“Sleep is the greatest legal performance enhancing drug (PED) that most people are probably neglecting.” Professor Matthew Walker, author of Why We Sleep

So you want to improve your sleep. That’s awesome! So many people neglect sleep because they don’t realize how vital it is to our health and performance. It is one of the three pillars of health: sleep, diet, and exercise. If you are serious about being your physical and mental best, I recommend you purchase a fitness tracker, like the Oura ring, that measures your recovery, sleep quality, and duration. The best way to improve anything is to measure it, and few things impact your health and performance as much as sleep. Sleep plays a vital role in weight management and overall health. Strive to get eight hours of quality sleep each night. Like exercise, it improves mood, focus, and self-control, while a lack of sleep does just the opposite. Don’t compromise your willpower by starting the day exhausted. Numerous studies have demonstrated the incredible benefits of adequate rest. A few of these benefits are:

• Improved mood
• Improved focus
• Greater self-control
• Enhanced physical and mental health
• Improved weight management
• Less anxiety
• Improved recovery

Foam rollers, cold immersion tubs, Infrared sauna blankets, and other recovery devices get a lot of attention. But, I would argue that if you aren’t getting at least 7.5 hours of quality sleep each night, your effort would be better spent getting to bed earlier and improving your sleep hygiene. In this article, I will give you some simple steps you can take to improve your sleep quality and duration.

Create an Ideal Sleep Environment

The ideal sleep environment is cool and dark. Studies suggest a room temperature between 60 and 65 degrees Fahrenheit helps people fall asleep faster and stay asleep longer. Lower your shades or use blackout curtains to ensure your bedroom stays dark throughout the night. I also recommend you banish all electronics from your bedroom, particularly your cell phone. Putting your cell phone out of reach is crucial to creating an ideal sleep environment. Besides making it more difficult to fall asleep by emitting blue light, studies have shown that the frequent interruptions they create after the onset of sleep adversely impact both sleep quality and duration. In a University of Rhode Island study, 47 percent of participants reported nighttime disturbances related to answering text messages and 40 percent to answering phone calls. Other studies have linked smartphone use before bed to sleep deprivation and insomnia. Instead of emailing, scrolling through social media, and chatting to unwind each night, I recommend taking a warm bath or shower, which encourages better sleep by temporarily elevating your core body temperature, resulting in a gradual cooling down that induces sleepiness. Light activities like walking have the same effect, plus they burn additional calories and promote better digestion and acute insulin sensitivity. Not all technologies are the enemy of sleep. Health trackers that monitor biometrics like resting heart rate and heart rate variability help us assess our sleep quality, duration, and physical readiness. But sleep technology like the Eight Sleep bed cover doesn’t just tell us how well we’ve slept. It promotes better sleep, transforming our bed into a recovery and performance-enhancing tool. It improves the quality of our sleep by regulating the temperature of our mattress, heating and cooling each side of the bed independently. The bed cover circulates water through a grid, allowing each user to regulate the temperatures between 55˚ Fahrenheit and 110° Fahrenheit. Users can program their temperature preferences during each sleep phase or let the autopilot feature adjust the temperature for them as it learns what produces the best night’s sleep. Eight Sleep claims users fall asleep 44% faster, enjoy 34% more restorative deep sleep, and increase their heart rate variability (HRV), an indicator of stress, illness, or insufficient recovery, by 14%. A higher HRV is considered better than a lower HRV, but values can vary from person to person. After a couple of months, the biometric sensors in the Eight Sleep bed cover will have collected enough data about you to provide a good assessment of your recoverability. I’ve found the biometrics it collects closely mirror that of my Oura ring. The sleep technology system isn’t inexpensive, with a price tag of approximately $2,400 and a monthly subscription of $15 a month at the time of this writing. But unlike other sleep technologies that tell you that you aren’t sleeping well, the Eight Sleep does something about it, and it eliminates the need for a wearable health tracker.

