WARNING:
IF YOU ARE EXPERIENCING SLEEP ISSUES PLEASE SEE A DOCTOR.
If you are anything like me, you don't feel as if there is enough time in the day to accomplish what you need to accomplish. If you are really like me, you are a victim of your own procrastination. My procrastination is another topic we will cover in a different post; in this post, we will discuss how to work sleep into your time management.
My schedule as it stands today is this:
0400- wake up
0415-0445- Exercise (give or take an hour or more)
0530-0600 Breakfast
0600-0630 Personal hygiene
0630-0900 Personal Development.
I try to get to bed at 2330 or earlier at the max end; I force myself to be in bed by midnight. As in the previous post about pulling morningers, I sleep for at least three hours, waking up at three, to accomplish tasks that I might not have performed during the previous day.
To avoid health issue fatigue and to be sharper during the day, I started researching micro-Napping. I remember this style of napping from a Mythbusters episode that I was not able to find during my research, but I was able to find several news and peer-reviewed articles that discuss the benefits of micro-napping.
There is a difference between micro-napping and micro-sleeping. The difference is micro-napping is a sleep you want to take, and micro-sleeping is a sleep you often don't realize is happening to you. Micro-sleeping is that sleep that happens suddenly to you while sitting in a boring meeting, class, and sadly sometimes at the wheel of your car.
Micro-napping is the idea of taking a nap or two during your workday, maybe on a break at work or in-between classes.
I will leave links at the bottom to some of the articles I researched so you can come up with micro-napping strategies that best suites your level of health and lifestyle.
According to studies by NASA researched by Catherine Milner and Kimberly Cote they state that "Longer naps will allow you to enter deeper sleep, which will contribute to the grogginess - also called sleep inertia - experienced upon awakening and disrupt nighttime sleep."
Most of the studies that I've researched call for 20 minutes or less of napping. Mainly this is to avoid sleep inertia. In the article from wearethemighty.com they write that "NASA's research showed that naps really could fully restore cognitive function at the same rate as a full night's sleep. The space agency found that pilots who slept in the cockpit for 26 minutes showed alertness improvements of up to 54 percent and job performance improvements by 34 percent, compared to pilots who didn't nap. But 26 minutes might be a little long."
I've been trying to take at least two micro-naps to increase my stamina and my mental cognition throughout the day. I also exercise every day and try and have a healthy diet. I did find some studies that say that napping can be detrimental to your health. That is why I'm telling you it's very important to seek a physician's advice, especially if you have preexisting health conditions.
In the video I've posted from Dr. Oz, he has an interesting napping technique involving drinking a cup of coffee before taking your micro-nap. The method behind his madness, he explains, is that coffee takes about 30 minutes to makes it way through the body before it starts its stimulating effects. Also, realize that everyone absorbs caffeine differently, and results may vary from person to person and whether or not you drink it on an empty stomach.
In my experience so far, the naps are working for me, and I will continue to develop a micro-napping strategy and keep you posted.
Good luck with the time management. Make sure you seek a physician's advice and keep a good record of all the variables in your micro-napping.
What time of day were you lying down or sitting up, how dark it was, how much sleep you got the night before, even the temperature of the room. Those are just a few of the variables you should be taking into consideration when micro-napping.
References:
MILNER, C.E. and COTE, K.A. (2009), Benefits of napping in healthy adults: impact of nap length, time of day, age, and experience with napping. Journal of Sleep Research, 18: 272-281. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2869.2008.00718.x
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