1. Maintain a Consistent Sleep Pattern
First and foremost, you want to attempt to go to sleep at the same time every night. Likewise, you want to wake up at the same time every morning. You won’t see any improvements until you begin making changes. However, if you maintain those good habits, you’re bound to experience improvements. Try to find what works for you and be consistent with it.
2. Spend The Right Amount Of Time In Bed
Most adults require as much as 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night. Some will require more time, and some might require less. Try to figure out what feels best for your body. A lot of inefficient and poor quality sleepers spend a lot more than 8 hours in bed. This can end up resulting in fragmented sleep. Unless you have specific sleep requirements that cause you to have to sleep more than 8 hours, you want to get yourself out of bed after a maximum of 8.5 hours. If you typically take more than an hour to fall asleep, try to set your bedtime to later on in the night. You don’t want to lay in bed awake for an extended time.
3. Use Your Bed For Sleep
You shouldn’t be using your tablets, smartphones, or anything else in bed. Ideally, you want to keep your TV off at night. You want to get your mind into the habit of shutting down when you lay down in bed. If you stay awake while you are in bed doing other things, you won’t train your mind to sleep.
4. Wind Down
Your body and mind need a wind-down period. You want to give yourself plenty of time to relax before trying to go to sleep. Try to give yourself a buffer of 30 minutes to an hour to get yourself ready to sleep. You can use this to jot down plans for the following day or even to meditate and relieve yourself of some stress. Avoid using anything with a screen during this time. Screentime is only going to exacerbate your worries and it can trick your brain into thinking it’s daytime due to exposure to blue light. Try to find something that relaxes you and stick to it.
5. Ensure Your Bedroom Is Comfortable
Enhancing the comfort of your bedroom is a good thing you can do to improve the quality of your sleep. You want to keep your room dark and cool. Ideally, you want to keep the ambient temperature sitting around 60-63 degrees.
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6. Avoid Caffeine and Alcohol
While you might get sleepy and drowsy after drinking alcohol, you want to avoid drinking it at night. It can interfere with your body’s ability to go through sleep cycles. Also, avoid drinking caffeine in the late afternoon. It’s a stimulant and it can interfere with your ability to fall asleep.
7. Avoid Napping
Ideally, you want to avoid napping whenever possible. If you must take a nap, make it a short one. Keeping your naps to around 20 minutes can keep it from negatively impacting your ability to sleep at night.
8. Don’t Watch The Clock
The last thing you want to do is spend hours laying in bed watching the clock. This is only going to inhibit your ability to fall asleep. Instead of laying in bed when you can’t sleep, you want to get up and do an activity that makes you tired. Only when you feel tired should you go back to bed to fall asleep.
