Tuesday, November 27, 2018
How to overcome your excuses for not prioritizing sleep
www.fastcompany.com: Not getting enough sleep at night? You’re not alone. According to research by the Harvard Business Review, 43% of business leaders don’t get enough sleep at least four nights a week. Yes, you read that right–for the majority of the workweek, you’re probably working with someone who’s running on fumes, metaphorically speaking.
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7 comments:
I really like this article because it addressed so many excuses that either me or my friends use when trying to justify our sleep deprivation. I, for one, definitely do not get enough sleep and it has come to the point where I cannot get more than six hours of sleep or I will be exhausted the entire day. Sleep is something that is talked a lot about in college because nobody sleeps and everyone complains about it. The biggest problem is that there is a clear and simple bad sleeping habit, but no one wants to do it because they’re lazy or tired. Not many people give direct solutions for how to get more sleep because time management is a even bigger issue that really has no formula and is catered to each and every specific person. I think the only true way to get on a good and healthy sleep schedule is if you truly want to, because no one will push you to do that but yourself.
I think this article does a good job of identifying the common problems that keep people from sleeping and discusses some simple ways to solve these problems. Although these solutions are simple and seem obvious, I think that this article is a good reminder of all that you are not doing that you can easily do to sleep more. I honestly don't know many people who use these tips to sleep so I wonder how easy these tips are to implement. It seems a lot of these solutions rely on creating a habit and thus will take a couple of weeks to get start working. Also, some of the solutions require buying products that would perhaps be expensive, but maybe that will be worth it to invest in higher quality to sleep better. Overall, this simple article is a great reminder of what we can do to improve our sleep.
I definitely fall into the category of people who don't get enough sleep at night and I it was definitely intriguing to see the different excused that people give. I have heard all of these excuses from different at different points in time and it may be worded differently but they all seem to fall under these categories that are listed in this articles. My biggest issue with sleep is noise and light. I have a very hard time sleeping when there is noise or even a little bit of light coming through. I definitely found the benefit of sleeping with ambient sounds. It helps calm me and keeps me in a relaxed state of mind. Although these tips are very helpful and if implemented will help with trend of lack of sleep but I would be more interested in an article that talks about ways to help people sleep throughout the night. This is an issue for me and no matter how sleep comes easy, it is more work staying asleep.
I find it interesting that this article uses the term excuses when really it is describing obstacles. I was expecting this to be about excuses along the lines of “I can catch up on sleep later” or “I won’t get enough work done if I don’t”. Reasons why people might legitimately believe sleep is less important. These are actually just common mistakes/ problems. These all seem like really solid suggestions. I’d definitely recommend a weighted blanket to anyone considering it, I got one this summer and it has improved the quality of my sleep so much, plus I fall asleep way faster. I also found I started falling asleep faster once I stopped doing work in bed after reading an article similar to this about separating where you sleep and where you work. I still work in my bedroom, but I have a defined work space. A lot of these types of suggestions may be things you’ve heard over and over again and always dismiss, but I’ve found they are pretty accurate. That isn’t to say I do everything listed in this article, but I probably should.
This article is very helpful because it presents common sleeping issues I had never thought of before. Usually when I head to bed I spend about 20 minutes looking at my phone until I finally crash. But now that I think about it, it’s 20 minutes I could be sleeping. With the hecticness of our schedules and the amount of work we get, I should be maximizing the amount of sleep I can bank every night. And like me, most of my classmates might be on the same boat. Also acknowledging the fact that our productivity lowers the further we stay awake it is really helpful. I can count the times I have stopped working on an assignment, and taken a nap, only to realize after the nap, that I can plow through the assignment. Our brains need rest in order to work. Once we start prioritizing sleep our ability to work through our to do list should improve.
I definitely have a habit of not sleeping enough. Even everyone back at home knew that I didn’t really sleep, and that being tired was kind of just part of who I was. For the first excuse, I think it’s pretty much everyone in the same boat. It’s really easy to just go on your phone and get distracted by all of the content out there in the internet. So I agree, that one is a barrier for sure. However I think some of the other ones are a little bit less of just “excuses.” Like being too stressed to sleep. Creating a ritual before bed doesn’t make all of your deadlines miraculously go away, or fix your family problems. Sure, it can help, but at least for me trying to put in a ‘bedtime routine’ just made me more stressed about trying to follow another set of rules and patterns. I think overall it’s people having repeated problems with sleep, yet for one reason or another they do nothing to solve it.
I think, like most people at CMU, I struggle with getting a healthy amount of sleep and also getting good quality sleep. Recently, I've had a lot of issues with waking up when my alarm goes off. The most helpful piece of advice in this article is establishing a regular sleep routine. The only way I've really found to feel rested and wake up consistently is to try and go to sleep and wake up at the same time every day. Obviously, something as rigid as that is really hard to maintain at CMU where your commitments vary so much week to week. I agree with Julian that this article offered good practical advice on improving your sleep quality but didn't actually address the underlying issue of the excuses people use to justify prioritizing so many other things over their sleep. And I'm not necessarily saying they shouldn't. When you have just too many things to do and not enough time, the easiest way to create more time is just to sleep less, that will never not be true. However, prioritizing and protecting your quality of sleep whenever you can is key to being a happy and productive person.
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