3 Rules for Better Sleep

Key Takeaways

you can't talk about living a healthy fulfilling and productive life without talking about sleep early on in my own life i saw sleep as many people do optional all-nighters were a badge of honor and daily sleeplessness was a given whether it's studying for finals or sacrificing sleep for a fun night out we don't make sleep as much of a priority as other areas of our lives like nutrition and fitness according to matthew walker author of why we sleep routinely sleeping less than six or seven hours a night demolishes your immune system more than doubling your risk of cancer he goes on saying it can also disrupt blood sugar levels block your arteries and cause major psychiatric conditions including anxiety and depression i'm sure that's enough to wake you up to the benefits of sleep but on top of all of that you will also i'm sure as you have experienced lose focus and concentration as well as productivity during the day so if you truly want to make the most out of your days as well as your life you need to take sleep seriously and so in this video i want to share three rules to help you do just that rule number one don't consume caffeine 10 hours before bed i love coffee now i don't need to tell you that because you probably are already aware based on the number of obnoxious b-roll sequences that i use in my videos [Music] over 2 billion cups of coffee are consumed a day in what matthew walker calls the most widely used and abused psychoactive stimulant in the world caffeine works by blocking your adenosine receptors which promote sleepiness so it doesn't really give you a boost of energy as much as it masks the fact that you're tired similar to how pain relievers simply cover up pain while this might be an effective approach for studying for finals or cramming in your next big project it could be harming your sleep without you even knowing about it according to a double-blind placebo-controlled study researchers found that consumption of a caffeine dose equivalent to that of a double espresso three hours before habitual bedtime induced a 40 minute phase delayed of circadian melatonin rhythm in humans caffeine has a half-life of around five hours so by the time you finish your last cup of coffee it's gonna take you five hours from that point to get rid of half of the caffeine in your body another five hours after that and the remaining caffeine in your body will be halved once again and so if you want to get better sleep cut yourself all from caffeine at least 10 hours before bed so since i go to bed around 10 pm each night that means i need to have my last cup of coffee by 12 pm in the afternoon don't forget that this includes caffeinated tea dark chocolate and some pain relievers caffeine affects everybody a little bit differently when i quit caffeine for 30 days last year a painful experience both physically and spiritually i personally didn't notice a huge shift in my sleep patterns and how i got to sleep i wasn't tracking my sleep meticulously during this 30-day experiment and so i can't really be certain whether quitting caffeine had a positive or negative effect i can just say that it felt the same it didn't feel like there were any positive benefits to completely quitting caffeine that's not to say that there was something going on under the surface during my night's sleep that actually was having a positive effect but i just i don't want to quit coffee i'm not quitting coffee and for the most part i'm really good about cutting myself off at around 12 p.m and so i think most of the effects or the negative effects of consuming caffeine have been cut off for me if you find that you're sluggish and tired later in the afternoon without a second cup of coffee it's probably an indicator that you're not getting enough sleep to begin with by intentionally cutting yourself off at least 10 hours before you go to bed you're much more likely to get to sleep quicker and also have less sleep disruptions during the night improving your overall sleep health rule number two get eight hours of sleep not eight hours in bed how much sleep people need each night varies but the national sleep foundation recommends an average of eight hours for adults some might be able to function on a little less some might need more and it requires some experimentation to truly understand how much sleep you need many people don't get enough sleep regardless of what the science tells us 40 of americans still say that they get less than seven hours of sleep every night and getting a full eight hours requires much more than being in bed for eight hours each night this might be one of the biggest misconceptions and one of the biggest mistakes that i made with my own sleep habits i just naturally assumed that if i was in bed for eight hours i'd be getting around eight hours of sleep but i didn't factor in a few things it usually takes me about 30 minutes to get to sleep and i also toss and turn throughout the night and so once i started to track my sleep i started to realize that i was actually underestimating the amount of time that i needed to be in bed through tracking my sleep i realized that i was consistently getting less than eight hours of sleep and occasionally i'd have nights of less than six hours if you're a parent you're probably throwing your hands in the air right now because six hours of sleep every night seems like a dream so in order to make sure that i gave myself the best chance of getting eight hours of sleep every night i knew that i'd have to give myself more time in bed so i planned ahead added a little bit of buffer time into my sleep schedule and if i really wanted to get eight hours of sleep then i'd often have to give myself nine hours in bed in order to get a full night's sleep you should also plan for potential sleep disruptions the quality of your sleep is directly related to your ability to stay asleep if you have constant interruptions then your sleep will suffer waking up to go to the bathroom sweating because your room is too hot street lights creeping in through your window don't simply default to your environment take control of your bedroom and organize it in a way that gives you the best shot at getting eight hours of sleep play white noise or rain sounds to drown out traffic get blinds to block the sunlight from coming in too early so