Establish a Bedtime Routine

Can you remember the last time you got to bed early and got a good night’s sleep? Strive to duplicate your pre-bedtime routine. Create a positive environment by programming your router to shut off at bedtime. Create a trigger to initiate your bedtime ritual. Set a daily alarm on your phone, or establish an implementation intention like going to bed after doing the dishes. If it has a screen, shut it down. Turn off the TV, power down your computer, put away your tablet, and put your smartphone in its charging cradle. I know how addictive these devices can be, but you must discipline yourself long enough to make this routine a habit. I recommend you replace late-night TV with reading, journaling, or planning. Substitution is the most effective strategy for behavior change. Identify your CUE to watch late-night TV, and replace your routine with something that doesn’t involve a screen. Our bodies thrive on regularity. Going to bed and waking up at consistent times is essential to getting a good night’s sleep. This aligns our body’s internal clock, allowing us to feel awake and refreshed during the day and calm and sleepy at night. Health technologies, like the Eight Sleep and Oura ring, provide a prompt for initiating your bedtime routine. If you have difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep due to restless leg syndrome or a racing mind, I recommend supplementing with magnesium pills or applying magnesium oil to your legs or stomach before sleep. I have found magnesium oil to be particularly effective. The first week I used it, my fitness tracker registered a 16-point improvement in my sleep score. Magnesium is safe and inexpensive, and it doesn’t appear to have any side effects or cause any harm in low doses, less than 350 milligrams daily, according to the Institute of Medicine. The reason magnesium works is because it calms our nervous system, allowing us to fall asleep quicker and stay asleep longer. It has also been shown to improve the concentration of serum renin, melatonin, and serum cortisol in older adults.[i] If you have trouble falling asleep, I recommend listening to soothing music or a guided meditation. For this purpose, I keep a sleep mask with integrated Bluetooth headphones on the side of my bed. I also keep magnesium spray by the side of my bed for the reasons I’ve already given and because it provides a visual prompt. When tempted to stay up to watch the latest episode of the House of the Dragon, remind yourself that sleep is an investment in your health and performance. Tomorrow is another opportunity to give yourself the gift of the first hour—an hour in which your goals don’t have to compete with anyone else’s, an hour that will set the course for a positive day, an hour that will fill your day with hope and vitality, an hour that will let you watch that episode while also working up a sweat. If you have difficulty falling asleep, you might want to limit your afternoon caffeine consumption. Late-night alcohol consumption can also adversely impact your sleep quality. Sleep is one of the best investments you can make in your health, happiness, and success. Don’t make the common mistake of staying up late, getting inadequate sleep, and rushing through the first hour of each day, as most people do. This is a time for peak performance. Give yourself the gift of the miracle morning. Better days begin with better mornings!

Conclusion

Sleep is one of the three pillars of health, so I recommend you devote as much effort to improving it as you do to improving your diet and exercise routine. Track your sleep and keep working on your sleep environment until you consistently get at least seven hours of quality sleep each night. Develop a bedtime routine that doesn’t expose you to blue light 30 minutes before bed, and strive to go to bed at the same time each night. The more consistent your sleep time, the more in sync your circadian rhythms will become. Sleep’s ability to positively impact our behavior is so profound that it is considered a keystone habit. Keystone habits like exercise, journaling, getting sufficient sleep, meditating, and food logging bolster our willpower. They tip the scales in our favor by improving our self-control. People with greater self-control eat better, drink less alcohol, smoke fewer cigarettes, use their credit cards less, and exercise more. If I can help you, please email me at LeanByHabit@gmail.com. Best wishes and best health! Jeff Subscribe to our Newsletter by visiting LeanByHabit.com and entering your email address at the bottom of the page. [i] Behnood Abbasi, Masud Kimiagar, Khosro Sadeghniiat, Minoo M. Shirazi, Mehdi Hedayati, and Bahram Rashidkhani, The effect of magnesium supplementation on primary insomnia in elderly: A double-blind placebo-controlled clinical trial, J Res Med Sci. 2012 Dec; 17(12): 1161–1169. __________________________________________________________________________ My second book, Lean by Habit: A Bulletproof Plan for Body Transformation, is now available on Kindle and Paperback. SAMPLE THE FIRST HOUR FOR FREE: leanbyhabit.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/LEAN-BY-HABIT-Better-1.m4a If you prefer audio, did you know that the Alexa App can read Kindle books while you’re driving or going about your day?

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