avatarArunn Thevapalan

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How to Sleep Smarter and Wake Up Smiling

The moment you experience it, there’s no going back.

Photo by Ketut Subiyanto from Pexels

Imagine waking up relaxed, full of energy, and smiling every day. I don’t know about you, but I had always thought these were only part of dramatic scenes in movies until I experienced it for myself.

It’s freaking real.

You can wake up smiling every single day. You will start looking forward to each day. The moment you experience it, trust me, there’s no going back.

In the past, I’ve never looked forward to my mornings. I’d have six alarms snooze before I’d finally wake up just in time to leave for work. If it were a weekend, I would sleep even more. But no matter how long I’d sleep, it always felt insufficient.

Little did I know, I didn’t need to sleep longer, but smarter. Smart sleep is nothing but just enough sleep under the right conditions. It took me a lot of research and experiments to know what works and what doesn’t. These gems, when applied, can help you sleep smart and have a pleasant start to your day.

Stop Treating Sleep as the Enemy of Productivity

I’d forego sleep to study when I had an exam the next morning in my college days. “Nothing makes an engineer more productive than the last minute,” I proudly claimed, and oh boy, I did not know what I was doing.

The first thing many people sacrifice when they’ve got more work is sleep. Little do they know sleep deprivation kills the quality, consistency, and output of their work. Arianna Huffington, the founder of the Huffington Post, introduced office nap rooms at work. Big firms like Google, Nike, and Zappos followed, and now it’s common to have nap rooms at offices.

Did you for a second wonder why companies are doing this? They did this not because they want you to sleep at work and be unproductive but because there is research-based evidence that afternoon naps enhance productivity.

“Without adequate sleep, you can be assured you’re going to experience major problems with your mood and everyday functioning.” — Serin Center

The primary reason for feeling unproductive is the reduction in the brain’s glucose content because of the continuous lack of sleep. Your brain needs its glucose content, the carbohydrate that fuels your grey matter and keeps you sane.

I can go on and on, citing more research, but you must get the point: depriving yourself in the name of productivity is nothing but counterproductive.

Take action:

  • Change your mindset about sleep and its impact on productivity.
  • Stop sacrificing sleep to get more work done.

Discover How a Good Night’s Sleep Begins the Moment You Wake Up

This felt like a discovery. I need to take care of my evenings to sleep well — fair enough, but why mornings?

We reap the benefits of our day in the night. When we don’t take care of our mornings, we don’t get a smart sleep. It’s as simple as that. Honestly, this change made the most impactful effect on my sleep. If you already have morning routines, I’m not asking you to change them. I am asking you to add two things: Exercising in the mornings and going out for a morning walk.

Why am I emphasising mornings? Exposure to sunlight directly affects the secretion of a hormone called melatonin. Your brain’s pineal gland secretes it and regulates your body’s internal clock. In simple terms, it signals your body when to fall asleep naturally. When it doesn’t, it’s harder for you to fall asleep.

Exposure to morning sunlight will help your brain produce more melatonin, allowing you to sleep faster and in a deep state when you doze off. A study conducted by Dr Shawn Youngstedt, an exercise scientist at Arizona State University, found that your biological clock is adjusted to be more alert during the day and sleep better during the night by maintaining a morning exercise routine. The exercise routine could be as small as for 5 minutes.

Aside from all these scientific reasons, I started feeling much happier looking forward to my morning walks and exercise when I wake up. Sometimes all we need is a positive experience to keep going.

Take action:

  • Exercise for at least five minutes every morning. If you feel like doing more, go for it. But five minutes is your bare-minimum.
  • Go out for a walk in the mornings when the sun is out. Absorb the sunlight as much as you want.

Consciously Walk into “Bedtime Mode”

Just as light can be your friend in the mornings, come night, they become your enemy.

Exposure to artificial light that mimics natural light can be detrimental to your sleep by suppressing melatonin. The point here is the artificial light, blue light, to be specific, tricks your brain that it is still the day, even at nights, and delays you from falling asleep. Ever felt the need for the pitch-black room when you go to sleep? It’s not you, but your brain demanding for it.

“When you get more sunlight exposure during the day, and less light exposure at night, you’re on your way to a magic sleep formula.” — Shawn Stevenson

Bedtime mode is a ritual where you consciously let your brain know it’s night and time to sleep. First things first, now unlock your mobile phone. Apple, Android, Windows, and other operating systems have “Night-Shift” mode or “Bed-Time” mode. Now set it to go to that mode from 7 PM automatically.

Couldn’t seem to find it? Here’s a detailed guide on how you can enable this feature. What this mode does is to filter out the most sleep-corroding blue light from your screens.

If it’s not essential, why would big players like Apple, Microsoft, and Google introduce such features to their systems? Think about it. It would be best to replace any LED bulbs in your bedroom because they emit the same blue light. These are minor changes you do to your bedroom that can pay incredible ROI.

I found these changes to be the easiest of them all. Once I set it on my devices and replaced bulbs, it’s there forever. It would soon become your norm; trust me on this.

Take action:

  • Use black curtains to darken your bedroom as much as possible.
  • Enable blue-light filtering across all your devices. Remove LED-like blue light sources from your bedroom.

Avoid Stimulants at All Costs After Mid-day

If you have the habit of having tea, coffee, or anything that contains caffeine during late evenings, you need to stop.

Caffeine is a stimulant that strives to keep you awake. It can work in your favour for improving your concentration, alertness, and energy, but can mess up with your sleep patterns as well. Research published by the Journal of Sleep Medicine suggests that consuming caffeine 6 hours before bedtime reduced total sleep time by 1 hour.

I’m a data scientist, and I have a love-hate relationship with coffee. I find the spark to solve a problem quickly with caffeine (or so do I believe). I would pull all-nighters coding while sipping excessive amounts of coffee.

But since I want to have a deep, sound sleep, I’ve limited having coffee to mornings, just before I get to work. The point is, if you’re going to sleep well, you will do whatever it takes.

“The number of people who can survive on five hours of sleep or less without impairment, and rounded to a whole number, is zero.” — Dr. Thomas Roth

Take action:

  • Consume nothing that contains caffeine in the evenings.
  • If you love coffee/tea, cherish it and have it in the mornings.

That’s How I Sleep Smarter and Wake Up Smiling

I’m not a specialist sleep researcher; I’m one of you. If this worked for me, it could work for you too. Give it a month. Like me, you can even start tracking sleep metrics using fitness bands, but it’s unnecessary. The feeling you get in the mornings after will tell you better.

I found many more science-backed tips, but I couldn’t sustain it as a habit since I didn’t see any results. So experiment. Either way, the gems that worked for me were:

  • Understanding the importance of sleep and not treating it as an enemy of productivity
  • Exercising and moving my body in the mornings
  • Absorbing sunlight during the day
  • Reducing the exposure to blue light, especially at the night
  • Avoiding caffeine at all costs in the afternoon

Okay, that’s all I’ve got to tell you. It was a bright morning writing session. I hear birds chirping, and the sun’s out, so if you excuse me, it’s time for my morning walk.

Sleep
Mindfulness
Self
Self Improvement
Happiness
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