Sleep is a naturally recurring state of mind and body that should take up one-third of your life. It’s the state of repair, regeneration, organization, and growth. It’s an essential process to a life well lived.
But we’ve been taught that sleeping is for the weak and lazy. To get ahead in life, we need to be willing to work late nights and get up early in the working. A popular phrase is “I’ll sleep when I’m dead.” But, a more scientifically proven phrase may be, “My lack of sleep will cause my death.” This is because a lack of proper sleep (duration, consistency, continuity or quality) increases one’s chances of developing deadly diseases, leads to lower quality-of-life, increases stress and anxiety, and leads to a shorter, less desirable life. Instead of spending those extra hours in the evening on work, or catching up on junk TV, it’s time we start prioritizing the process that facilities a happy and healthy life. It’s time to start prioritizing sleep.
This idea of optimizing sleep has brought a number of benefits into my life and many others. To name a few:
If you’d like to begin your journey to optimal sleep, here are the 3 steps I recommend.

Maintain a Strict Sleep Schedule
Go to bed and wake up at the same time every single day. Your schedule should allocate around 8 hours of sleep every night.

Setup a Sleep Sanctuary
Create an environment that facilities proper sleep. Use a well-rated mattress, head pillow and body pillow. Keep your bedroom cool while being void of light and noise.

Limit Consumption
Abstain from digital screens an hour before bedtime. Avoid large, unhealthy, or spicy meals within 3 hours of bedtime. Don’t consume caffeine within 12 hours of bedtime. Avoid alcohol altogether.
While this 3-step guide may seem obvious and easy to implement, it’s far from it. To make changes in your life, it requires a significant portion of time to educate yourself, develop a personalized plan, implement the changes and retrain your habits. Despite the process being difficult, as with anything, it gets easier with consistent effort over an extended period of time. Try focusing on one step of this guide for a month. Monitor and manage your progress each week. And then once you’ve got a good handle on it, move on to the next step. Because…
Small disciplines repeated with consistency every day lead to great achievements gained slowly over time.
John Maxwell – The 15 Invaluable Laws of Growth