I am into health very much, which is also the overarching theme of this blogsite, so I think a post on sleeping schedule is definitely necessary. I had postponed this post a long while since I was not sure whether I can actually identify and maintain a healthy schedule myself. Now that I did find it and have been maintaining it for a while, I decided to pop up here and share it with you.
Sleeping is essential to our health and bad sleep can play a deteriorating effect to our productivity in our waking time. I have done some research and found that successful (a caveat here, success can mean different things to different people, here I am limiting it to the generally accepted version of success) people maintain in general 6-8 hours of sleep. There are a couple of extremes who sleep for 3, 5 or even 9 hours a day. The time ranges are also interesting. Please see the non-exhaustive list below:
- Benjamin Franklin: 8 hours, 10 pm-5 am.
- Thomas Edison: 5 hours, 11 pm-4 am.
- Winston Churchill: 5 hours, 3 am-8 am.
- Barack Obama: 6 hours, 1 am-7 am.
- Donald Trump: 3 hours, 1 am-4 am.
- Bill Gates: 7 hours, 12 am-7 am.
- Tim Cook: 7 hours, 9:30 pm-4:30 am
- Elon Musk: 6 hours, 1 am – 7 am.
- Ellen DeGeneres, 8 hours, 11 pm-7 am.
- Arianna Huffington, 8 hours, 10 pm -5 am.
- Marissa Mayer, 4-6 hours, 12 am-4 ~6 am.
As you can see, there is no general rule of thumb in terms of what time frame contributes to the success of the people listed above. I was experimenting the schedule myself as well. I sometimes get tremendous creativity in the wee hours if I end up staying late, but I also notice the strong negative health effect late sleep has on me. So I decided to stick to my healthy schedule, and I believe the creativity part is mostly a result of habit, since your brain can be trained/tricked.
And below the list ends:
12. Hellen Jiang, 7 hours, 10 pm-5 am.
Sometimes your brain can be so active that it is hard to fall asleep, and here are some tips in helping reduce that:
- maintain a consistent sleeping schedule
- work out and break a sweat regularly
- avoid heavy meals/drinking a couple hours before sleep (if you really need to drink something, herbal tea could be your safe choice)
- meditation, deep breathing, and progressive muscle relaxation
- hot bath or aromatherapy or try to visualize tranquility
- power down one hour before bed: turn off electronics and dim your lights
- write down what is bugging you, if there is any; don’t leave unresolved negative feelings before sleep
- paint your bedroom in tranquil color, keep it cool and keep it dark
- make sure hands and feet are not cold
- reserve the bed only for sleep and sex.
Time to power down for me 🙂
Good luck finding that schedule that works for you the best!
Happy Healthy Helping 