Wednesday, March 01, 2006

8 Tips for Sleeping Less

It seems many people are interested in sleeping less. The theory most people have is they will get more done. I do not believe in oversleeping and think in many respect too much sleep is overrated.

I love the early morning time and have many many things I love to do before the world wakes up including working out and getting a good jump on my day.

And there is a buzz on the net these days about Polyphasic sleep. This is sleeping for 20 minutes every 4 hours for a total of 3 hours per day. I have toyed with this idea but have yet to get my courage up to try it (among other things, napping seems a bit weird since every 4 hours it would definitely interfere.

And of course the No Sleep Pill that lets you get all the sleep you need in 2 hours.

My top 8 tips for sleeping less and still feeling great are:

1 - Be inspired. If you truly are passionate about life, you will natually function well on less sleep. You also will not want to miss anything so will sleep less.

2 - Avoid drugs. Caffeine and alcohol are two bad ones that come to mind. Both impact sleep negatively.

3 - Wake up at the same time each day (I am not perfect at this but it helps).

4 - Sleep well when you sleep. This means a quiet, cool, dark room. Relax well before going to bed. Clear your mind.

5 - Exercise. This helps you to sleep better. It also helps you to be more alert during the day.

6 - Eat well. Healthy eating leads to healthy sleeping.

7 - Just do it. Like any habit, it is easy to get used to less sleep (to a limit). I do think it varies from person to person.

8 - catnap if you can. Learn to nap for only 20 minutes (a trick stolen from polyphasic sleep). I have begun to master this one and it works great.

Given that you are not over sleeping, perhaps the idea should be to be more productive with the time we are awake. And you know if you follow my blog that I spend a lot of time and focus on being productive.


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5 Comments:

At 12:28 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Nothing new here. Basic, obvious "tips," don't you think?

 
At 8:18 AM, Blogger Jim Estill said...

The obvious is often powerful. Mastering the basics is often the way to succeed.

 
At 8:53 PM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks for the article. It shows basic things, but powerful ones. I wonder if you are "polyphasing"?

I am doing it for 9 days, and even opened a blog: http://polyphasicsleep.auriumsoft.com

I haven't saved so much time yet, but my life is changing to better, because the working is getting more productive.

Regards.

 
At 12:01 PM, Anonymous James G said...

i'd be interested to hear how you felt after 4 hours sleep a night after a couple of weeks.

i think this is just a gimmick - you can only really get by on a min of 6 hours sleep in my opinion.

 
At 2:31 AM, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Awesome article and probably not good for me to read considering the little sleep I get already...yet well said, especially in # 1...be inspired

 

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