This week on Discover the Hustle Podcast we talk about the importance of sleep and how you can start sleeping better. We took these tips directly from Sleep Smarter by ShawnStevenson and put our own spin/thoughts into it. It’s a phenomenal read and really helped us to sleep better. So what are these tips? How can you start sleeping better? Let’s get into it!

First things first. You’ll want to schedule it into yourday. We’ve talked about the importance of scheduling many times in the past.Shawn talks about making it a point to get the sleep that you need and don’t waiver off on this. It’s necessary you don’t pull all-nighters in an attempt to get that project finished, because you’ll end up worse off in the future anyways. What you can do though, is be prepared. Don’t procrastinate too long on the things you need to get done. This makes sure that you can still be efficient while awake and get all of the necessary sleep, which happens to be roughly 7-9hours for most ages. In our opinion, we feel that sleeping the necessary amount each night allows us to be more effective the next day. This means that we don’t want to stay up late to get just an hour more of work done, because we’ll end up being worse off the next day then. We know if we allocate time like we should, we will kill it and still sleep great. 

The next piece is utilizing natural light. We’ve biologically adapted to waking up around the time the sun comes up and going to sleep when the sun goes down. So we should utilize our circadian rhythms in this way. The idea is to wake up around the time the sun comes up and go to bed around the time the sun goes down. The light from the sun leaves us feeling awake and energized for the day. We should also try to minimize blue light.Blue light is emitted from the sun and tells us when to be awake. We are also exposed to these sources of light from screens that we interact with daily.Blue light comes from phones, laptops, TVs and many more devices. We don’t want this telling our bodies to be awake so reducing screen time before bed is massively important. This means no TVs in our bedrooms and putting the phone down an hour before bed. If you struggle with using your phone/laptop to the late hours, then try using apps that turn blue light off. The newer iPhone models have a new feature called “Night Mode” that allows you to turn blue light off starting at a specific time. You can also use f.lux for laptops, which essentially does the same thing. These are great ways to reduce exposure to blue light, allowing you to sleep better at night.

Sleep Cycles are another thing that Shawn explains really well. A sleep cycle lasts roughly 90 minutes. He recommends that at the MINIMUM you try to shoot for four sleep cycles, which equates to 6 hours of sleep. Five or six would also be beneficial depending on the person, with five probably being most ideal and coming out to 7.5 hours of sleep. Shawn also mentions that it’s more beneficial to sleep a full cycle instead of interrupting it. For example, instead of sleeping for 7 hours you should either sleep for 6 or 7.5 to make sure you complete a full cycle. This can obviously be adjusted based on your schedule, but your best bet is to complete a sleep cycle. What’s awesome is there are apps that can sense when you are in the best sleep cycle and actually wake you up at an ideal point. One example is http://www.sleepcycle.com.

Bedroom is for sleep and another ‘S’ word. It is not snacks. And Shawn makes this very clear. You don’t want to build poor associations with your bedroom. You should use your bedroom and bed for these two main purposes and leave it at that. No TVs, no video games, nothing else. Build an association with your bedroom that is centered around sleep. That way every time you enter your room, your brain thinks sleep and you can fall asleep easier. Another important feature to your room is having it pitch black. If you want to achieve high quality sleep your room should not be filled with unnatural light.Unnatural light could be TV screens, street lights, car lights, etc. But the good news is you have a few options to make your room super dark. Either get yourself some dark shades or buy a sleeping mask! Sleeping mask is cheaper and portable. Shades are easy to use and won’t fall off your face ever! 

One of the final tips we talked about related to exercise.Shawn mentions that early morning workouts lead to better sleep at night. He credits cortisol with the reason for keeping you awake at night when your workout is late. Cortisol is a stress hormone that puts you in fight or flight mode, which obviously then makes it hard to sleep. You probably will also have a tough time regulating your body temperature. So for this, like I said, Shawn recommends working out in the morning. He also gives many examples of how losing weight can lead to better sleep. Overall he says that you will have better organ function and be able to breathe easier in general. These things play a vital role in that quality of sleep that we get. 

And if we could leave you with one tip it’s this; just chill out and focus on your breathing. Meditate if you must, but just really let yourself decompress a little bit before bed. Don’t force thoughts out of your mind. Just let them pass through your mind and then refocus on your breathing.This will allow you to calm down and really relax. Sleep is used for recovery and is an extremely important part of our lives. We must learn to use it as one of the single greatest tools that life has given us. Let us know what tips you use from this episode!

Buy the book here: http://amzn.to/1rW79E2

Shawn’s Links: http://theshawnstevensonmodel.com

Twitter: @ShawnModel

Episode with MFCEO: http://apple.co/1W6coO5

Twitter: @brad_ploch & @dylanmparks

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DiscoverTheHustle.com

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LodosBtoB0A 

Intro musicby:

JPB – High

https://soundcloud.com/anis-jay