Have you slept enough?

All of us want to grow and we want to grow fast and faster.  It would not be exaggerating to say that we live in an impatient world wherein we want things to happen fast and show less tolerance for delays. In a way, it’s good and can be taken for achievement and result orientation. That’s the kind of people that you would want to have in your team. Go-getters.

But do we really have habits that compliment what we want to achieve in our life?

One of such habits that I want to talk about is sleeping, sleeping enough and sleeping enough every day. I remember to have read a research article that says that that on an average at least 8 hours of sleep is a must.  I mean per day.

That’s how our bio-logical clocks work and it needs to be respected. When we sleep less, we violate this principle and we do it repeatedly, it starts hurting our systems. The research says that, when we deprive ourselves of enough sleep, it can really take a toll on our focus, concentration, thinking and analytical ability. To give an analogy, I think what fuel is to vehicles, sleep is to human beings.  Even if you were to have a superfast sports car, without fuel, it cannot move a bit. Similarly, lack of sleep does really take a toll on our performance at workplace.

So, it’s clear how important sleep is.. Do we sleep enough?

The answer is certainly NOT YES.

Habits that kill our basic habit of sleeping on time

There is only one habit that I want to talk about here.

Social media.

One habit that kills peoples sleeping pattern is social media. To give an example, in what’s up last seen status is populated.  When I send messages in what’s up, for many, I see the “last seen” status till late nights or an hour or two past 12.00 pm in the night.  I am sure you would agree with me on this and if no, do check the last seen status, next time you send a message to someone in your friends list.  I am not really sure if all these messages that we receive and send could be such urgent messages for us to be awake till midnight. I think it’s more of a habitual thing than the criticality of the messages being exchanged since in almost all the cases, all these messages can wait till tomorrow.

Similarly, the Facebook fever seem to have caught up with everyone.  With so many friends, acquaintances, friends’ friends and so many others on our friends list, there are endless updates. It’s just not that. I see updates being posted in the late nights. The updates includes selfies and it looks like almost everyone has a “selfie-fever”.  

BTW, the research findings by American psychiatric association confirm “selfie” is a kind of mental disorder and the severity of the disorder is classified based on the no. of selfies being taken and posted per day on social medias as detailed below. I guess you must find this interesting. (Source:https://adobochronicles.com)

Borderline selfitis : taking photos of one’s self at least three times a day but not posting them on social media.

Acute selfitis: taking photos of one’s self at least three times a day and posting each of the photos on social media.

Chronic selfitis: Uncontrollable urge to take photos of one’s self  round the clock and posting the photos on social media more than six times a day.

So the easy inference is people do not go to bed early and they sleep for a lesser time. The quality of sleep suffers too.

Rules to follow to get your basic habit – sleeping – right.

# Decide on a time before which you want to go to sleep. It cannot be late night. Do ensure that you get to sleep for minimum of 8 hours.

# Do a reverse planning from the above time and prioritize what you want to do before doing to bed ie, What do you really want to do and how much time you want to spend on each of those activities, what do you want to remove from your list etc., For example, Narayana Murthy and his spouse decided to not have a Television at their home when their kids were growing up.  They did not want to spend any time watching TV and rather they wanted to spend all that time with their growing children.

# Switch off the internet in your phone and Keep your smart phone away after a particular time after which you decide to not check your phone.

#If you are not able to stop your smart phone usage rule, you are addicted to your phone. So every time, you flout your own rule, do note down somewhere and review every week. You will know how severe your addiction is and take a call on how strictly you should stick to your own rules.

# This exercise is certainly required since we are flooded with too many choices. If we don’t do it, we will not be spending our time fruitfully. We would rather be wasting our time.

# Remember, Big things in life are made up of small things only.  Sleeping is one such small habit for bigger results in your life.

# Habits die hard.  However it’s certainly possible to make changes.

To conclude, we are not robots that can go on working or doing something. We are after all human beings and need good amount of sleep to start the day as a new day.  Sleeping enough keep your alert and focused. It can help keep you on your feet. It keeps your thinking and analytical abilities agile at workplace. Do try it for a week and see the improvement for yourself.

So Have you slept “enough” for the day?  

diD yOU enJOY ReADinG ThIS ArTIcLE? 

                                  If yES, 

yOU maY sHAre it wiTH Your FriENds tOO