Tips For Cultivating Healthy Sleeping Habits

Here’s a familiar situation—the 7 am alarm clock is blaring and you don’t want to move a muscle. You eventually muster the strength to get up, rub a poor night's sleep out of your eyes and think “how am I possibly going to get through the day?”

This problem is exceptionally common, with 70% of American adults reporting insufficient sleep at least one night a month, and 11% reporting insufficient sleep every night (https://www.sleephealth.org/sleep-health/the-state-of-sleephealth-in-america/). Whether it be because of anxiety about the day to come, a health disorder, or an inconsistent sleep schedule, we all deal with poor sleep every once in a while.

While getting poor sleep has been normalized and even romanticized in work culture, a lack of sleep can decrease your ability to focus, make decisions, and can worsen your mental health. That’s why it’s immensely important to form habits that help you get a good night’s rest and why it’s important to take care of yourself when you’re feeling sleep-deprived. Below are some tips for cultivating healthy sleeping habits.

1) Stick to a sleep schedule

While it might be tempting to sleep in on weekends, inconsistency in your sleeping habits can lead to being chronically tired. Sticking to a consistent sleep schedule gets your body into a natural rhythm—before you know it, getting enough sleep will be just like clockwork. If this feels like a daunting task, try easing into it by going to bed earlier or waking up earlier by 30-minute intervals until you hit your bedtime and wake-time goals.

2) Nix the napping

When you’re feeling tired, napping often seems like the quickest solution. However, taking naps too frequently or taking one late in the day can cause you to want to go to bed later, throwing your sleeping rhythm out of whack. If you’re really craving that nap, keep it 30 minutes or less and avoid napping late in the day.

3) Ease into sleep

Cultivating a night-time routine can put you in the perfect relaxed mindset for sleep. In the hour before you go to bed, do something you enjoy whether it be doing your skincare routine, watching a comfort show, or reading a book. While screens can affect our drowsiness levels and make us more alert, whether or not you want to eliminate screens from your routine is up to you.

4) Be gentle with yourself

If you try all of these solutions and none of them seem to work, breathe. Cultivating habits takes time and patience. The harder you are on yourself for not being able to follow your goals, the more impossible they will seem. The day after a poor night'