In today’s 24-hour technological society, most of us don’t nap at all, and many don’t nap enough. We all need to start napping more- it would make us less crabby and more productive in the long-run.
Why don’t we nap? Social stigma / false beliefs:
Napping is for lazy people
Napping is a waste your day
Napping is unproductive
In reality, nothing could be further from the truth. Napping actually makes us more productive because we wake up feeling refreshed, as if it’s the start of a second day.
Famous Nappers
During World War II, Winston Churchill would nap at least an hour in the early afternoon. Churchill is quoted saying “‘Nature had not intended mankind to work from 8 in the morning until midnight without the refreshment of blessed oblivion which, even if it only lasts 20 minutes, is sufficient to renew all the vital forces.” Some other famous nappers throughout history include:
Thomas Edison
Leonardo Davinci
Albert Einstein
Skilled Napping Takes Time
If you aren’t very good at napping, don’t worry- it is a skill that can be improved over time. I would have never thought I could nap on public transportation. I would be afraid to miss my stop… But since I’ve started taking the train every day, after some practice, napping has become a habit. I am now able to fall asleep, and wake up in time for my stop.
Give napping a try… What have you got to lose?
Next time you consider making a Starbucks run to keep you awake through the afternoon, consider taking a 20 minute nap instead. You just might wake up feeling more refreshed than you would have felt from the short-term jolt of caffeine.
Life is like a river. It’s moving, and you can be at the mercy of the river if you don’t take deliberate, conscious action to steer yourself in a direction you have pre-determined.
-Anthony Robbins
Leo Babauta over at Zen Habits recently wrote a very honest post about The Dirty Little Secrets of Productivity Bloggers, and I’ll be sharing one of my own with you in this post. To give you some background, over this last month, I have been on two extremes, and am now back to normalcy. For the first two weeks, I was on vacation. I had lots of free time, and I managed my own schedule and did what I wanted to do. I lived on my own sleep schedule (I’m a late riser). I meditated and exercised every day. I did a lot of reading, writing, and relaxing.
When I came back to work, I was immediately placed on an intense project, which involved long hours and weekend work for 2 weeks. I went from 100% free time to 100% structured time. Was I able to maintain my positive habits when my routine changed so significantly? Nope. And this explains my dirty little secret- I wasn’t able to follow my own advice.
I ended up building sleep debt due to long work hours. I was unable to maintain my exercise routine due to getting home so late from work, I ate unhealthy food (catered into our conference room at work), and I stopped meditating.
Why couldn’t I maintain my daily positive habits when my routine changed?
I love being challenged and pushed to extremes- this is a way to personal growth for me. I dedicated myself to the success of the project at work, and gained a lot of experience from it, but in doing so, I also adopted the norms (eating and sleeping habits) of the team, and temporarily lost my positive habits along the way.
I wasn’t able to follow the advice of my blog post about living like a sprinter (having a healthy balance between stress and recovery), versus living like a long distance runner (no balance/time for recovery, leading to burnout). During these past two weeks, I have been confronted with how difficult living like a sprinter can be. How do you maintain positive habits when routine changes, and the nature of your work can be so chaotic?
Your routine will change, that’s a given- plan for it
I’m learning that routine changes will happen to you and I many times in our lives, but the important thing we need to have in place is a a backup plan. A back up plan is your pre-determined way of handling drastic routine change and maintaining positive habits. Why come up with a backup plan early on? If you have to come up with the backup plan while you are in crisis mode, it’s already too late:
Changes to routine have a smaller impact on your positive habits when you use a backup plan
Here are several examples of creating a backup plan:
Routine Change: Working long hours, unable to work out at gym
Backup Plan Options: If long work hours are going to be a long-term occurrence, you will want to find an alternate work-out time, such as early in the morning or over lunch break. If it is only short-term, you can simply cut back on your daily caloric intake, and plan to get back into your workout routine as soon as your work hours go back to normal.
Routine Change: Unable to leave work for lunch break due to deadlines, unhealthy snack options in the office
Backup Plan Options: Bring a bag of trail mix or nuts with you to work, use this as a meal replacement when you are unable to eat a normal lunch. Otherwise, you may end up eating unhealthy office snacks, or even worse, you will be starving by dinner time, and overeat to make up for the missed lunch.
Routine Change: Unable to get enough sleep during the week
Backup Plan Options: Take a mid-day 20 minute nap at work. If you have you own office, this will be easier to do. If not, you will have to be more creative with napping at work.
It’s Your Turn to Share
It’s much easier to maintain positive habits when your external environment and routine stay the same. But when the situation suddenly changes, are you able to adjust? Do you maintain your positive habits, or do you revert back to the way you were before you acquired the positive habits?
