

Action Step: Remove excess electronics from your bedroom (TV, computer, etc). Try to move your desk out of your bedroom and into a spare room. You should try to build yourself a work station outside of your room, if possible. This step may not be possible if you have kids or depending on your home set up. Space is limited and sometimes we need to make due with what we have. A simple solution would be to remove your computer from your bedroom at night and spend time working outside of the bedroom, whenever possible

Thanks for reading,

Coach Chris