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!
***
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.
(6 votes, average: 4.17 out of 5)
Loading ...
Sure, you can condense your # of sleep hours IF you can successfully improve the quality of your sleep, but to be alert, happy and productive during the day, the vast majority of people in this nation need to sleep more, not less. I fully recommend “The Promise of Sleep” by the big name in sleep research, Dr. Dement — definitely the most accurate and scientifically based work I’ve seen on how to get a good night’s sleep.
[…] Sleep Less and Stay Healthy [Pick the Brain] […]
It’s definitely more about the quality of the sleep than the quantity. I’d much prefer to get 5 hours of deep uninterrupted sleep vs. 8-10 hours of restless sleep anytime.
Recently I started eating one piece of fruit before going to bed (about 15-30 minutes before) and found I would wake up feeling refreshed after only 6 hours of sleep instead of my normal 8.
I discontinued it because I don’t really need the extra time right now. Usually I go to sleep about 10:30 and if I wake up at 4:30 I just waste that time until it’s time for work.
Give it a try for a few days and see if it works for you too.
Wow several things that don’t work for me in here.
1. open window, no thanks my sinus wouldn’t put up with it, and as for air refresher? Not sure what that is.
2. No exercise before bed, this one really screws me up. Yes exercise , a lot if you can, but do it upon waking or by mid day. If I work out any before bedtime, sleep won’t come for me.
3. No coffee after noon for me, but I drink 3-4 cups upon awakening.
4. I never noticed a difference with reading a well chosen book, or watching a well chosen TV show before bed. In both the theme shouldn’t be exciting, but as the author says relaxing.
5. do something exciting upon awakening, I have a group I correspond with online we discuss the day, politics, religion. Get the blood flowing. Yeah being a little groggy happens, but after a few minutes its gone.
I never look for waking up refreshed I wait an hour to see how I’m doing or wait till the end of the day and see how I feel, and adjust sleep accordingly.
My normal sleep hours are 10 pm to 2:30 am for years now. I keep very close watch on my health as I am diabetic. My doctor and I are both satisfied with my health. Good Luck, I wish you pleasant dreams.
Ecartmen,
Yes, you shouldn’t ACTIVELY exercise two hours before the sleep, but taking a walk and some fresh air with it is absolutely fine.
Half the caffeine that you consumed still exists in your body after six hours, so yes, no coffee after noon is a good idea.
As for TV, if you stay with some relaxing show that might be OK, just avoid news and thrillers (arent’ those the same these days?)
Good luck and sweat dreams!
This is very helpful information. I can & do get by quite well on only six hours of sleep. A few times I have had to do with with a couple of hours, but my body felt on edge the entire day. When it was time to go to sleep it was harder to unwind. Plus, if you get too much sleep it can make you feel all drained. The tips you mentioned help to improve the quality of the sleep, which is a really, really good thing. Thanks!
For the last three weeks, I’ve been waking up at 5 AM every day so I can accomplish more in the day. I’ve been exercising every morning and I feel better. I’d like to get on a 6 hour schedule, but I am skeptical about how it will affect my mind and body. I’ve studied lucid dreaming as a tool I can use for self-improvement while I’m asleep; sleeping is a waste of time, but is necessary for my body, so I though I’d use that time to try new things.
My concern with sleeping six hours each day is that my mind will not get enough delta sleep, when REM and lucid dreaming occurs, resulting in less than adequate rest for my mind. Last week, I was surprised to wake up one morning after five and a half hours of sleep and feeling full of energy. The whole day I was energized. The next morning I woke up after seven and a half hours of sleep and I was dragging myself the whole day.
I’m curious if anyone has done experiments to see how a regular six hour sleep schedule affects the mind’s cognitive abilities (critical thinking, creativity, focus), the body’s reaction in everyday living and whether lucid dreaming can be used effectively.
