During these stressful and challenging times it’s more important than ever that we take care of ourselves. Taking care of ourselves starts with getting good sleep. According to the CDC more than 30% of adult Americans sleep less than the recommended 7 hours of sleep every night. Furthermore, it is estimated that 50-70 million Americans have a sleep disorder.
Sleep disturbances have been linked to increases in depression, heart problems and cancer. Sleep problems are also known to decrease productivity and deteriorate mood and affect. For this reason lack of sleep leads to decreased job performance and satisfaction. Better sleep on the other hand has been linked to improved memory and learning capabilities allowing people to increase work performance and progress in their careers. (Semel Institute for Neuroscience).
So what can you do if you’re not getting enough sleep? Minetum is here to help you with some advice.
According to SleepFoundation.org good sleep starts with making your bedroom a place of comfort and relaxation. This factor is often overlooked, as people seek more drastic solutions to their sleep problems. The key point here is to minimize distractions and maximize comfort:
- Get a quality mattress and pillow. This enables you to be comfortable enough to truly relax and your spine gets proper support to avoid aches.
- Choose quality bedding that can maintain a comfortable temperature throughout the night.
- Blackout curtains or a sleep mask can be beneficial to avoid light disruption, as light can negatively impact your circadian rhythm.
- Eliminate noise and if you’re not able to control all sounds, you can consider using earplugs or a white noise machine to cancel out the sounds that would disrupt your sleep.
- Find the right temperature: sleeping in the wrong temperature can be a distraction like no other.
We’ve all heard countless pieces of advice on how to control your daily sleep schedule. Set a fixed wake-up time, set a target bedtime, be cautious with naps and don’t nap for more than 20 minutes are all common suggestions to improve sleep. Furthermore disconnecting from electronic devices and winding down for bed can also improve your sleep.
Sometimes you find yourself having to work after getting an insufficient amount of sleep the night before, but how do you get through the day then?
Minetum has found some solutions that can help you get through the day, when you’re feeling extremely tired:
Caffeine – but use it with caution
The most obvious solution is caffeine. Short-term this can be a good solution to offset the effect of sleep deprivation, but long-term this is not a good solution. If you depend on caffeine to get through the day too often, it can potentially cause more sleep deprivation the next day and the day after that. Use caffeine with caution and save it for work emergencies.
Call it a day
This one can be difficult to use and implement, but it’s a piece of advice that you should really consider. Working while sleep deprived leads to being more likely to make mistakes and producing lower quality work. For this reason if you work while you’re very tired you’re possibly causing problems and not adding any value. If you have work tasks that can’t wait until you are more rested, take a 20-minute effective nap.
Strategize
Research done by the American Psychological Association indicates that sleep deprivation does most harm to tasks that require innovation and creativity. Therefore you should strategize and only work on tasks that are routine, when you are very tired.
If you’re working from home during these times, perhaps now is the perfect opportunity to focus on getting your sleep schedule in order to reduce stress and get more work done. When you’re well rested you will have a lot more energy to put into your work tasks and to boost your career!
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