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:

  • Decrease Risk of Cancer, Alzheimer’s and Mental illness
  • Increase Energy, Awareness and Alertness
  • Expand Ability to Learn and Remember
  • Increase Creativity and Wisdom
  • Reduce Anxiety and Loneliness
  • Increase Immunity to Sickness

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.

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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.

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Limit Consumption

Abstain from digital screens a 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.

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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
Additional Resources
  • Managing Artificial Light Exposure Before Bedtime
    Melatonin is a chemical that causes us to become sleepy and fall asleep at nighttime. One of the primary factors for determining melatonin levels is light. With artificial light and digital screens taking over our homes, it’s affecting our melatonin levels and subsequently, our ability to fall asleep and stay asleep. Find out how to control light to facilitate proper melatonin levels here.
  • Are You Too Busy to Sleep?
    In the modern world, we’ve become so busy that we’re cutting back on sleep to accomplish more things. But, cutting back on sleep degrades our ability to learn, be productive and complete work effectively. This means we’re likely accomplishing less. Find out how sleeping adequately will help you learn faster and become more productive.
  • Should You Use an Alarm Clock?
    Most people in the United States use an alarm clock every morning. Some people even set multiple alarms to make sure they get up. On top of that, people hit the snooze button over and over. But it turns out that an alarm clock is a short-term fix for a longer-term problem. And the short-term fix comes with problems like increased stress levels, elevated blood pressure and morning drowsiness.