Have a Good Day

How many times do you hear the alarm go off and let out a little groan of disappointment? After all wouldn't a couple more hours or even minutes be better? Sometimes that first hour at work is a killer as you just can't shake off the sleepies. Here are a few tips on making sure you'll be awake for work and be as productive as you can be.

1) Go to bed early.
That's right. Set a bed time and stick to it. Consider setting it for an hour earlier than you think you should. If you're used to going to sleep late it may take you that extra hour to actually fall asleep. Take some time to figure out exactly how many hours of sleep you need. On the weekend, go to bed at a reasonable time and notice what time you wake up naturally. Take into account any sleep you may have missed during the week. Any sleep debt will cause you to oversleep. Once you figure out how many hours of sleep you need, work backwards from the time you need to get up to figure out the time you need to go to bed. Even if it seems excessivly early... that's then you need to go to sleep, otherwise you won't function as well as you could during the day.

2) Get up when you wake up.
One mistake that almost everyone makes is going back to bed when they wake up. Sometimes people will wake up an hour before the alarm goes off feeling fully alert and then go back to bed because it's an hour before they really need to get up. If you're waking up before your alarm goes off it's most likely because your internal body clock is telling you it's time to get up. If you feel alert and awake when you wake up, get up. If it's earlier than you usually get up you'll be able to get some extra work done around the house, or just take time to read the morning paper.

3) Eat breakfast.
Every nutritionist recommends this. Make sure your breakfast has plenty of protein and complex carbohydrates. Your breakfast is what's going to be fueling you for the rest of the day. Stay away from foods high in fat like bacon or sausage. Here are some things to consider: berries, apples, bananas, peaches, pears, plums, a couple boiled eggs, whole wheat toast, juice, or oatmeal.

4) Visit your doctor.
You'll want to do this if you've been having an particularly hard time sleeping. You may be experiencing sleep apnea which can be brought on by slightly mis-positioned sinuses. It causes you to temporarily stop breathing while you're sleeping, you wake up to re-position yourself and then you go back to sleep. You may not even notice that you're waking up but you feel inordinately tired in the morning. Some people with sleep apnea wake up as many as one hundred times during the night. That's a lot of missed sleep.