A lot of people are
asking themselves, how to sleep less. I read some books and a lot of articles
about it and can give you some recommendations after which you could sleep 5-6
hours and feel yourself great.
The sleep stages happen
not only once during sleep, they happen many times.
Here is a plan of this
article:
- Basic theory about sleep
- Recommendations for a daily routine
- Struggling with insomnia
I. Basic theory about sleep
A lot of us heard that
adults need to sleep 8 hours to get enough sleep. I disagree with this
statement. If you meet a person, who sleeps 5-6 hours per day and it's enough
for him, don't be surprised. He just has the right daily routine.
Now let's talk about sleep
stages:
Stage 1 sleep
It’s when you are
drowsing off, day dreaming, or “zoning out” during a boring class or lecture. I
think all of us had this situation.
Stage 2 sleep
It's already when you are
sleeping, but not deeply. It’s characterized by sudden bursts of the brain
activity. Some scientists say that the brain “turns itself off”. Most people
who are woken up out of this stage say, “I was still awake.”
Stage 3 sleep
It’s a deep sleep, the most important stage of sleep. As we enter the
deep sleep, our blood pressure, respiration, and heart rate, reach their lowest
point of the day. The brain and the body relax, there is the most intensive
restore of the body's resources. Brain waves reach their lowest frequency.
 |
Source: Kacper M. P. 2004. How to sleep less and have more energy than you ever had before. Page 9.
The figure above is a general example of high and low brain waves.
|
Stage 4 sleep
It’s rapid eye movement (REM) sleep (in this stage our eyes move very
rapidly in all directions, also, we dream mostly in this stage).
 |
| Source: https://www.cozydozee.com.au/motion-sleep-good-toddler/ |
II. Recommendations for a daily routine
- Stable sleep routine Every day you need to get up at the same time.
- Morning exercises Hard exercises that will make you sweat.
- More sunlight Melatonin is destroyed in the sunlight and you want to sleep less.
- Requires physical activity throughout the day If you can go to the gym or pool after work, it would be very good.
- Drink more water (about 2-3 liters per day)
- Don’t use: alcohol, nicotine, caffeine, energetics. If you can’t, try to reduce the usage of it.
- If at lunch time you are sleepy, go to sleep for 20-30 minutes. But no longer than 30 minutes. The main thing is to wake up BEFORE your body enters the deep sleep stage.
III. Struggling with insomnia
- Use the bed only for sleeping, don’t use it for reading or working.
- 20 minutes before bedtime, put aside everything, sit and try to relax, free your mind.
- Don’t do anything before going to bed that will increase body temperature.
- Sleep in a chilled room.
- Sleep in complete darkness.
- And important: can't sleep - don't sleep. Go to bed later.
Questions:
- Have you ever been interested in sleeping less and adding more hours to the day?
- What do you think about recommendations for your daily routine? Maybe you have your own suggestions about it?
- Have you ever had insomnia? If yes, how did you struggle with it?
Sources:
https://archive.org/details/HowToSleepLessAndHaveMoreEnergyThanYouEverHadBefore
Comments
This is a real problem with insomnia. If I can't sleep I am trying calm myself down by listening music or if this isn't work I try to do something. And then try one more time.
Good job with the article, it contains only usefull information. I know your techinques cause I'm using it on daily basis - lerning them helps me a lot. The only recomendation I could add is "buy comfy mattress(or bed in general)" cause as we know it directly helps our body to rest. As far as insomnia are concerned I would recoment to you finding the best position of your body to fall asleep and stict to it - it worked for me -> my technique is to lay on my back with little rotation to the left side(head also directed left) -> as we all know, we're tend to switching position to find the best one to fall asleep, why make one and use it every night? Good article, I like it!
I guess all of your recommendations for daily routine are reasonable. But the most difficult one is the last one. Indeed, when I oversleep those 30 min of day nap it turns to a disaster. When I sleep 2-3 hours during during a day then there are 90% that I won't be able to fall asleep in the evening.
Most time when I have insomnia, I'm trying to play some chill music and think a bit about things which worries me.
I think a lot of people were interested, to sleep less and do more,I'm no exception.
2.What do you think about recommendations for your daily routine? Maybe you have your own suggestions about it?
I've tried a lot of things to reduce my sleep from 10-12 hours to 7-8. Sleep interval, Sleep 20 minutes every 3 hours. I was prescribed a set of pills, only then I was able to sleep.
3.Have you ever had insomnia? If yes, how did you struggle with it?
I've had insomnia for many years. To avoid getting used to the pills, I try to drink pills on herbs.The gym helps me sleep, or melatonin in pills.
It is very unfortunate but the author of that post obviously lacks basic knowledge about personal health. I agree that sometimes it’s necessary to wake up earlier and it certainly is not unhealthy thing to do from time to time. But if you’re going to stick to that for a long period of time you risk VERY SERIOUS HEALTH CONSEQUENCES that you have to bear in mind! Sleep deprivation can lead to cardiovascular diseases, increased blood pressure and sugar level, uncontrolled release of hormone production (like growth and testosterone hormone) which increases risk of cancer, increased release of insulin which may lead to diabetes, risk of having Parkinson, Alzheimer and much more. Note that during 5-6 hour sleep your organism won’t clean neurotoxins that are produced by your brain daily. Everyone in age of 18-65 should sleep between 7-9hours to be healthy and optimal.
