Given the news lately about sleep deprivation among college students, I did some checking on sleep tips. Did you know that almost every search result on the topic parades out the same list of ~10 tips? They are pretty standard, but they are sparse in spots. So I decided to start a series of posts with sleep tips that apply equally well for students or those in the working world.
In this post, you will see just the brief list of tips I came up with. I will elaborate on each of these in future posts. Here you go!
- Establish a regular waking time, regardless of your morning schedule
- Establish a regular bedtime that works with your new waking schedule
- Take short naps, if necessary (20 – 25 minutes at most)
- Plan naps into your daily schedule in advance (again, if necessary)
- Follow naps with active tasks to quickly wake back up (exercise, cooking, walking to class, etc)
- Exercise daily to improve your quality of sleep (or at least plan periods of activity into your day)
- Eat healthy foods to improve your quality of sleep
- Avoid caffeine immediately before bedtime (and the final hours leading up to it)
- Avoid nicotine immediately before bedtime (and the final hours leading up to it)
- Avoid alcohol immediately before bedtime (and the final hours leading up to it)
- Establish a bedtime routine – wind down your day before sleeping
- Avoid bright screens before bedtime (tv, computer screens, iPads, phones, etc)
- Use your bed for sleep – not for studying, watching tv, or working
- Wake up with your sleep cycles – use subtle, dual-alarm systems whenever possible
- Afterward, have breakfast! – get the nutrients your body needs to wake up
Keep the order of this list in mind – planning first! Establish a routine, then live the details daily and it will fall into place. Working into a positive sleep pattern takes time, but eventually your body (and habits) will adjust!
Any further sleep tips you want to add? Comment below!
Photo Credit: By Colton Cotton (Own work) [ CC-BY-SA-3.0 ], via Wikimedia Commons
[...] September 14, 2012 By mark Leave a Comment In Part 1 of this series on sleep, I established a list of sleep tips that can help any of us sleep better. In this post, we start with the first of those tips and [...]