Sleep Hygiene
In a fast-paced world, it can be easy to fall prey into a pattern of habitual sleeplessness.
Many leaders across our nation put in long hours to meet their grueling demands. In a recent reflection, Elon Musk (formerly serving as the CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink, all at the same time) spent the full 24 hours of his 47th birthday at work. Marissa Mayer (former CEO of Yahoo!) noted that early in her career she would work all-nighters at least once a week. In extolling his own work ethic, President Donald Trump noted: “Don’t sleep any more than you have to. I usually sleep about four hours per night.” These examples are merely the tip of the iceberg; systematic research indicates that sleep deprivation is very common among leaders even at lower levels of organizations.
Sleepy individuals are less effective on the job than their well-rested counterparts. When leaders trade away sleep in order to work more, they become more abusive toward subordinates, have less effective working relationships with their employees, are less able to inspire others, and see engagement rates drop on the teams they manage. And, of course, sleep deprivation leads to impulsiveness, disrupts decision making, and undermines creativity and innovation. It is probably not a coincidence that those who talk about how much sleep they trade away for extra work time have also displayed some impulsive Tweeting.
How much sleep do you get each night? Most of us know that eight hours is the recommended amount, but with work, family, and social commitments often consuming more than 16 hours of the day, it can seem impossible to make this math work. Perhaps you feel that you operate just fine for four or five hours a night. Maybe you’ve grown accustomed to red-eye flights, time zone changes, and the occasional all-nighter. You might even wear your sleep deprivation like a badge of honor.
If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Although the ranks of sleep advocates are no doubt growing—led by the likes of Arianna Huffington and Jeff Bezos—a significant percentage of people, and U.S. executives in particular, don’t seem to be getting the sleep they need. According to the most recent data from the National Health Interview Survey, the proportion of Americans getting no more than six hours a night (the minimum for a good night’s rest for most people) rose from 22% in 1985 to 29% in 2012. An international study conducted in 2017 by the Center for Creative Leadership found that among leaders, the problem is even worse: 42% get six or fewer hours of shut-eye a night.
Begrudgingly, some Americans are starting to accept the fact that they are better leaders if they regularly get a good night’s sleep. But acknowledging that fact is much easier than actually making the lifestyle changes required to get that sleep. There is always one more urgent task to complete right now, and we tell ourselves that if we don’t do it, the consequences will be dire. We tell ourselves that sleep can wait just one more hour. We’ll catch up on sleep later, perhaps on the weekend. We’ll just drink another pot of coffee, and that will get us through the storm. Then we can focus on sleeping some other time when we are not so busy. But of course that time never comes, because the same thing happens the next night, and then the next.
We need to take a more meaningful step in the right direction. This requires asking an important question: When should I call it a night? When should I stop working for the evening so I can rest up and be at my best tomorrow?
You would be surprised at how developing healthy sleeping patterns can change your productivity, relationships, mental health and overall lifestyle. Not getting quality rest in the night can produce a lasting impact on both mental and physical health. Sleep hygiene is really a set of practices alongside healthy habits that attempts to improve our quality of sleep.
Sleep hygiene is essential for good, quality sleep.
This consists of several components. Considerable research has gone into developing a set of guidelines and tips that are designed to enhance good sleeping, and there is much evidence to suggest that these strategies can provide long-term solutions to sleep difficulties. A tailor-made approach can be created to best fit your personal needs. Consider the following:
Get regular: Train your body to follow a regular rhythm. As much as possible, go to bed and wake up simultaneously, even on the weekends.
Get up and try again: If you find yourself attempting to go to sleep with no avail, after 20 minutes try getting up and do something calming and nonessential until you get sleepy again.
Bed is for sleeping: More and more we can be guilty of scrolling through an app or watching a TV show. It is important to honor what our bed is meant for … catching Z’s.
Cultivate the right environment: Ensure your room is dark, quiet, and cool. The right mattress and pillows are worth the investment.
Sleep rituals: Following the same routine each night signals to your body that it is time for sleep. Sleep rituals aid the natural occurrence of melatonin production in the body which is associated with regulation of the circadian rhythm.
Limit naps: We can all remember a time in which we accidentally took too long of a nap that resulted in a disruption of our daytime and nighttime routine. The Sleep Foundation suggests limiting your nap to no longer than 30 minutes.
If you follow these strategies and pursue getting good rest for each night of sleep, you will be more effective in the hours that you are awake. Moreover, you’ll be happier, healthier, and a better version of yourself in non-work contexts as well.
Why should any of this matter to me?
Good, quality sleep has numerous benefits:
Improved overall health: Quality sleep impacts our overall health. Without adequate sleep, our immune system, metabolism, and cardiovascular health can decline.
Cognitive Functioning: Restful sleep enhances cognitive function including memory, concentration, problem-solving, and creativity.
Stress Reduction and Emotional Regulation: When you achieve and maintain quality sleep, you allow your body the opportunity to recover from stressors encountered throughout your day. Paired with reduced stress, good sleep hygiene allows for increased ability for emotional regulation.
As we begin each return to the routines of the school year, it is important to review the importance of sleep hygiene and how it impacts our overall health (physical and psychological).
Sleep is one of the most basic needs for humans. Sleep is also foundational in the realization of higher-level needs. Consider Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. It suggests that people are motivated to fulfill basic needs before moving on to other, more advanced needs. For example, people are first motivated to fulfill basic biological needs for food, shelter … sleep, then to progress through higher needs like safety, esteem, etc. Once these needs have been met, the primary motivator becomes the desire to fulfill one's potential. To meet a higher level of need, we must fulfill the basic needs to create a foundation.
With an increase in focus on the social-emotional well-being and needs of our students over the past several years, it is important to understand that improved overall social-emotional functioning begins with the basics. Focusing on habits that benefit overall physical health aligns with practices associated with mental, and emotional health.
Achieving the goal of improved sleep hygiene requires developing the proper habits. Making sleep hygiene a priority will lead to numerous benefits that will impact each individual’s life.
Here’s to better sleep!
- Jenna Cartwright, School Social Worker
