Sleep is natural and important for the human body. But what happens when you can’t sleep well at night—either due to stress, anxiety, or everyday concerns about what you have left to do?
Lack of sleep can make you grumpy and unproductive, which is detrimental to your work ethic and your mental health. Nobody likes coworkers in a bad mood, after all.
As you can see from the below infographic template, adults who get 7.5-9 hours of sleep are 20% more productive than their peers.
But sleep troubles can also badly affect your physical health—leading to consistent drowsiness, hormonal changes, and dietary defects.
We will look at what is stopping you from achieving a great night’s sleep and what you can do rectify it.
Drinking Before Sleep
There are a few beverages that you should avoid imbibing before bed. Chief among them are caffeine-filled drinks, and alcohol. These could stimulate your mind and negatively impact your ability to sleep.
If you need a caffeine fix to work on your paper presentation, try to limit your coffee drinking to earlier in the day, not the afternoon, and definitely not the evening.
Nicotine is another stimulant that you should be steering clear of as you approach bedtime.
You should generally avoid drinking too much of any other liquid during the evening as that will increase your propensity to visit the washroom at night, which will interrupt your sleep.
Food Intake at Night
Don’t go to sleep on a full stomach—it can make you feel bloated, uncomfortable, or give you indigestion.
Instead, take a break working on your white label web design and eat at least 3-4 hours before sleeping, as that will give the food enough time to settle, and will not impact how you sleep.
If you require a mid-night snack, you can have something small like a sandwich or yoghurt, which won’t tax your system too much.
Light Exposure Limits
What a lot of people don’t know is that Melatonin is a hormone that has a profound effect on how you sleep.
The hormone is affected by light exposure—increasing in darkness, and diminishing when exposed to light—and is impacted by the body’s circadian rhythm.
With that in mind, to ensure that you sleep well at night, your room should be dark and cozy, to activate the Melatonin in your brain and improve your sleep.
Too many light elements around will make your brain think it is still day, thus making sleep harder to achieve.
During the day, try and keep your surrounding areas bright, to keep your mind alert on your blockchain marketing efforts, and go out into the fresh air and sunlight as much as possible—such as taking your lunchbreaks outside.
Another light element that affects your body is blue light, produced by computer, tablet, and phone screens.
You should limit your exposure to these light sources especially before bed time as these can impact your circadian rhythm, making your brain believe it is still daytime.
This will make sleeping more difficult, even if you do want to improve your blogging career.
Your Body’s Sleeping Schedule
If you find yourself feeling sleepy during the day, as you work on ways to sell your website, you may be tempted to take a quick nap. This is fine—your body’s internal clock may just need a nap at that time of day.
But if you do take a nap, keep it short, up to 30 minutes at the most. Longer than that and your body could become confused, assuming it’s night time.
This will damage your circadian rhythm and make sleeping at night very difficult.
In general, you should sleep according to your body’s needs but it is important to get into a pattern of sleeping and waking that will make the process easier to achieve.
Practice going to bed at the same time every night, and waking up every morning at the same time. With enough practice, your body will become accustomed to the system and make for better sleep.
What’s on Your Mind Before Sleeping
Working during the day is stressful but if you take your worries about how to buy likes on Instagram or how to make a brochure to bed with you, getting to sleep, and staying asleep, will be difficult.
Try and do mental exercises to remove the stimulations from the day—try meditating or deep breathing exercises that will calm your mind and empty it of interrupting thoughts about what is the best password manager.
You could also use the military method of sleeping by relaxing different parts of your body. Then imagine yourself first in a canoe, then a hammock, and repeat “don’t think” to yourself for 10 seconds.
It isn’t possible to sleep when your mind is thinking of a million things about the previous day, or the next day. Keeping your mind calm and destressing will help you sleep better.
Your Bed is For Sleeping
A good way to trick your brain into wanting to sleep when you’re in bed is to avoid conducting other activities in bed during the day.
So, avoid watching Netflix, researching the best podcast equipment or updating your live chat software in bed—do those activities at your desk instead.
Not only will this help you limit your blue light exposure, your body will also mentally associate bed with sleep over time.
Sleep Well and Wake Up Alert
Make your work day more productive and improve your overall mental and physical health by following these tips to sleep better at night.
A great night’s sleep can do you wonders and these tips should help you cultivate good sleeping habits.
As you have seen, there are a number of reasons why you may not be sleeping well, and if the methods above don’t work for you, you may need to see a doctor.
You could have a sleep disorder that will need professional help to manage.
For everyone else, these methods are just what you need to ensure a good night’s sleep.