Do you find that sleep often escapes you? Perhaps your sleep schedule is all over the place, with varied bedtimes and wake up schedules. This could be causing you to feel tired and fatigued and lacking the energy you need for success in your day-to-day life.
How do you fix this issue? Whether you’re dealing with insomnia or simply don’t allow for enough sleep on a regular basis, these five tips can help you have a more consistent sleep schedule:
- Keep a sleep schedule.
As tempted as you are to stay in bed longer on the weekends, under the best blanket imaginable, it’s wise to maintain the same sleep schedule throughout the week. This allows you to set a clock, so to speak, for when it’s time to sleep and wake up. An irregular sleep schedule can actually do a number on your body, causing drowsiness and irritability, even though you’ve gotten the number of hours of sleep that you should.
- Schedule your meals according to the hour of bedtime.
From indigestion to heartburn, bloating, and gas, there are many things that you may eat before bed that could make it difficult to get to sleep. While you may want to reconsider your diet to avoid an upset stomach, it could be beneficial for your sleep quality to avoid eating right before bed. Eating around two hours before it’s time to go to sleep is a common suggestion, so you can make sure to digest your food long before it’s time to get to bed.
- Make sure to get exercise every day but avoid doing so before bed.
Exercise is immensely helpful for your sleep quality, so it’s important to get some movement in every day. However, if you’ve been doing a nighttime routine at the gym or running before bed and your sleep isn’t going too well, this could be why. All those great endorphins after exercise are wonderful but they can also make it difficult to doze off at bedtime.
- Don’t drink caffeine in the afternoon.
As much as you may love coffee it could be better to avoid your cup of Joe after 2:00 p.m or so. Caffeine is a great pick-me-up in the morning to get you going but the last thing you want is to still be going when it’s time to be stopping—for your sleep schedule. There may be other drinks you have in the afternoon that contain caffeine that you may need to avoid, as well.
- Go to bed early.
With a sleep schedule, you’re going to want to actually set a time for when it’s time to sleep and when it’s time to get up. If you have a job where you need to be there or get started at a certain time, you probably already have to wake up at a set time every morning. In order to get as much sleep as you need, consider going to bed early enough to get around 8 hours of shuteye every night. If you are someone who doesn’t just hit the pillow and go to sleep, consider setting bedtime to an earlier time so you can be sure you actually get to sleep as early as you need to.
In Conclusion
A sleep schedule could be helpful for you if it helps you get as much sleep as you need to function at your optimal level—something that everyone wants. Consider these tips if you want to get the most out of your nights, as sleep has more of an impact on your everyday living than you may realize.
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