where i live right now the sun starts to rise around 5 30 a.m but i don't wake up until 6 30 a.m so that hour is usually a pretty disruptive moment in my own sleep schedule so what i've started to do is put on an eye mask when i begin to toss and turn in the morning i don't like wearing an eye mask all night because it tends to give me a little bit of acne and it also falls off in the middle of the night and so then in the morning when i really need it i'm like scavenging throughout the bed trying to find it waking up natalie she's getting mad at me it's a whole thing so what i try to do now is just leave it by my bedside once i initially wake up from the sunrise coming in the room i pop my eye mask on and i get that extra hour of really good sleep in the morning you can also control the amount of beverages that you drink before you go to bed research indicates that alcohol is particularly damaging to your sleep but i'm also talking about any beverages you want to make sure that you don't have to wake up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night and lastly you can control the temperature of your room this can be challenging when sharing a bed with your partner but having enough blankets and getting a fan placed on your side of the bed can help to keep both people comfortable during the night rule number three don't look at screens one hour before bed i'm gonna be totally real with you guys this rule is the one that i break most often i'm sure that so many of you are in the same boat as me right now in the past i've had a very peaceful nighttime routine of making a cup of mint tea and reading but lately 2020 has been a crazy year and my screen has become my comfort blanket of sorts as nat and i watch a few episodes of our favorite shows before we go to bed we sometimes even watch these shows in bed as a distraction to help us turn off our brains and get to sleep but i know this isn't the best or healthiest long-term nightly routine as research has shown that looking at screens before bed can have a negative impact on our sleep schedules according to the national sleep foundation using screens before bed delays your body's internal clock suppresses the release of sleep-induced hormone melatonin and makes it more difficult to fall asleep the blue glow of our screens is dialed to match the sunlight most computers now have the ability to switch to a dark mode or night mode and this acts to change the color temperature of your screen as the sun sets making screens a warmer color but some research has shown that this might actually make the problem even worse a recent study found that brightness has more of an effect than color temperature so a glowing screen blue or not will still confuse the brain into thinking that it's daytime the better solution is to avoid all screens completely one hour before bed two hours if you can one way that i've found to be able to do this effectively is to replace that habit with something else this happens with almost every bad habit that you can think of by replacing it you're preoccupying your mind you're keeping yourself busy and comfortable doing something else if you simply cut out screens and expect yourself to sit there and meditate for an hour you're going to break and you are going to fail replace it with something positive and you'll give yourself an even better shot of changing the habit so you might want to try this set your alarm one hour before you go to bed when it goes off turn off all your screens dim the lights in your house and start up a new nighttime routine perhaps make a cup of mint tea play a board game a card game or read one of your favorite books replacing the habit will help to curb the urge to watch something and helps to do something more calming instead i already spend enough time of my day looking at screens from the eight hours of work i typically spend behind my computer and then watching tv shows at night and so if you're anything like me this one hour of solitude will guarantee that you can switch things off and enjoy some quiet before bed the earlier that you cut off screens and begin to dim the lights in your home the more likely you are to get to sleep much quicker two hours is ideal one hour works if you're trying to catch up on bachelor in paradise my sponsor for this week's video is squarespace i've partnered with squarespace all year because i've gotten a ton of value from their platform over the years whether you're building a personal brand starting a podcast or creating a blog they make it effortless to create a beautiful and professionally designed website use their tools for blogging get powerful analytics connect your social media accounts and much more or keep things crazy simple like me and simply set up your website with an email signup form i really like squarespace and i think that if you give them a shot if you need to build a website for yourself you will like them as well go to squarespace.com for a free trial when you're ready to launch go to squarespace.comella to save 10 off your first purchase of a website or domain i know firsthand just how easy it is to push off sleep as a priority in life it's so much easier to focus on these other areas of self-development and productivity that are a little bit more sexy especially for those of us who are really ambitious and really want to get a lot done but i know firsthand how pushing off sleep really does negatively impact your well-being as well as your mental health so of course there's going to be these late nights of course there's going to be these times when you have to complete that project last second when you're pushing things off until the last minute but i've found that for my health for my mental health for my physical health for my overall well-being uh to really be happy and to really enjoy the work that i'm doing i need to make sure that i'm getting enough sleep every single day so i hope that you guys uh have gotten a few things out of this video i hope you're able to implement one or more of these rules into your nighttime routine if there's something else that really has helped you get a really full well-rounded night's sleep i love to hear about it in the comments if you want to learn more about sleep i definitely recommend you check out matthew walker's book why we sleep thanks for watching and i'll see you next time