How much sleep do we really need? Of course it’s very personal, but “seven to eight hours should be enough” is what we keep hearing from most sources. But is it possible to shorten this time, without hurting your health?
Indeed, sufficient sleep time is important for your body to function well during the day. Sleep helps your body to recover from illness, minimizes the effect of stress, increases ability to concentrate, and improves memory and coordination. You don’t want to put these abilities at risk, do you?
The good news is that it is possible to shorten sleep time by up to 1 hour without the risk of sleep deprivation if you understand and follow these two simple rules.
How to Sleep Less
Rule 1. It’s not just the quantity of sleep that counts, but also the quality.
Everyone has woken up after 10 hours sleep and felt fatigue, as well as getting up after 6 hours of sleep feeling completely refreshed and rested. There are many factors that may influence how long you need to sleep to feel rested, but the rule is simple. The higher is the quality of your sleep, the smaller amount of sleep time you need. This is the first recipe in shortening your sleep time. It seems to be logical, but how you can improve the quality of your sleep? There are a number of ways to do it but the most practical are:
- Do not eat before going to bed (at least 2 hours before sleep time).
- Sleep in dark, quiet room.
- Try using a sleep optimization program. These work wonders for some people.
- Sleep with fresh air (open windows or get air refresher).
- Exercise during the day. If you don’t exercise, go for a 15 minutes walk before the sleep time.
- Do not watch TV in the bed before going to sleep. Read a book, take a bath, do something relaxing.
- Don’t drink coffee or other stimulants within 6 hours of bed time.
- Don’t take long naps (more than 30 mins) during the day.
Follow these simple tips and within one or two weeks you will notice how your sleep starts improving.
Rule 2. Any habit can be changed, slowly
There is an old African proverb. “How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.” The same is true for changing your sleep habits. When do you go to sleep, how long you sleep, where you sleep –- it’s all part of the sleeping pattern that your body is accustomed to. Like any habit, it can be changed by taking small but regular steps.
Start waking up 5 minutes earlier every 2-3 days. In one week, you’ll be waking up 15 minutes earlier. In one month, you’ll be waking up 1 hour earlier! To make it even easier, you can take slower steps and extend your experiment for 2 or 3 months by shifting your sleep time by 5 minutes a week. To succeed in this experiment, you should try and go to bed at about the same time every day. It requires discipline, but result is well worth it.
As you start sleeping less and less, it’s crucial to remember and follow the first rule about quality sleep. This is your only way to compensate for less sleep.
Just imagine what you can do with all the free time you can get from waking up earlier. If you can manage to get one extra hour per day you’ll end up with 365 hours per year –- that’s equal to 9 work-weeks of productive time! By utilizing this time you could learn a new language, read dozens of books (or even write some!) and start exercising regularly. Morning time is also the most productive time. No wonder the early rising habit is so common among successful people. Become one of them!
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This guest post is contributed by Y. Graf, the author of the How to Wake Up Early blog. His blog is loaded with tips, tricks and strategies to help everyone in building the early wake up habit and becoming an early riser.
事实上，我们最多是可以减少一小时的睡眠时间的。
- 不仅仅是睡眠的长短，更重要的是睡眠质量。
很多人在睡了10个小时起床，仍然觉得疲倦；而有些人只需要六个小时的睡眠，便可以重新精神焕发。这是因为除了睡眠的长短的影响外，睡眠的质量对健 康也有着不可估量的影响。若你的睡眠质量越高，那你需要的睡眠的时间也就可以少一些。所以提高你的睡眠质量，便是缩短你的睡眠质量的第一条秘方。这里有几 条方法帮助你如何提高睡眠质量：
- 不要在睡前吃东西（至少不要在睡觉前2小时内）
- 不要开灯睡觉，尽量在黑暗的房间里睡觉。
- 睡觉时要有新鲜空气（开窗或使用空气净化器）
- 每天坚持锻炼。如果你没有锻炼，坚持15分钟的晚间散步。
使用这些方法，坚持一二个星期，你就会注意到自己的睡眠质量会慢慢提高的。阅读《如何保证睡眠质量》，让你进一步提高睡眠质量。
- 任何习惯都是可以慢慢改变的。
有这么一句非洲谚语：“怎样吃掉一头大象？ 一次一小口。”对于习惯上的改变来说，这个道理也是非常正确的。什么时候睡觉、睡眠时间有多久、在哪儿睡觉？这些都是一些你已经习惯了的睡眠模式。就像任何习惯，你是可以慢慢改变的。
开始每2～3天就提前5分钟起床。一个星期后，你就可以提前15分钟起床了；一个月后，你就可以提前1小时起床了！希望更早的起床，你可以慢慢地通过每周提前5分钟，坚持二三个月。习惯培养后，你仍然需要坚持这个作息规律，按时睡觉。
当你睡眠逐渐变短，上一条提到的睡眠质量就变得至关重要，只有提高睡眠质量才能补偿你因为少睡带来的健康上的影响。
最后，如果你能够成功坚持早起的好习惯，你便在不断地为自己创作时间。想想，每天一小时，365天慢慢加起来就是9周的工作时间。你可以利用这些时 间学习一门新语言、读十几本书、或者写几本小说和培养一个好习惯。一日之际在于晨，早晨是最有效率的时间，难怪成功的人们都有早起的要习惯，为什么不加入 他们呢？
如果大家觉得读了这篇文章对你有所启发，希望大家能够浏览弥缝的博客褪墨（http://www.mifengtd.cn ，关于 时间管理、个人提升和演讲技巧 ），大家一定会发现更多的好文章。弥缝推荐《勤奋不代表一切》、《如何花少的时间学习更多的知识》和《为什么要区分紧急与重要任务》这三篇文章，愿与您共勉。
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