I’m still working on my backup plan, and experimenting with the best ways to maintain positive habits when my routine changes. I’d love to hear your experience with maintaining positive habits through routine changes- please leave a comment!
There is no hope for a civilization which starts each day to the sound of an alarm clock. -Author Unknown
Super-Replicating Belief: A Belief that has some property which facilitates its own transmission, which makes it be held by an increasing number of minds.
There is a super-replicating false belief in our society that sleeping in is lazy. Sleeping in is not lazy- many individuals would actually be more productive if they slept in versus waking up early. But as a whole, promoting the belief that sleeping in is lazy serves the needs of a stable society, in which individuals are all on similar schedules.
What are some of the ways that society makes us feel guilty for sleeping in?
“Early to Bed, Early to Rise, Makes a Man Healthy Wealthy and Wise”
Early risers are considered more productive than those who sleep in
We are only supposed to need 8 hours of sleep, and people often brag about getting by on less
If we sleep in, we may feel out of synch with the 9-5 society
The online community, including bloggers Steve Pavlina and Leo Babauta, promote becoming early risers
There is no need to feel guilty or lazy- here are 5 reasons why sleeping in will boost your productivity:
5 Reasons Why Sleeping In Every Day Will Boost your Productivity
Are you a Night Owl?
1) Depending on your chronotype, you may be a Night Owl living in a Morning Lark’s world
Morning Lark: Morning person, naturally wakes up 2 hours earlier than the majority of the population, is ready for sleep between 8pm - 10pm. Cope more easily with early shifts.
Night Owl: Night person, naturally wakes up 2 hours later than the majority of the population, doesn’t feel sleepy until 12am - 2am. Cope more easily with late shifts.
Many creative types, such as writers, actors, and computer programmers, tend to be Night Owls. If they don’t have to get up early for work, many Night Owls choose to go along with there inherent sleep schedule and work until very late at night.
2) Most people need more than 8 hours of sleep
Before the invention of the electric light in 1879, most people slept 10 hours each night, and this has recently been discovered as the ideal amount of sleep for optimum performance. Additionally, people in cultures that are free from the demands of modern society typically sleep 10 hours each night. There are big benefits to sleeping ten hours per night:
Research Center of the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, Michigan, have demonstrated that alertness significantly increases when eight-hour sleepers who claim to be well rested get an additional two hours of sleep. Energy, vigilance, and the ability to effectively process information are all enhanced, as are critical thinking skills and creativity.
3) Sleep consistency is important; the time you wake up is not (unless you must get up for work)
Sleep consistency is key- this is why I named this post “5 Reasons Why Sleeping In Every Day Will Boost your Productivity”. But the time you wake up is not important:
In 1757 Benjamin Franklin gave us the epigram “early to bed, early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” It would be more accurate to say “Consistently to bed and consistently to rise….” As long as you fulfill your sleep requirement without interruption, it doesn’t really matter what time you go to bed or get up.
Sleeping in can improve your long-term memory retention
4) Sleeping in can improve your long-term memory retention, memory organization, and learning
REM Sleep: Stage of sleep with predominant eye movements and dreaming. During REM, brain neuronal pathways are fired randomly, and REM sleep causes strengthening of memory circuits similar to lifting weights causes strengthening of muscles.
When you fall asleep at night, you go through 4 stages of sleep every 90 to 110 minutes. You typically go through 4-5 cycles of these stages each night. With each successive cycle, more time is spent in REM stage. During later sleep cycles, REM sleep increases from twenty to as much as sixty minutes.
Whenever you have a short night of sleep, you eliminate the long REM periods that come toward morning. This can have significant negative consequences in terms of your learning, thinking, memory, and performance. The only solution is for you to get more sleep.
5) Sleeping in allows you to catch up on sleep debt
Sleeping is a way for you to catch up on sleep debt (Hours of sleep you need per night - Hours of sleep you actually get). In my sleep debt post, I recommend that instead of sleeping in, you catch up on sleep debt by going to bed earlier. However, if you can’t get to bed early, and can’t get enough sleep in your normal schedule, it’s smart to sleep in to catch up on sleep debt when you are able to.
Now that you know the benefits, here are three tips for becoming a late riser:
How to Become a Late Riser
Note: If you are a Morning Lark, and easily awaken at an early hour, you will generally not be able to become a late riser. This advice is for Night Owls who do not wake up easily for work.
For freelancers and those in control of their own work schedule, sleeping in is an easy habit to adopt. But what about the rest of us? Here are some solutions for the regular worker:
1) Talk to your employer about flextime
Flextime allows you to determine when you work, so you can sleep in every day if you negotiate coming in late with your employer.
