Tyler's 15 Sleep Tips

May 21

Tom Brady, Lebron James, and Roger Federer all try to get 11 to 12 hours of sleep every night. Every animal species on the planet sleeps. Every bug, zebra, and duck sleeps.

Don’t think you’re special. You need sleep too. You’re more likely to be injured by a toilet (1 in 10,000) than you are to have the gene that allows you to get by on 6 hours of sleep or less each night.

The benefits of sleep include:

Helping you live longer and stave off cancer.
Your mood will improve and you’ll feel less depressed and anxious.
It improves your memory and fights against dementia.
Among a slew of other reasons, it also defends you against food cravings.
Imagine all the mountains you will climb and years later, be able to remember which ones you did, just by getting better sleep!

So here are the 15 Sleep Tips to Change Your Life:

Blue Light is Destructive
Blue light decreases melatonin release by 50%. Melatonin is the chemical in your body that is released at night and helps you fall asleep. You can find this hormone in pill form at your local Walgreens (I caution against taking it though. Any time you artificially give your body a hormone, it stops producing it naturally.) If you have to be on your iPhone, iPad, laptop, or watch TV at night, considering getting some blue light glasses on Amazon or at your local Target. Another option is to just go with candle light or a fire.
Meditation
Meditation helps you fall asleep twice as fast. An article out of Stanford found that people were falling asleep in 33 minutes on average before meditating. After adopting a meditation practice, they were falling asleep in 15 minutes. So if you meditate for 15 minutes, you’re getting a pretty decent ROI before you even add in the benefits of meditating like reducing stress and anxiety, increasing your ability to focus, and helping reduce memory loss).
Avoid caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol
Caffeine inhibits the uptake of the chemicals that tell your brain you’re tired. Nicotine is a stimulant and also masks fatigue. Alcohol delays your ability to get into REM - the part of sleep that releases all of the goodness that helps repair your brain and body.
Exercise regularly.
We all know the benefits of exercise at this point, but why don’t we do it? Take a look at your habits and read one of my favorite books, Atomic Habits by James Clear. Click here to check out my notes.
Get rid of the TV
Two quick comments: 1. TV is meant to ENTERTAIN you! The only channel I suggest watching is the one that says you don’t get this channel. 2. It releases blue light (see tip #1).
No cell phone
Plug it in on the other side of the room. Again, this puppy releases blue light and it’s meant to entertain you, you want to be BORED. Being bored is how you fall asleep. Also, by plugging it in on the other side of the room, you’re pre-committing to getting out of bed in the morning to turn it off.
Computers = Entertainment + Blue Light
Black out the room
As little as 8 lux of light can decrease melatonin production. A good rule of thumb for darkness is that you shouldn’t be able to see your hand in front of your face.
Replace that uncomfortable bed!
You literally spend a third of your life in bed, don’t you want to feel rested the other two thirds?
Turn down the temperature
The ideal sleeping temperature, according to Dr. James Maas (sleep expert), is 60-68 degrees. Play around with it, but over the last few years, I’ve found that I sleep best at 69 degrees.
Turn the clock away from you
Better yet… put it on the other side of the room. This way you CANNOT look at it. By looking at your clock, you increase your anxiety after 5, 10, and 15 minutes goes by - making it even harder to fall asleep.
Only sleep in your bed
If you don’t fall asleep after 20 minutes, get up and go down something relaxing. Begin to associate your bed with only sleeping and you will fall asleep quicker.
Don’t drink too much water before bed
Sleeping straight through the night is the best way to go. If you are drinking too much water, then you’ll be getting up throughout the night, ruining that rest we’re looking for.
Don’t eat too much too late
Indigestion delays sleep onset.
Have a PM routine.
Routines help us perform our best when it means the most. They also help us sleep the best when it means the most, which is every night.

The Wrap-up

Sleep is essential to your performance in life. There is a study done every year, twice a year, with over one billion test subjects. It’s called day light savings. When we get an extra hour of sleep, heart attacks go down, car accidents go down, and mistake at the doctors office go down. When we lose an hour, it works in the opposite direction. If you’re interested in more…