A couple of weeks ago I started to plan out how I would hack my sleep. Making it possible to fall asleep faster and easier and being able to wake up refreshed. As I said in my earlier post I’ve always had trouble sleeping, especially falling asleep. After doing some research I found some methods that would help me and I have been testing them over the past couple of weeks. Let’s start with that I am doing…
Take a Cold shower 1 hour before bed – This has proved to be the most effective way to help me actually relax and fall asleep. Taking a cold shower is not the most pleasant thing, but it is worth it. If I take a cold shower about an hour before I go to bed I fall right asleep!
Avoid late night planning – I don’t plan anything out for the next day after 5PM. I get all of my planning for the next day done during the afternoon so I’m not up thinking about what I have to do the next day.
The other things on the list I haven’t been doing on a constant enough basis to really see if they are effective. So I am able to fall asleep very easily, which is a relief since I was laying in bed for hours trying to fall asleep before. I’ve still had a problem actually getting up. Some days I will let my alarm go off for hours before I actually get up and normally I don’t feel that great when I get up. So now it is time to work on that aspect of hacking my sleep. Here is what I plan on doing to make sure I wake up feeling refreshed.
Wake up after a Sleep Cycle – Sleep cycle’s are normally 90 minutes long. The best time to wake up is right after a sleep cycle is over. I am going to shoot for 4 sleep cycles, so 6 hours of sleep. I’ve actually been testing this for about a week and I am waking up about 5 minutes before my alarm goes off!
Put the alarm clock out of reach – My big problem when I wake up is that I hit the snooze button immediately as my alarm goes off. If I put my alarm clock out of reach I will actually have to physically get up to turn it off.
Hydrate – After a long night without fluids your body needs to re-hydrate. A glass of water will kick start your metabolism and as such you will wake up faster and feel more alert.
Take a shower – Taking a shower as soon as you wake up should help you feel awake. Also alternating between hot and cold water will really get your body going.
Eat Breakfast – This seems like a no-brainer, but lately I have not been eating breakfast at all. This is not a good thing as by lunch time I feel exhausted!
So I will be testing these methods and continue to tweak hacking my sleep until I find the perfect method!