When it comes to daily routine I would add eating healthy meals which will contain many vitamins and minerals. Also, we should remember about consuming the proper amount of fruits and vegetables daily. What is also important is that when you are mainly sitting during a day it is compulsory to take a lot of breaks to stretch your spine and let your eyes rest from for example computer monitor.
I have never had insomnia. I think when you are tired after a whole day of work then it is not hard to fall sleep quickly :)
I am afraid that i have to disagree with these recommendations for daily routine. As I know, human needs approximately 8 hours of sleep per day. Of course, sometimes people can sleep less however it is extremely unhealthy in long period of time. Especially, advice “And important: can't sleep - don't sleep. Go to bed later”, I have read that most healthy and valuable sleep is more or less before midnight.
From time to time, i have problems with falling asleep, however I am not sure if I call it real insomnia. Unfortunately, I don’t have any good method for dealing with such problems, i just stay in my bed with closed eyes and hope for sleep.
I find these recommendations very useful and I have heard about some of them before, but I didn’t know the sunlight reduces amounts of melatonin in our body.
I have experienced insomnia couple of times in my life and what has always helped in such cases it was going outside and taking a walk.
I've never had insomnia. I do not have any sleeping problems.
I am very much for this, it is a perfect plan for me and my body.
I have never had problems with it, but if I ever had something like that, I would definitely set aside coffee and energy and start to eat more sugars.
This article is written more than I knew. I would argue with the fact that you can not drink coffee, because I know that it does not affect sleep if you drink it 10 hours before sleep. I can recommend sleeping on your back, it allows you to sleep well due to proper blood circulation.
No, I do not suffer from insomnia, because I get up early and spend all my strength for the whole day. I go to bed on time and tired, so I have a good sleep.
I think that the most important thing is physical activity - if you stay active, you just have more energy.
I struggled from insomnia during some stressful era of my life. I just couldn't stop thinking about some things and that didn't let me fall asleep.
I've never had insomnia in my life and i think it's caused by stress and burn-out of your organism.
The recommendations that you described in the article simply concern a healthy lifestyle. You should always follow the recommendations and you will definitely feel better.
Insomnia never caught me longer. Only by a deregulated biological clock sometimes I can not fall asleep and only after many hours of trying.
I'm sleeping around 7.5 hours each day (+/- 0.5 hours) and I think I'm good with this. I know people sometimes view sleep as a wasted time - after all, we sleep about 1/3 of our life. But sleep is important for our brains. And our brains are important for us. So I don't mind to sleep 8 hours per day - if this keeps my brain healthy.
I like your recommendation for daily routine though. I found that too much variety in my wake up and fall asleep hours isn't good for me. It's better to just pick an earlier hour and wake up at the same time each day then to have various hours to wake up each day. The same with falling asleep - if I pick some time for it, I try to stick with it. So at a certain hour, I just get sleepy.
But of course it's not easy - we have night event and late parties. Or we have to finish some work late at night. Also, it's sometimes hard to go to sleep because it's so quiet and finally I have time just for myself. So yes, sticking to the routine is important, but not always easy.
No, I have never had insomnia but my friends do. It's very strange situation because you want to take a rest by sleep and you can't. I know that I can live without sleep for 20 hours but it's hard and I always have to equalize my sleep time after that.
I think sleep is good enough for the body, depending on the type of activity we are doing, the body needs to recover, sometimes 5 hours of sleep, sometimes 10 hours.
start by closing your eyes (who would have thought?!) and taking deep, slow breaths. Start to consciously relax all the muscles in your face – from your forehead to your eyes to your jaw – all the way down to your neck, shoulders, arms and legs, hands and feet.
After another 10 or so seconds of deep, slow breathing, picture your happy place – the book’s author suggests lying in a canoe on a calm lake with blue sky above you, or a black velvet hammock (strangely specific, but okay) in a pitch-black room.
If that fails, you’re supposed to say ‘don’t think’ over and over to yourself for 10 seconds.
2. Those are all great recommendations. I found during my previous full-time job that the stable sleep routine is quite important if you want to sleep less and still have energy to do anything during the day.
3. No, I've never had insomnia.
I do have insomnia right now, in fact - it's been caused by the fact that I needed to wake up and go to sleep at varying times each day, and it's been haunting me for weeks, but I'm slowly recovering back to a normal state.
Getting up and going to sleep in the same hours is the best practice for me. It works perfectly. You know how much time you have. maybe getting rid of nicotine was also a good idea.
Well I love to sleep so insomnia isn’t one of my problems
About recommendation for a daily routine - they sounds impossible for me. It’s impossible to get up at the same time, it’s even more impossible to get more sunlight, because this country is sad and cold :) And I love coffee. And I can’t drink more than 1-1,5 l of water everyday.
I’ve never had insomnia. I have different problem - I’m always sleepy and sometimes it’s really hard to deal with it.