2) Talk to your employer about working from home
Talk to your boss about working from home one day of the week. Prove that you can be trusted, and then negotiate working from home full-time. As part of this arrangement, make sure to negotiate working on your own hours (so you can sleep in).
3) No flextime and can’t work from home? Quit your job
If your employer doesn’t allow flextime or working from home, and you are a Night Owl, and getting up early each morning is hell for you, why not consider some alternatives? You could find another employer that is more flexible, or you could start your own business. Either way, you would be more productive working your own hours, versus the hours that society chooses for you.
4) No flextime, can’t work from home, and don’t want to quit your job? Sleep in and face the consequences
Sleep Debt = Hours of sleep you need per night - Hours of sleep you actually get
During a busy week recently, I averaged 5-6 hours of sleep per night, and planned on getting my eight hours of sleep on the weekend nights. After getting less-than-adequate sleep for 5 consecutive nights, I noticed it had started to take a toll on me. By Friday, I felt like I had pulled an all-nighter the night before.
When the weekend came, I slept in and got 10 hours of sleep per night to partially make up for the sleep I had missed over the week. I’m sure many of you have experienced a similar scenario. I had accumulated sleep debt during the week, and I paid it back over the weekend.
Your Sleep Bank Account
The whole idea of sleep debt comes from the analogy of having a sleep bank account, where you can make sleep deposits and debits. This analogy is not perfect, and can be a bit confusing. Here are some caveats to the sleep bank account:
Current research suggests your maximum sleep debt is 20 hours
You cannot “sleep ahead” and build up your sleep bank account
You can only pay back sleep debt in increments of 1-2 hours; If you are 10 hours in sleep debt, don’t expect to pay it all back at once
Losing one hour of sleep per night over a week is equivalent to pulling one all-nighter- here’s an example to explain why:
Sleep Debt Comparison Example: Sarah and Ashley
Sarah and Ashley both need eight hours of sleep per night. Sarah gets 6 hours of sleep on week nights, and 8 hours of sleep on the weekend. Ashley gets 8 hours of sleep per night, except for Thursday night, when she pulls an all-nighter:
Sleep Debt Comparison: Sarah versus Ashley
At the end of the week, Sarah has 10 hours of sleep debt (56 - 46); Ashley has 8 hours of sleep debt (56 - 48). So both women have similar levels of sleep debt, even though one accumulated the debt all over Thursday night. Their similar levels of sleep debt will give them similar negative symptoms of sleep deprivation:
Daytime drowsiness
Mood shifts, including depression, increased irritability, and loss of sense of humor
Stress, anxiety, and loss of coping skills
Lack of interest in socializing with others
Weight gain
Reduced immunity to disease and viral infection
Feelings of lethargy
Reduced productivity
Why not just sleep in on weekends to pay back sleep debt?
You cannot make up for large sleep losses during the week by sleeping in on weekends any more than you can make up for lack of regular exercise and overeating during the week by working out and dieting only on the weekends.
You can make payments of an extra couple of hours of sleep on Saturday and Sunday to pay back part of your sleep debt. But you aren’t likely to be able to pay more than 2 hours at a time. You still have debt left, and this doesn’t get to the root of the problem- you still face symptoms of sleep deprivation over the course of your week.
Calculating the Hours of sleep you need per night
Each individual has different sleep needs- some need 9-10 hours of sleep per night to perform at their best. Others function perfectly at 5-6 hours of sleep per night. Thomas Edison slept three or four hours at night, and regarded sleep as a waste of time. Albert Einstein needed 10 hours of sleep per night to function well.
Note: Before calculating your hours of sleep needed, be sure to review my previous post on do’s and dont’s for better sleep. Caffeine, alcohol, your diet, and exercise habits all play a role in sleep quality.
The Easy (Less Accurate) Way to Calculate Your Nightly Sleep Needs
If you feel drowsy during the day, you probably didn’t get enough sleep the night before. Try going to bed earlier and see if you feel alert the next day. If you do, this is your nightly sleep need.
The Accurate Way to Calculate Your Nightly Sleep Needs
Select a bedtime at least eight hours before you need to wake up
Maintain this time for a week and keep track of the time that you wake up
If you feel drowsy or don’t get up easily to your alarm, go to bed thirty minutes earlier than usual
If you feel alert, try to cut back fifteen minutes and see if you still feel alert to confirm if this is your correct number of sleep hours
Calculating your Sleep Debt
Take your nightly sleep need, and subtract it by the amount of sleep you actually got. The number that remains is your sleep debt:
Sleep debt = Hours of sleep you need per night - Hours of sleep you actually get
Paying back sleep debt
You cannot replace lost sleep all at once. If you lose two nights of sleep you will not sleep for fourteen or sixteen additional hours on the third night. When you sleep longer to catch up, try to do so by going to bed earlier than usual. Otherwise your normal waking time will be shifted. This is likely to make it difficult to get to sleep at the usual time the following night.
