Have you ever experienced a significant lack of sleep?
Do you actually know how much sleep you get every night?
Well, I know how much sleep I get and I am experiencing a significant lack of sleep. I’ve had enough and I’m not coping with the lack of sleep anymore!
Two years ago I purchased a Lark. It’s a wearable sleep device that tracks your sleep patterns and gently wakes you up in the morning. When I first bought the Lark, the amount of sleep I was getting was pretty good and most every night was being rated as “well” on the Lark scale. The scale goes poor, fair, ok, well, and very well.
The Lark judges your sleep based on the amount of time you were actually asleep and the overall quality of the sleep (i.e., how much you toss and turn). It also tells you the length of time it takes for you to fall asleep, after you put the device on, and how many times you actually wake up durning the night.
Over the last month–the Lark provides a 7-day, 30-day, and Overall Summary–my sleep quality has been good, but the amount of time sleeping is averaging at about 5 hours and 45 seconds. That’s not good!
Yesterday morning, on my way into work, amidst a series of yawns, I really started considering how much sleep I was getting lately. Then I get into work and I had a daily health email in my Outlook and it talked about the effects of lack of sleep.
Sometimes two by fours have to hit you in the face for you to realize what’s going on. Everything they were talking about in the article I was (am) experiencing.
I printed out the article and pulled out my iPhone to see what the Lark was telling me–I really hadn’t been paying attention to the numbers, just using the Lark to wake myself up.
Overall–since I bought the Lark two years ago–my average time sleeping was six hours…not good. What the Lark tells me is that, if I want at least seven hours of sleep, I need to get into bed no later than 8:30 pm so I would be able to fall asleep by 9 pm. Most of the time I was falling asleep around 10 pm or later. Basically’ if I fall asleep by 9 pm, I will get about seven hours sleep.
So, plan is in place.
Last night I climbed in bed at 8:24 pm and was in bed for 8 hours and 6 minutes (I normally wake up at 4:30 am during the week). I slept for 6 hours and 45 minutes. Actually, I probably had another 15 minutes, because I turned off the alarm (and Lark) at 4:30, but went back to sleep for about 47 minutes.
It’s my intention to get to bed now at 8:30 to get at least seven good hours of sleep a night. Over the next couple weeks to a month, I will look for changes that are outlined in the article that I printed.
Essentially, I’m not coping with a lack of sleep anymore.