I’m no expert at lucid dreaming. In fact, I stopped trying it a while ago. I recalled several dreams and I used a dream journal for a while. I gave up after little success and I left it up to my subconscious brain to do the dreaming and brain repair. I believe that my brain needs adequate time (7 hours) to repair itself, but I may try sleeping six hours to see how I feel. The times I’ve slept less than six hours usually ruin my day, just as sleeping more than 10 hours will ruin my day.
[…] to sleep less and still stay […]
As a college student, I constantly face the challenge of balancing quality and amount of sleep with fun. Last year (my freshman year), I would constanly go to bed from 12:30 to 2:30 every day, then sleep till 7:30 on early class days or as late as 1 on weekends. I never felt rested, it was terrible. This year, my friends and I are doing a little better job, going to bed from 12 to 1:30 and waking up from 8 to 10. This (combined with a better schedule) has allowed me to continue working out in the mornings (I habit I started these last 2 summers, but could not continue at school last year), and I feel much more rested and alert overall. I still need a little caffeine boost in the morning, but who doesn’t? If only I could start drinking coffee instead of energy drinks and diet Pepsi Max…
[…] 原文：How to Sleep Less and Stay Healthy - Y. Graf 翻译：弥缝 中文：如何减少睡眠时间却保持健康 如何给别人留下好印象 […]
Sleeping is so hard for me. I find not drinking caffeine after lunch to be the most beneficial. After that, I would say exercise helps me fall asleep the quickest.
some times no work.
I cut caffeine out of my life a year ago this month, but it hasn’t reduced the number of hours that I sleep. I just sleep like a rock now, but still the same 8 to 9 hours.
I’ve spent the past three months working on getting up earlier. I’ve had some success - I now get up 2 hours earlier than I used to - but I also go to bed now two hours earlier than I used to. I still sleep 8 to 9 hours.
My Dad at age 65 still sleeps 8 to 9 hours per night, like a rock, so getting by on fewer hours of sleep is probably never going to work for me. Total bummer; I would love to be able to get by on 7 hours of sleep.
I am a health and fitness coach and spend a reasonable amount of time talking to clients about sleep and weightloss. It is so true that 8 hours of sleep is worthless if you actually aren’t in a deep sleep. Metabolism just doesn’t “cut the mustard” if we are sluggish! Thanks for a great TIP!
I agree that quality of sleep is more important. I also found that whenever I am stressed or am thinking about work before I go to sleep, I tend to not be able to sleep. Doing something relaxing is especially useful.
[…] to become an early riser (Steve Pavlina) How to become an early riser - part II (Steve Pavlina) How to sleep less and stay healthy (Pick the Brain) Understand sleep mechanics (How to wake up early) 24 Tips to becoming an early […]
[…] 原文：How to Sleep Less and Stay Healthy - Y. Graf […]
[…] 原文：How to Sleep Less and Stay Healthy - Y. Graf […]
[…] 原文：How to Sleep Less and Stay Healthy - Y. Graf 翻译：弥缝（褪墨|时间管理） […]
[…] 原文：How to Sleep Less and Stay Healthy - Y. Graf […]
[…] 原文：How to Sleep Less and Stay Healthy - Y. Graf […]
[…] 原文：How to Sleep Less and Stay Healthy - Y. Graf […]
[…] 原文：How to Sleep Less and Stay Healthy - Y. Graf […]
[…] 原文：How to Sleep Less and Stay Healthy - Y. Graf […]
[…] 原文：How to Sleep Less and Stay Healthy - Y. […]
it’s the first time for me to come here.i’m not good at english,but i can understand what u say. it’s so helpful for me because i’m always sleepy but cann’t sleep well in the evening.
[…] Review for three public blog 1. http://www.pickthebrain.com/blog/how-to-sleep-less-and-stay-healthy/ […]
Bath reviews…
…
[…] How to Sleep Less and Stay Healthy - a teraz coś dla tych, którzy chcieliby spać nieco mniej. […]