Sleep, An Experiment by Chris Bowler
Fellow web-creator, Chris Bowler, has put himself to the task over the next couple of weeks to see if he can change his sleeping habits down to 5 hours an in the process gain valuable extra time in the process.
The experiment: I’m going to take two weeks and see how I operate on 5 hours of sleep per night.
That probably sounds a little crazy, but there are a few caveats. 1) This will only be for nights before a weekday, Sunday to Thursday. Friday and Saturday I will sleep as long as possible. 2) I already happily exist on 6.5 hours per night (again, weekday nights) so it’s not a huge change for me.
While Chris has me doubled in young kids under one roof, I can relate to the fact that there never seems to be enough day available. I too exist on about 6-6.5 hours on a regular basis but I’m not sure I can say that because of, I operate at an optimal level.
Most of us grew up hearing that 8 hours was the perfect amount of sleep an adult needed but as I researched a bit more yesterday, it seems like anywhere between 7 & 9 is best. Most of the things that I found mentioned that under 7 is manageable but your health becomes more at risk the less (and more) you get. The potential of heart disease, diabetes, obesity and depression are all shown to rise as well as a shortened estimated life span.
I’d love to add an extra hour or two to my day but at this point think I’m better off refining other areas or becoming a little better at delegation of tasks in order to achieve.
Chris, wishing you the best of luck with the experiment, be careful to monitor the other aspects of your life as you go through the process to make sure they’re not affected too greatly.
References:
1. National Sleep Foundation – How Much Sleep Do We Really Need?
2. Time.com – How Much Sleep Do You Really Need?
3. Boston.com – Resolutions to sleep on
4. MedicineNet.com – 6 to 8 Hours of Shut-Eye Is Optimal for Health
With all there is to do in life, and all there is to take our attention, it seems that there just never seems to be enough time in the day. However, my main new years resolution was to personally do a better job of budgeting my time. I always wish I had more time to read, or just think, or to exercise, but felt that my project workload was just too much to break off from to do anything else. In reality, I am just poor at budgeting my time.
Instead of ‘tonight, I’m catching up on web design and after that we’ll see’, it’s ‘tonight, 2 hours of web design, 30 minutes of reading, an hour with the wife’. The key for me to get more out of my day is plain and simple – budget. Moderation in all things.
Good thoughts, Joel. I too struggle with time-budgeting, hoping that some new business choices will help to at least mask that for a bit longer!