Daily Tip #17 - Adjusting Your Sleep

0:01 - Intro

Hello, and welcome to Tuesday. And Week-Daily Tip #17. I'm Shane from MATRIX. In today's tip, we're going to talk about sleep. And I'm a little embarrassed that has taken me 17 Tips to get to the one thing that might be absolutely most critical for everybody to be healthy and have reduced stress. Sure, you've heard about all the benefits of sleep. And as much as we hear about it, we still don't seem to do much about getting more of it. But I'm going to go through the benefits in a little bit more detail. And then, on the back end of this, I'm going to give you some ideas of how you can use the time that we're in right now to start to adjust your sleep schedule to something that's right for you.

0:48 – Benefits of Sleep

So, the benefits of sleep. I'm sure you've heard it improves memory and improves focus when you get the right amount of sleep. But more importantly, for what's going on in the world right now, is it's hugely important for your body's immune system. It's super important for your stress levels. Not getting enough sleep doesn't allow us to take care of the cortisol that's in our body. In fact, it builds it. So we're more stressed out. We have more issues with weight. We have more issues focusing. And so, we're more stressed out because those other things aren't going well in our life. Sleep can just play a huge role.

1:25 – How many Hours Do You Need?

Now for the average person, they say seven to nine hours of sleep is appropriate. But that's, of course, different for everybody. Personally, if I get more than eight hours, I actually feel worse. I wake up sore and stiff. But I do know that if I get less than seven, I'm not at my optimal. So that's my range. The first thing that I would want you to think about today is what is your optimal range of sleep? How many hours of sleep does it take for you to feel your best? And this doesn't mean when you went for a week of getting five hours of sleep and all of a sudden you slept 10 and it felt amazing. That's not it. When you're consistently getting a certain number of hours of sleep, you probably have a pretty good idea of where you feel best. If you don't know that number, just start with eight for the thing that we're going to try today.

2:15 – How Much Are You Awake? 

Number two, that you need to know is that I track my sleep with my Fitbit sleep tracker. So, I have a pretty good idea of when I'm falling asleep, when I'm waking up, and how good my sleep was. You don't have to have one of those. That's not super important. But what I do find really interesting is that for about an hour out of every night -- 45 minutes to an hour -- I'm actually awake. They're little micro wake-ups that I don't remember the next day, but they're happening and we all have them. So, when we take those two numbers -- me wanting to get seven hours of sleep and knowing that I'm going to be awake for 45 minutes per night. That means the time I need to be in bed is closer to eight hours. Just keep that in mind when you're trying to decide what works best for you.

3:05 – What’s Your Sleep Window 

Now, let's just take a target of eight hours for you. And 30 minutes knowing that throughout the night, you're going to be awake for that period of time. You're looking for eight and a half hours in bed. The next part of what we want to do is, can you fit that into your day? What time do you typically like to go to bed? What time do you typically need to get up? And is there eight and a half hours available there for you to work with? Now, an important part about starting to get on a better schedule is making sure that we don't do it too fast. And that we don't add excess stress to the process. Because that's going to prevent you from doing it all together. So, if you can think of a window even if it meant changing your current schedule by a lot, is there a window that you'd be willing to get the proper amount of sleep within? If not, that's okay. Adjust the amount of sleep that you're going to try and give yourself every day so that you're not getting stressed out about having to sleep past when your kids are getting up or anything like that.

4:12 – Making the Shift

Alright, so we've got three things, we've got time to sleep that you need, time awake during the night that you have to compensate for, and the window that you're willing to sleep. The next thing to look at is, what times are you actually going to sleep and actually getting up? What we're going to do to over the next couple weeks -- while we're still all stuck at home -- is I will encourage you to slowly start to shift what your current schedule is, toward what that ideal schedule is. Don't jump in there tonight and say, "Oh, I'm going to go to bed at 9 so that I can get up at 6 o'clock in the morning and everything's going to be perfect". Don't do that. If you're currently going to bed at midnight. Trying to go to bed at 9 is unrealistic. What you should do is start to adjust your window by 15 minutes every day. That's it. So, if your current window is 12pm to 6am, start thinking 11:45 to 6:15. 11:30 to 6:30 the next day. So you're starting to spread that window out. And if those jumps are too big -- if 15 minutes on both ends is too much -- work with just 15 minutes on one end. Say, "I know I have to get up at this time, but I'm going to try to go to bed a little earlier", and adjust by 15 minutes. Just on that one end.

5:31 – Is It Working for You?

And then most importantly -- out of all of this -- is to actually pay attention to how it's making you feel. Is trying to change your schedule, adding too much stress? If it is, try to make the windows even smaller. Are you actually feeling better after you're getting this much sleep? Don't make the decision off of just one night. But do it after each week. Check in -- "How am I feeling now? Do I feel a little bit more weight? Do I feel healthier? Do I feel lighter? Do I feel more energized?" You can check on all those things. And it's from that information that you'll be able to make the decision if what you're doing is right for you and make the appropriate adjustments as we go.

6:10 - Conclusion

So that's it. Today's talk was all about sleep. Basically, how important it is. And a simple little process of trying to figure out how much you need. And when you're going to fit it into your schedule without adding more stress by doing it. Take the time over these next couple of weeks that were stuck at home, to really begin to create the shift so that when you're back into your normal routine again -- whenever that may be -- you'll have the right sleep pattern to keep it going.

6:34 - Farewell

Thanks a lot. Tune back in tomorrow for a new Tip. It's going to be on habit change, just so you know. It'll help you out with what you're trying to do from this Tip. And don't forget tonight, I am holding my first training. So, if you're interested in checking that out, hop on our mailing list so you can get those details. Talk to you tomorrow!