As Dr. Maas mentions in Power Sleep, you should pay back your sleep debt by going to bed earlier than usual. This way, you can maintain your normal waking time. You can also use a nap to help you pay back your sleep debt. But make sure you take your nap in the early afternoon, as late-afternoon napping will shift your biological clock, making getting up in the morning a struggle.
Avoid accumulating new sleep debt
After factoring how much sleep you need, and repaying your sleep debt, factor it into your daily schedule. Create a daily ritual (see my creating daily habits post) of going to bed and getting up at the same time, each day of the week. This will ensure you do not accumulate new sleep debt.
The feeling of sleepiness when you are not in bed, and can’t get there, is the meanest feeling in the world.
-Edgar Watson Howe
You spend one third of your life sleeping. This one third has significant effects on your waking life, in terms of productivity, energy, alertness, creativity, memory, body weight, mood, safety, and good health. Here are 10 sleep hygiene do’s and don’ts for better sleep:
1) Sex
Do: Have pleasurable sexual relations or masturbation before bedtime. Researchers have found that this can promote sleep onset and induce deep and restful sleep.
Don’t: Have un-pleasurable sexual relations before bedtime. If sexual experience leads to dissatisfaction, anxiety, or performance concern, it will be detrimental to a good night’s rest.
2) Exercise
Do: Exercise to stay fit, reduce stress, and induce deeper sleep. Exercise elevates your body temperature, and an ensuing drop in body temperature at bedtime will induce drowsiness and deeper sleep. The best time to exercise for better sleep is in the late afternoon or at noon-time. Exercise in the morning has little effect on the quality of your sleep.
Don’t: Exercise within three hours of bedtime. This will stimulate the release of adrenaline, and you’ll be too alert to relax and fall asleep.
3) Eating
Do: Eat a light snack high in carbohydrates and low in protein if you are hungry before bedtime.
Don’t: Eat a large or heavy meal within four or five hours of going to bed. This may make you drowsy initially, but you will toss and turn during the night.
4) Drinking
Do: Cut back on liquids of all kind before bedtime. This will ensure you don’t interrupt your sleep due to a full bladder in the middle of the night.
Don’t: Drink any caffeinated beverages within six hours of your bedtime. Stimulants such as caffeine will delay sleep onset and disturb REM sleep. Additionally, avoid drinking alcohol within three hours of bedtime if you expect to sleep well. The common practice of “having a nightcap before bed” actually suppresses REM sleep, and you will experience early-morning awakenings.
5) Nightly Ritual
Do: Create a nightly ritual of reading for pleasure before turning off lights. Use a reading lamp that can be gradually dimmed, and take your mind off the day’s worries. Also, try taking a warm bath before bed. After the bath, your body temperature will plummet (if you have a cool bedroom), and this will initiate sleepiness and more deep sleep.
Don’t: Create a ritual of stay in bed longer than you need to get sleep. Staying in bed too long will promote shallow and disturbed sleep.
6) Sleep Schedule
Do: Establish a regular sleep schedule. Researchers at Harvard Medical School found that if you alert your sleep schedule by even a few hours, your mood deteriorates.
Don’t: Sleep in on weekends. This does not help overcome sleep loss during the week any more than overeating during the week would be helped by dieting on the weekend.
7) Sleep Position
Do: Sleep on your side, with the spine straight; or on your back, maintaining the primary curvature of the cervical spine.
Don’t: Sleep on your stomach or with your head elevated. This can give you aches and pains, and is not recommended by medical experts.
8) Napping
Do: Take a nap of fifteen to thirty minutes in duration, if your hectic lifestyle doesn’t permit you to get enough sleep at night. Set an alarm for 15-30 minutes, as any time longer than that will put you in deep sleep, and you will wake up terribly groggy.
Don’t: Take a nap if you are already getting adequate sleep during the night. Additionally, don’t take late-afternoon naps, as this delays your falling-asleep time in the evening and will begin to shift your biological clock.
9) Pets
Do: Sleep with a stuffed animal if it comforts you.
Don’t: Sleep with your pets. Their movements and noises during the night or early morning can disrupt your sleep.
10) Your Bedroom
Do: Use your bedroom for sexual activity and sleep. If you watch television in your bedroom, focus on comedy as a tension reducer.
Don’t: Use your bedroom for arguing, watching exciting/violent television shows, eating, or working.
I’ve been researching and experimenting with sleep a lot lately, and decided it would be fun to write a sleep series for Life Evolver. So here it is- a new sleep post will be added every few days this week. Enjoy!
photo credit: Bert van Dijk
