Sleep 101

Sleep.

I know what you’re thinking, “BOOORRRRIIIIINNGG”.

I wholeheartedly agree, I wish that I never had to sleep and I loathe that at some point, someone decided that it would be a good idea to force everyone to lie still for hours on end just to feel normal.

However, there is no closer equivalent to a total system reset than the change in mindset you experience between being sleep deprived and being well slept.

Below is a fantastic TED talk by Professor of neuroscience, Russel Foster, showing the effects of sleep deprivation go further than we realise:

Hormonal and metabolic consequences aside, not getting enough sleep is quite simply rubbish.

You interact with the world like a car with the handbrake left on, no matter how much throttle you give you’ll never reach top speed. You tend to focus on the negative, use a pessimistic interpretation of your environment and have a reduced ability to reason and rationalise.

“Errr…speak for yourself Jonny, I get like LOOOAADS of sleep”

Well, ask yourself these questions:

1. Do I consistently get between 7-9 hours of (largely) uninterrupted sleep?

2. When I wake up, do I feel good and energetic?

3. If I had to watch a 4 hour lecture on the history of the British political system, would I be able to stay awake throughout?

Usually, the answer to these questions if mainly “no” and if this is you, your sleep needs work. If not, go be smug and well slept somewhere else please.

A sure-fire way to be bad at anything and everything is to get insufficient sleep. You should be getting enough sleep such that during daylight hours you feel awake and alert. In fact, a common test for sleep deprivation is the subject participants to mundane tasks requiring little to no dynamic thought, if the participant falls asleep, box ticked, they’re sleep deprived.

Lets look at the variables:

The sleep we get has insufficient duration, intensity and/or routine

Problems:

1) We have social or work commitments that impede our sleep

2) We are surrounded by sources of instant gratification and procrastination (TV, Facebook, instragram etc etc)

3) We are able to drive with the handbrake and mask tiredness through caffiene and stimulants

Solution:

You may have read articles suggesting that you need to wake up at 5am everyday and that you need 9 hours of sleep in a cave otherwise you’ll wake up a pre-diabetic mess. Yea, no problem, I’ll do that and then hunt for my breakfast in the woods using my bare hands, cook it on a man-made fire and wash in a mountain spring…..all before I finish this report that I need to present at 9am.

We need to be realistic here, people are busy..very busy and usually commitments take precedence. How fantastic would it be if you could arrive late for work on the justification “sorry guys, I had to get my 8 hours in” - if only

“sleep as much as you can without getting fired or divorced” Robb Wolf

As James Clear points out, we can only control 3 things:

1) Intensity

2) Routine

3) Duration

So, this considered, we’ve compiled our favourite tips that address each of these factors:

Bedtime routine:

http://youtu.be/0fd12MXmV5s

1. Control your environment:

Make your bedroom cool, as dark as possible and as quiet as possible. Mattresses are a touchy topic: while mattress salesmen will have you think that you need to spend £1000+ to achieve a good night's sleep, this is overkill. There's a major placebo component to this.

I even slept on the floor for 1.5 years... for science.

https://youtu.be/YP1M8JjKx2Y

The main takeaway is not to sleep on an overly soft surface, and to replace your mattress every 10 years,