24 hours is hardly enough; some insist it is not.
Me? I think that even if a day were to be 48 hours, the narrative will still be the same. It’s really about what we do with time- management.
Time management is what we must strive to master, after all, the reality is the 24 hours we have, so the earlier we start making it work and useful for us, the better.
Waking up at night is a habit of many productive and successful persons. I do not know and have never heard of anyone that consistently sleeps for a good 8 hours daily that did remarkable things in life. That’s one-third of the day that is gone to sleep.
Forget all that “sleep for 8 hours every day” talk that you were told. Especially if you’re a young person that hasn’t achieved outstanding milestones in life yet.
When you ration your sleep early in life, you can retire at 40 or 50 and get all the sleep you want, making up for the lost sleep.
Hey! I am not in any way downplaying the importance of sleep!
Sleep is highly important. Poor sleep can affect and destroy your health, so do not constantly deprive yourself of sleep to work, because it will come back to hunt you.
What we are trying to achieve is a sleep routine that is working for our body and our goals, not against any of them.
In between rationing sleep to be able to get more done, there should be times you give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back by just sleeping recklessly for a day or couple more, especially when you notice your body demands it.
I’m pretty sure you get what I’m saying; don’t sleep away your goals, but the goal shouldn’t be to hurt your health due to poor sleep.
The truth about life is that good habits or practices can also affect us negatively, depending on what we do with them.
Think of food, relationships, fun, etc., they are vital for good living, but when not put in check, they can become a nuisance.
So, how do we get our bodies to comply when we need to sacrifice some sleep for a greater good?
From personal experience, I can emphatically say that how you go to bed determines to a great deal how you wake up.
Good preparation makes for happy endings. If we make the right decisions at bedtime, we will get the most out of the night if we need to be awake.
Fact is, it is one thing to be awake and another to carry yourself out of bed to put the hours into whatever task you wish to achieve. Sometimes, the latter is more difficult to pull off.
Here are three hacks to get off bed at night.
1. Make Your Dinner Work For You
Food plays a massive role in how your body works.
If you load your body with so much food or have a late dinner around 10 pm, you might as well forget about staying up at night.
This is so because the heavier a meal, the longer it would take to digest, and vice-versa.
The goal should be to have dinner on time and to have it in a small to moderate portion.
It’s best to have dinner by 7 pm at most, and be active for one or two hours afterward to allow proper digestion.
One ally to sleepy eyes is a full stomach. So, if you want to keep awake for good, you must be intentional about your dinner.
By the way, asides the aim of trying to wake up for some purpose, an early and nutricious dinner is good practice for your total well-being.
2. Map Out A Concrete Plan
Planning does not only help you prepare ahead; it also positions you mentally. Planning puts your mind into perspective, making it a potent psychological tool.
It works like magic, but it really isn’t magic; the body is in sync with the subconscious.
So, what precisely do you want to achieve when you wake up?
Do you want to study, research, or do some work-related task?
Put precise plans in order.
For instance, say you are a tailor who works from home and needs to get some work done on a client’s fabric at night.
Before going to bed, place your work tools and the exact fabric you wish to work with on your sewing machine. Intentionally arrange other relevant assets you would be working with.
Then build a mental picture of the steps you’d take to achieve that milestone you desire, and take that to dreamland with you.
Trust me, these simple steps will help to energize your will when it’s time to get out of bed because your subconscious will have these activities ongoing even when your body is asleep, thereby helping your body to comply.
It works!
3. Set An Alarm Or More
No, alarms are not obsolete yet, and they are not going anywhere! A lot of people still use an alarm to help them overpower sleep.
The trick is to set multiple alarms so if you happen to miss one, The next could do the job.
Set an alarm for exactly when you want to be up and another for a 5 to 10 minutes interval.
Some persons set as much as three, lol, just so that one is strong enough to accomplish the mission.
If you have the first 2 points intact, then there’s hardly a chance that you will not respond to an alarm. They all go hand-in-hand to help you meet your goal.
I’d love to know your thoughts in the comments, please leave them!
