Rethinking the Way We Sleep

A common goal that people-especially the working class-share is to wake up earlier. To many, things like exercise have become a trivial and unattainable fantasy due to long working hours. After all, the last thing people want to do after a long day at work is work up a sweat at the gym.

The secret to a more productive day is to become an early riser.

There is a significant chance that anyone reading this article has read others about training your body to wake up earlier and become an early riser. And there's an even greater chance that after trying the tips relayed in said article, you found that you still were not able to wake up any earlier. The key to becoming an early riser is to identify why previous attempts have failed. Why is it that it is so difficult to wake up just an hour or so earlier? The problem lies in the way we sleep.

Why the current system is flawed

For those of you who religiously follow a strict sleeping schedule, it's time to rethink your strategy. Contrary to popular belief, the body does not need a set number of hours of sleep per night. I won't even bother citing a source on that, because you probably won't find it published anywhere. Let my qualify that statement: do you think that cavemen and nomads went to bed at 10:00 PM and woke up at 6:00 AM every day? Absolutely not. In truth, they slept when they felt tired and woke up when they felt refreshed.

The only reason modern-day human beings sleep in a structured fashion is because of the environment in which we live. In order for the workplace to attain its maximum productivity, its employees need to function at the same time. This synchronicity is not possible if everyone were to sleep at different times based on when their bodies told them it was time to rest. As a result, a "work day" schedule was established and the nine-to-five job was born.

Now, rather than allowing our bodies to tell us when to sleep and when to rise, we force ourselves into a pre-established framework. Tired or not, a bedtime is set and adhered to because we are convinced that we need a specific number of hours of sleep every night to operate at peak efficiency. This severely limits sleeping options, for instead of trusting the human body and giving it the liberties it needs, we force it to conform to our social system.

This system is the reason why so many attempts to wake up earlier fail. Often times, you aren't tired when that revered bed time comes around. Your body tells you this by making you toss and turn trying to fall asleep, but most people don't listen. As a result, you end up wasting up to several hours trying to fall asleep, when in truth, the time would have been better spent doing something productive.

Shifting the framework back an hour or two doesn't work. Many people who try to become early risers resort to this tactic, then find that it is simply too difficult and strenuous on the body. The only way to fix the problem and wake up earlier without brute force and unnatural levels or perseverance is to rethink the way we sleep.

The solution

So we have a dilemma. One option is to live like our predecessors and sleep when your body tells you to. The second option is to sleep when society tells you to. In truth, neither system is an ideal fit. The latter has already been elaborated on, and the former-while being the most natural and efficient way to sleep-is simply unrealistic in today's modern world.

The solution? A combination of both systems.

Since we cannot escape the fact that job shifts begin around 9:00 AM, it is important to wake up at a set time every morning. This is an inescapable aspect of life. However, the time at which you go to bed should be dynamic. Tossing out all of that scientific research may be difficult, but your body knows how much sleep it needs, and it isn't the same every day. A long day's work may mean that you need to go to bed earlier, whereas a leisurely Saturday may be significantly less taxing on your body, allowing you to stay up a few extra hours.

What is the definition of "tired" in this scenario? If you can't fall asleep within three to five minutes of laying down, you aren't ready for bed. Get up, walk around, read a book, do something, then try to sleep again in a half an hour or so. Eventually, you will start to get a feel for when you are ready for bed, which will reduce the amount of trial and error involved in the process.

Don't misunderstand: this isn't a miracle system that works instantaneously. Your body will still need to adjust to the new way of sleeping; after all, it's difficult to break a habit that you've built over many years. However, it is a much more efficient way to sleep, as it removes the long wasted periods of time spent staring at the neon numbers on the alarm clock as you try to fall asleep.

The moral of the story? Trust your body; it knows best.