I love sleep, most people I know do. Its nice, its comfortable and mostly it makes us feel good. How could you not love sleep?

Yet so often I hear of people with success claiming to have F-all sleep. They sleep only a few hours a night and operate fine. I call a big bunch of B-S to all that. This may be true for an exceptional few but for the most of us sleep is important.

In my research and conversations with people, clearly more knowledgeable on this topic than me, I have made some really cool discoveries. So I thought I would share them with you.

First let me just say that for everyone no sleep pattern will be identical, woman need more sleep then men, some men perhaps need more sleep than women, some will need more sleep than others depending on what they do in life, and some will find certain sleep hacks more useful than others.

For all that said, here are 5 pretty consistent sleep tips that I think would be adaptable to anyone’s sleeping habits.

Sleep helps us be more productive.

We are more effective when we have good sleep and are well rested. It is true that the first few hours of the day we produce our best work and this is why we must do what is most important in those hours. All the other stuff that we fill our day with can come later but it’s important that we must do what is most important first.

When we are well rested our body is more in balance and tuned in to the world and all that is going on. When we are in balance we tend to be happier, both our ability to learn and memory are improved. With this alone we become more productive and effective in life.

Lack of rest and the opposite occurs, our hormones are thrown out of balance, our emotions are less charged and our energy levels are certainly depleted.  The best thing to fix this is either more rest or drugs, yet drugs are not sustainable- rest is!

There has been some research carried out on people that sleep four hours each night and seem to operate each day fine. This is great news. Others have slept for 6 hour plus a night and also operate greatly. The noticeable difference was that over a longer period of time the 4 hour sleepers had a noticeable decrease in their ability to cognitively think.

What does that mean? What happens when our cognitive ability falls away, well, all areas that are important to function correctly also fall away. Knowledge, attention, memory, clarity and focus, reasoning, problem solving, logical thinking and judgement are affected. So don’t kid yourself thinking that you will survive and thrive on 4 hours of sleep, maybe in the short term but certainly not forever.

Just like taking drugs the short-term effects may enhance your immediate performances and have minimal side effects but the cumulative effects can be a disaster and creep up without being noticed.

We have a greater quality of sleep at night.

Some people work well at night, good for them. I work best in morning and hey that’s just how I like it and will never judge those night bodies. I do believe that depending on the work you do you may get away with late night hours and day time sleep but for the majority this is certainly not productive.

Our bodies are conditioned to sleep when the sun goes down. Melatonin is a hormone that helps control our sleep cycles and is produced in our penal gland. You can find it in some foods, which might explain why I get sleepy after eating some foods.

Melatonin kicks in as the sun goes down and stays hi during the dark hours, as light appears in the morning melatonin depletes and we naturally wake. This explains why we get tired at night and why when the sun rises for most of us we find difficulty in sleep.

Let me remind you that you can train your body to do anything. If you train yourself to sleep in the day and stay up during the night your body will adjust. Some research however indicated that this change in sleep pattern and hormones could lead to levels of depression.

Let me be honest, when you lack quality sleep, your mood is affected, and when you choose to sleep when your body doesn’t produce melatonin, your sleep quality will be less.

Taking advantage of the night to sleep will lead to improved quality of sleep. So as the sun goes down we should also be moving towards rest and as it rises we should start becoming active.

Some studies have shown the difference between the quality of sleep prior to midnight being greater than the hours just after midnight. This suggests that 4 hours prior to midnight may be greater rest than 4 hours after midnight indicating that for those who sleep early may rise earlier also and still feel just as rested.

Sleep early and rise early and you will see a noticeable improvement in your productivity. If this is not possible than you need to remove barriers and improve your environment as best you can to avoid the lack of melatonin in your sleep. Practices may include removing sunlight from resting areas and reducing digital screen time near rest.

Exercise and diet effects sleep.

Exercise and diet affect every area in life and certainly with both a quality diet and regular exercise your sleep will be improved.

I use to wonder why I had more energy when I exercised. I could wake up earlier in the morning and pump through my day with greater productivity. The simply truth was that I sleep better.

What is really fascinating about this is that poor sleep patterns actually causes us to lead unhealthier life styles. Because our moods and hormones are out of balance with poor sleep, we tend to make poorer quality decision.

