There’s no excuse for this one. You shouldn’t be spending solitary confinement doing much other than sleeping.
Don’t settle for waiting out the plague. Bulletproof habits are a way to turn the Lockdown into an opportunity to ramp up your fitness. And because the challenge is greater, so are the rewards.
It all starts with two minutes, or less. Each week brings us to the next level. By the end of this series, these health and productivity-boosting habits will be integral parts of your routine.
Pros of Sleep
- Restores energy
- Reduces sleepiness
- Allows you to fast-forward bad days
- Increases productivity
- Improves memory retention
- Elevates testosterone and other good hormones
- Lowers aging
Cons of Sleep
- Less time in the day to procrastinate
- Can’t join your friend’s birthday night out
Keeping a consistent bedtime schedule is the single most proven way of fixing issues with sleep quality. And it just so happens that the lockdown’s made it a lot easier. Most excuses have now been driven out of the picture, and we’re free to dedicate as much time as we’d like to the business of sleep.
Inconsistent sleeping and waking times can mess with the brain to the point where you can end up feeling too restless and wired to nod off at the right time. Making space for the traditional eight hours won’t necessarily mean you get enough rest. There are a lot of factors that still have to be ticked off.
There’s sleep efficiency, which is the percentage of time in bed where you’re actually asleep. You should be spending a good portion of time in deep and REM sleep, which are important for restoring energy and memory. And it should be generally restful, without the spikes in heart rate when you wake up with a full bladder. Having to make bathroom runs in the middle of the night isn’t actually normal for the human body.
The best course of action is to settle the brain into expecting sleep at a certain time. Much of your habits are dependent on the time and location of the cue, and this is no different. Figure out when you’re best waking up, and set bedtime for 8-8:30 hours beforehand. So if you like to be productive in the mornings, and want to get up at 6, then aim for 9:30-10 in the evening.
It may feel like you’re having to make huge sacrifices to make these appointments, but most likely you’ll just be losing a few unhealthy habits to get there. And by that, I mean turning off your devices and stopping the blue light glare from further disrupting sleep.
Sleep Walkthrough
- The first stage of this bulletproof habit, is making sure you’re at home by that appointed time. Which we’ve pretty much solved already, and will be crossed off once martial law gets invoked.
2. Leading us onto the second step, which is turning off devices on schedule.
3. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to climb on to your bed, you could easily begin a routine of winding down for the night.
4. Read a book, prep your meals, brush your teeth, talk to your spouse, you get the idea. Bore yourself out.
5. Sleep will come eventually. Don’t rush and force it while intermittently checking the clock. That tends to work even worse than trying an allnighter.
Bulletproof Habits are a part of Apocalypse Cheat Sheet Series. Head to my blog to see everything that’s been posted so far.
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