Thus far this year I’ve been “only” getting roughly seven hours of consistent sleep each night, which is lower than my optimum of the standard eight hours. I fell into the trap of wanting more hours out of the day to do stuff, and figured that robbing an hour out of precious sleep time – as opposed to, you know, maybe not surf twitter so much – would be the thing to accomplish this. Idiotic, I know.
Armed with seven hours sleep, I was still decently productive and mentally sharp, but I’d be lying if I said it’s exactly the same as getting the proper eight hours. Is the productivity trade-off worth it? That’s a resounding no as well: the extra hour I gained ends up almost exclusively used towards frivolous activities, like the aforementioned twitter surfing, or watching car films on YouTube.
Reading more pages on a book or writing more words on the blog? That’s hilarious.
Starting this week, I decided to not be so wasteful and reverted back to sleeping the standard eight hours. Like meeting an old friend again or finding something long lost, the increased energy and focus I’m getting from my slumber is nearly revelatory. I feel great, and far less annoyed when the alarm clock wakes me in the morning. I’ve rediscovered why I started sleeping the proper amount of hours many years ago in the first place: for health and vitality.
All of this may sound trivial, but when you detach and see how important sleep is – a third of our entire lives, the move back to eight hours is quite significant in my opinion. As I creep further into my 30s, I need to be exceptionally guarded with the sleep schedule; at a decade removed from my college days, I simply can’t pull all-nighters with impunity and feel zero ill effects.
Sleep is nature way of healing our bodies and keeping us well, millennia before any forms of medicine. So please do get enough amounts of it, my friends.
All that glitters is gold.