Sleep apnoea is a serious condition affecting millions of people worldwide and is typically represented in less healthy people. It causes people to stop breathing while they sleep and their sleep is very restless. People that suffer with this have very poor quality sleep. Now while being unhealthy affects your sleep we need to remember that poor sleep affects diet and exercise.

Studies show that when you’re tired you not only eat crappy foods but you crave them. I certainly notice my food cravings change when I haven’t had great rest. I also know that when you lack rest you lack energy and without energy you are less likely to exercise.

Sleep, diet and exercise all flow to affect one another. Start improving each area just a little bit and you will unquestionably notice a major improvement in your daily productivity.

Start by getting going to bed earlier each night and waking up by that much earlier each day. When you wake up start doing even a bit of exercise and throughout the day try making some better food choices. It may take some time but the rewards will be tremendous. You’ll sleep better.

Sleeping and nights makes evolutionary sense.

I’ve already covered this but it’s worth throwing in the evolutionary piece here. There are studies out there that suggest sleep does nothing for us but allow us to escape. Therefore rather than a need to simply rest, recuperate and recover sleep is none other than a way to pass time.

Do I agree with this entirely, well not sure, I think research now shows that sleep helps us recover and is actually beneficial to how effectively we can operate. At the same time I guess that just how we’ve evolved and maybe if we all untied we could un-evolve, but why go backwards.

The theory goes that millions of years ago when man evolved we had massive periods of darkness, up to 14 hours. This can be attributed to our geographical location I assume. During these times in total darkness, without any artificial light, escape into caves, made sense.

For our survival it was better to protect ourselves and hide when there was total darkness. However what were we to do with the hours. The easiest thing to do was to sleep.

When we sleep we become unconscious to the world and time passes quickly.  This began mans evolution to sleep. With this theory in mind it would suggest that while we have now adapted to this way of life that perhaps we could actually survive just fine without any sleep at all. This theory suggests sleep is nothing more than a way to pass time.

I challenge anyway to try go without sleep and operate effectively. However if you think about it perhaps it is only our consciousness that would get to us. And what better way to put our minds and thoughts to rest than sleep. Sleep can be the deepest form of meditation there is.

Sleep in 90-minute intervals and taking naps work.

My final lesson is that we sleep in 90-minute cycles. This was a fascinating discovery but when I look at my sleep patterns it seems that when I myself sleep in 90-minute intervals I seem to function, noticeably, better.

Rest for 6 hours and you will feel ok, carry on over to 6 and half hours or seven, and you will notice slight sluggishness in your ways. Carry it on over to seven and a half hours and you will feel fresher- you don’t break the cycle.

The sleep cycle is broken into non-REM sleep (Rapid eye movement) for about 65 minutes, followed by REM sleep for 20 minutes, when we dream, and then another 5 minutes of non-REM sleep.  If you break this cycle you disrupt the benefits of completing a full set. This then makes you feel like you lack benefits of sleep.

Sticking with the evolutionary theory, studies carried out like this have found that the length of which we sleep is less relevant to our ability to function, than our ability to stick to sleep within these cycles.

You may notice that when you wake up during the night, with natural sleep, that you do indeed wake up in between these cycles. If you are not disturbed by anything you will either wake up, bright eyed and bushy tailed, or go back into another cycle.

I have been playing around with this a little and without any hard evidence myself, I would conclude it seems pretty legit. If you sleep for 7 hours or 10 hours you will feel less rested than if you slept for 4.5 or 6 hours. Test it for yourself and see how you feel.

With all these being said and done however I personally find that for me, 6 hours or 7.5 hours works best. Actually, last night was a good example of sleep patterns. I went to bed at 9pm and woke up at 1:30 somewhat naturally. I need to wake by 2:30 at the latest for an interview I was hosting at 3am. Naturally however I woke up after 4.5 hours sleep and to be honest, felt fine.

At times I have had similar schedules and rather than waking up naturally have been woken up by an alarm outside the 1.5 hour cycles. This has disrupted me in the middle of a deep cycle and god can I feel the differences. My body is in total shock, in reboot mode. I feel sweaty and almost dizzy.

And on a final note, when I finished my interview I went back to bed for some more rest, without an alarm set. Slept for 90 minutes before waking, and I felt fine.

So there you have it, my 5 sleep hacks, tips of bits of advice. Take what you can and leave the rest. Get it rest!!!

Leave your comments and thoughts and until next time, peace, passion and purpose.