A Recipe For Productivity Breakdown: Poor Sleep Health
We’re all striving to find new ways to become more productive but it’s important that we don’t miss one of the fundamental aspects of general well being, mental health and productivity – sleep. In this guest post Sarah Jones takes a look the signs your sleep quality isn’t as good as it could be and what you can do about it.
How many hours have you been sleeping lately? Do you wake up feeling more exhausted or relaxed and rejuvenated ready for the day ahead? If you fall into the former category, then you need to pay more attention to this article. It’s time to put an end to a clumsy morning and the habit of taking breakfast on the road.
Indicators That You Have Poor Sleep Health
More often than not, you may think that you’ve had enough sleep but on the contrary, you’ve not. The general recommendation for adults is 7-9 hours of sleep depending on your age, health, and such similar factors. Getting a late night’s sleep on occasion, like catching up with your latest TV series doesn’t do much harm other than you feeling tired the following day.
However, sleeping late night after night poses serious threats to your productivity and your general health. If this is the case, you need to find a way to get into a better sleep pattern. Here are some indicators that you could be sleep deprived.
- Sleepiness/ drowsiness during the day – Isn’t this obvious?
- Irritability and mood swings – If you find yourself suddenly getting short tempered, you might be experiencing poor sleep health.
- Impaired performance – With poor sleep habits, you’ll have trouble concentrating even in your usual routines. The worst part is that you may never realize your performance is compromised until someone else brings it to your attention.
- Poor memory – Have you been forgetting stuff lately? If yes, then you need to revisit your current sleep routine. Unless, of course, you have a medical condition.
- Psychiatric consequences – These include paranoia and hallucinations. Sad as it is, people who suffer from these conditions forget things as simple as dates and months. Extreme patients won’t even remember their names or where they come from. And it all starts from a simple cause such as inadequate sleep or stress.
- Fatigue – This is a must-have symptom for poor sleepers. Some people try to deal with it by taking stimulants such as coffee, but that is a story for another day.
Problems Resulting From Poor Sleep Health
From the above symptoms, I think some of the problems can be quite obvious. For example, if you feel drowsy during the day, then you are not fit to drive. According to statistics, poor sleep accounts for a large percentage of road accidents happening worldwide today. Now that’s scary.
If you’re already living a stressed life due to a hectic work schedule, then poor sleep can have a great impact on your productivity and the way you handle things. The smallest change in your planning for the day could be the start of a big breakdown.
It gets even worse if you are an accountant and you start experiencing poor memory. Those accounting books will have a lot of mistakes to show by the end of the day. And you know very well what happens with your boss when you can’t identify and correct the mistakes yourself.
When it comes to fatigue, your body has limits. Unfortunately, once the limit has been reached you will give in and find a safe place to nap. How many precious productive hours will you waste while napping? Several hours, right? Why not do the right thing at the right time? By this I mean you should sleep when it is time to sleep: at night.
Finally, can you imagine dealing with an irritable doctor? That injection might as well land in the wrong vein. That’s horrendous, to say the least. Several other repercussions from the above sleep-related symptoms can occur that you simply should have to deal with in the first place. Dealing with poor sleep health is not an option, unless you don’t value your well-being. So let us look at some possible solutions.
How To Deal With Poor Sleeping Habits
If you find yourself going to bed late just because you were catching up with the latest in television, or following gossip on Instagram, then this is what I call self-induced sleep problems. However, if you are forced to sleep late in the night due to work or having to take care of a sick person, then you have little choice over your sleep problems. Both of these situations can handle poor sleep habits with the following tips;
- Draft and follow a practical sleep schedule – To be honest, this is not going to be easy. But with commitment and a little dedication, it can be achieved. This tip alone can be effective in solving all your sleep problems as long as you stay committed to the schedule. Play around with sleep times depending on your daily routines, but ensure the overall sleep hours each day are the same and not less than 7 hours.
- Sleep at a particular time every day – Programming your mind to switch off to sleep at say 9 pm every day may be successful in the long run. Just make sure you deal with irregular waking up to achieve the minimum recommended sleep hours.
- Resist the urge to use electronics before you sleep – These gadgets prolong the time you actually fall asleep. It is more advisable to use the few hours before you sleep to meditate and think about what you accomplished during the day. In the long run, this will not only help overcome your poor sleeping habits but also help you to be accountable as a person.
- Do not exercise before you go to bed – Exercising makes your body active and consequently, you’ll struggle to fall asleep. If you have to exercise in the evening, do it at least a few hours before bedtime.
The Bottom Line
Take charge of your sleep routine before it’s too late. Stop making excuses. Once you realize that your poor sleeping habits could be the cause of your under-productivity, you’ll be grateful that you read this article. And remember, it’s never too late to do the right things.
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