Nick Littlehales has written a small book called ‘Sleep’ and it’s fantastic! Along with Professor Matthew Walker’s book, ‘Why We Sleep’ have really helped to shape our ideas and inform a lot of what we guide you on. One of Nick Littlehales’ idea is to have a consistent wake time.

What does it mean? For me, my consistent wake time is typically around 7.00am. I am one of the 99.9 % of the people in this world who need between seven and eight hours of sleep. It’s a myth, except for a very tiny few of us, that we can survive on anything less than a long term.

If I need seven and a half hours’ sleep and a sleep cycle is around 90 minutes, that’s five sleep cycles. If my consistent wake time is 7.00am, then 5.30, 4.00, 2.30, 1.00, 11.30, then 11.30 needs to be my ultimate bedtime (when I go to sleep). If I went straight to sleep I’d get seven and a half hours’ sleep. In order to create the opportunity to have seven and a half hours’ sleep, I need to have a window of eight and a half hours.

For me, 10.30pm is when I need to be in bed at the latest. I do go to sleep quite quickly, but if it does take me a while, I’ve still got a good chance of getting those five sleep cycles. That’s one part of Nick’s idea, and the other is that if you think in terms of sleep cycles and not in terms of number of hours of sleep, you can then adapt what you do. If for example, you get in late.

If I get in 11.15pm and I’m not going to be able to get to bed and to sleep by 11.30pm, Nick’s idea is that you would wait for the next sleep cycle, which is 1.00am. You would start preparing yourself at 12.00 to fall asleep at 1:00am and then you’d get four full sleep cycles before your alarm or you wake up at 7.00am. The idea being, you don’t wake up in the middle of a sleep cycle groggy, tired, confused, but you actually feel quite rested because you’ve woken up at the end of a cycle.

Nick suggests if you get the chance to nap, you can always catch up on that missing sleep cycle or you can catch up on it later in the week. What’s your consistent wake time? Reverse engineer from there what time you need to be asleep by, and then figure out how big a window you need to leave yourself and what time therefore, you need to be in bed. It’s a simple idea – which I’ve been doing.

I’ve been trying naps when I can, which isn’t always that often, but I’ve also been working according to sleep cycles, not number of hours of sleep. I have found it’s empowering and that it’s helped. That’s the idea. The author is Nick Littlehales and his book is called ‘Sleep’. I really recommend reading this book – there are lots of ideas on what you can do to optimise your sleep.

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If you’re reading this, you’re are probably in a reasonably senior position, running your own business or have a busy life running the home and juggling other responsibilities. Either way, you’re busy. The convergent pressures of work and family life have probably meant that the time you did have to spend on health and fitness has disappeared. Why not talk to us and see how we can help.

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Leanne Spencer is an entrepreneur, coach, TEDx Speaker, author of Remove the Guesswork, and founder of Bodyshot Performance Limited. Bodyshot is a health and fitness consultancy that helps busy professionals get more energy by removing the guesswork around their health, fitness and nutrition. Visit www.bodyshotperformance.com or email [email protected] to register your interest in our services and connect with us on FacebookInstagram and Twitter.

Author(s)

  • Leanne is an award-winning entrepreneur and the founder of Bodyshot Performance Limited. She delivered a TEDx talk on 'Why fitness is more important than weight', is the author of bestselling books 'Remove the Guesswork' and 'Rise and Shine', and hosts a podcast called ’Remove the Guesswork‘. Leanne is the founder of Bodyshot Performance, an award-winning health and wellbeing company. Bodyshot Performance work with businesses of up to 500 people who want to create a culture of energy, vitality and performance through the business and position wellbeing as a competitive advantage. Bodyshot intersect the latest science and technology to provide unique solutions to the challenge of wellbeing in the workplace that have a direct impact on the bottom line. Our clients have won awards for wellbeing and recognise it directly improves employee engagement and retention and attracts talent into the business.  We also work with chronically stressed or burned out professionals to get you back in control of your health and able to do the things you want to do in life. My expertise is around health, fitness and wellbeing, specifically focusing on sleep, mental health, energy, body composition, digestion and fitness. I host a popular podcast on iTunes called ’Remove the Guesswork ‘, and in November 2016 I delivered a TEDx talk on 'Why fitness is more important than weight'. I’m the author of the bestselling books 'Remove the Guesswork' and 'Rise and Shine' and I regularly speak to corporates on health and wellbeing. My personal values are to live truthfully, considerately and to "suck all the marrow out of life" as Thoreau said. I support the charity Diversity Role Models which works to combat homophobic, biphobic and transphobic bullying. I recently completed the world’s toughest ski race to raise £10,125 for Alzheimer's Research as my father-in-law was profoundly ill with Alzheimers, and I am on a constant mission to find ways to live in a way that is sustainable and environmentally friendly. I love sport, fitness, reading, gardening, business, podcasting, and being with my cat and our scampish little rescue dog, Kami from Romania.