Hop out of bed rested and alert in the morning? Only if we slept well. The Dutchman Floris Wouterson is a coach and sleep consultant and explains in his new book “Super Sleep” how we achieve exactly that.
Who doesn’t know it: You went to bed on time and slept the recommended eight hours. The next morning you open your eyes and feel as if a whole column of trucks had rolled over you. This may be due to our non-existent or wrong sleep strategy, as Floris Wouterson writes in his book “Super Sleep – Practical Tips for the Best Sleep Ever”. We explain here how we do it.
We need a sleep plan
Maybe you’ve tried a lot, but somehow you still can’t get a good night’s sleep? Then maybe you just don’t have the right plan or, as Wouterson calls it, the right one sleep strategy. We have often trained ourselves to sleep badly over the course of our lives. But that also means that we unlearn it again and establish new routines can. Above all, however, it is about getting back in tune with our internal clock in order to significantly improve our lives.
Incidentally, this can even lead to a worsening of sleep at first, but Wouterson promises: It’s worth persevering and then you’ll get super duper sleep.
Forget what you used to think about sleep
We all have multiple beliefs about family, relationships, money, and friends—including sleep. And they have to be identified and then forgotten as quickly as possible. Because as a rule, our principles about sleep consist of a mixture of half-knowledge and old wives’ tales.
Step 1: Don’t think in hours, think in cycles
Our inner clock determines our whole life, but unfortunately we have forgotten how to listen to them. It has a lot to do with good and healthy sleep. Here are the facts:
- Their period length is longer than the 24-hour rhythm we live by and is 26 hours
- These 26 hours are in turn divided into cycles of 90 minutes each – this corresponds to a complete sleep cycle, which also lasts about 90 minutes
- A sleep cycle consists of: falling asleep, light sleep. Deep sleep and REM phase. At the end of each sleep cycle, we feel rested because we have reached a state that most closely resembles our waking state
- On the other hand, if we are awakened in the middle of the sleep cycle, we often feel disoriented and overwhelmed
To avoid this condition, you can Sleep duration in units of 90 minutes measured and use this to calculate the best time to go to bed in order to be woken up at a convenient time. So if you have to get up at 7 a.m., you should be in bed by 11:30 p.m. at the latest in order to start the day fresh and lively.
It is also important to have a fixed bedtime and wake-up time, which is also adhered to at the weekend, because otherwise we mess up our inner clock. The much-loved sleeping in at the weekend often takes revenge on Monday.
Step 2: How much sleep do I really need?
Forget what you once learned about 8-hour sleep. Sleeping is individual and so is the number of hours of sleep that each individual needs to be productive. But how do we find out how many hours we should sleep?
Our goal is to wake up in the morning without an alarm clock or before the alarm clock. Then we have ours Determine sleep needst. And it goes like this:
Suppose you need between seven and eight hours of sleep and have a fixed time to get up (which you then also do on weekends) of 7 a.m. So you calculate back in blocks of 1.5 hours and you end up with bedtime of 11:30 p.m. Now, for the next ten days, do this, going to bed at the same time every day and waking up at the same time. Our brain likes regularity. If you wake up before your alarm clock at the end of the ten days, you have determined your sleep needs. If you don’t, go to bed fifteen minutes earlier and repeat the procedure. If that’s not enough, go to bed even earlier. You do this until you wake up before your alarm clock and have determined your sleep window.
Step 3: Keep a sleep diary
We see our successes best when we document them. This is the only way we can see afterwards whether improvements have actually been made. An important benchmark here is sleep efficiency. It compares the time we spend in bed with the time we actually sleep. To do this, we note all the important data in a sleep diary (templates can be found on the Internet, for example). Among other things, this includes information on the quality of sleep, but also how long it takes us to fall asleep, how often we were awake and how long it took us to actually get up after waking up. But things like alcohol, a party, sports, illnesses or emotionally charged moments should also be recorded in order to draw conclusions about sleeping behavior, what is good for us, what we should keep and where there are still adjustments that we can make to learn good sleep again.
There is much more worth knowing about sleep in the book “Super sleep. Practical tips for the best sleep ever” by Floris Wouterson, published by Südwest for €20.