Have something you do everytime before you head to bed. Something small that after some time will subconciously make you think of sleep and get sleepy.
I'm dealing with chronic insomnia, once in a while it grabs me unexpected and requires me to have a night where I pull an allnighter so that the next day I sleep like a baby.
I love sleeping so I think I wouldn't give up even 15 minutes.
I've heard that working out before sleeping helps you to fall asleep and the sleep is better, there is an App called sleep cycle, it measure sleep quality and helps to improve it.
I have heard about insomnia, I am aware that going to bed very late can cause to insomnia later but I hope it won't happen to me.
I constantly think about it. I sorely lack time. I would prefer not to sleep at all.
2.What do you think about recommendations for your daily routine? Maybe you have your own suggestions about it?
I try to go to bed until 12 p.m. Many studies say that from 12 p.m. to 2 a.m. a person has the deepest sleep and mostly resting. And it is tested in practice. If you go to bed at 11 p.m. there is absolutely no problem for the morning to wake up at 6 a.m. The body becomes accustomed and wakes up even before the alarm clock.
3.Have you ever had insomnia? If yes, how did you struggle with it?
Glory to the god I have never had insomnia. I think it is very scary. And I am sorry for the people who have it.
Ohhh yes! I really love sleep but I think that 8 hours a day is waaaaaay to much. It's basicly 1/3 of a day, it means that you could use this time to work / enjoy life even more.
2. What do you think about recommendations for your daily routine? Maybe you have your own suggestions about it?
"
If at lunch time you are sleepy, go to sleep for 20-30 minutes. But no longer than 30 minutes." basicly it's worst idea ever. I cannot imagine myself sleeping in office during work, not in Poland :D In Japan it would be doable :p
3. Have you ever had insomnia? If yes, how did you struggle with it?
I basicly struggle to it when I have a lot to do, many resposibilities, a lot to do at studies, work, home, whn I'm ill. I think that's normal for 3/4 of the population so never though of it as something as illness.
2. I can't help you because from few months when I started combined working and studying I am still sleepy and I don't know how to deal with it. I can't wake up every day even after 3 alarm clocks.
3. I have had insomnia but it was only caused by too much coffeine so solution was easy - cut off coffee and it returns to normal.
Yes, of course, this is a hot topic for me today. The 21st century requires more productivity from people, and I am not an exception. Therefore, I try to sleep less, but do it without harm to the body.
What do you think about recommendations for your daily routine? Maybe you have your own suggestions about it?
I think you made the main recommendations, and if you follow them, you can achieve the desired result.
Have you ever had insomnia? If yes, how did you struggle with it?
Fortunately, this did not happen to me.
These recommendations which I read today, I must honestly say that I didn't know them before and I will definitely want to apply some of them. Unfortunately, I don't have my own suggestions on this topic.
Sometimes insomnia happens to me. This is terribly annoying and I have to fight with it, I hope that if I step into these councils, it will help me somehow.
- Of course, I do every time I have an exam or I have to finish a project.
2. What do you think about recommendations for your daily routine? Maybe you have your own suggestions about it?
- I like the recommendations, I will try to stable my sleep routine, drink more water and reduce the amount of caffeine.
3. Have you ever had insomnia? If yes, how did you struggle with it?
- I had insomnia ones and my solution is to hit a gym or go for a walk to calm your mind.
In my opinion those recommendations are awesome. I have never been interested in this topic, so I can’t point any other suggestions, my daily routines are very various.
Fortunately, I have never had insomnia, sometimes I had a little problem with fall asleep but chilled room works amazing for me.
I will try it and I suggest to try scheduling your day.
I have never had insomnia.
2. The recommendations are pretty simple and well known but... are also great! I've always forgetting about such things like "wake up at the same time every day" and so on. Would definitely try the routine.
3. I'm enough happy to not have any problems with sleep (only with getting out of bed) .
Sure, I heard a lot of ways to decrease sleeping time, but tons of them was just stupid and not worth efforts. In the other hand, your 'advices' are pretty interesting. I didn't hear about this ways before.
Have you ever had insomnia? If yes, how did you struggle with it?
Nah, never. Generally, I'm sleeping very well, I didn't have any problems with my sleep yet. Of course, it pertain to situations, when I have time to sleep. In week I have problem with finding some time for calm sleep.
2. this recommendation for daily routine has good tips i agree with that body activity is good for sleep quality, but I never heard about that we should not reading or working in a our bed.
3. sometimes when I am stressed i can't sleep, but I don't have any way for it, I just waiting for being exhausted.
Of course I had. I'm always trying to do as much as possible during the day, but the other thing is - I love sleeping :). I'm trying to balance it. During the week I sleep between 7-8 hours and on the weekend I'm sleeping as much as I need, but I'm waking up not later than 10am.
What do you think about recommendations for your daily routine? Maybe you have your own suggestions about it?
I'm doing few things that you recommended, for example I drink a lot of water, or when I'm sleepy I do some "power naps" etc.
Have you ever had insomnia? If yes, how did you struggle with it?
Nope, I don't have any problems with sleeping :).
Thank you for this article, really cool!