I recently had a trip to my hometown where I discovered a very unique way of developing a sleeping habit. In my hometown people still don’t watch TV. It’s not that they don’t have TVs, but they intentionally don’t watch it or don’t have the time for it. They wake up early around 5:00 in the morning and pray. After praying most of the people in the cities go back to sleep but those people in my hometown and many more like them don’t sleep after praying, they go out and attend to their duties. And in the evening, they go to bed as early as 9:00 PM. How is this possible and what causes this early waking up and sleeping? A very simple habit; “not watching TV”.
That TV for the people in my hometown is social media for me and you here. We don’t watch TV but kill our time surfing social media apps. So, for us to better manage our time we should quit surfing social media in the evening or at the time when we are preparing for sleep. So for us this simple habit can be “stop endless scrolling”.
The Secret to an Energized Life: How Quality Sleep Transforms Your Health
You may have heard this many times that the key to a better and healthy life is a healthy diet, exercise, and sleep. It may sound cliché for you, but it really is the formula. I had read this many times and I underestimated it but didn’t know that the problem exactly was not paying attention to these three basics.
Sleeping for 8 hours without any distraction helps boost your immune system and energize your body to be fully prepared for the amazing next day. The most important change that you would experience after sleeping for 8 hours undistracted is that you won’t feel tired and sluggish anymore. The inadequacy in sleep results in tiredness and feeling sluggish.
You may have experienced a feeling of tiredness and sluggishness during your day — no matter how much sleep you get and how much do you rest, you still feel sluggish and demotivated. It’s because you are distracted during your sleep.
Our body releases a hormone called melatonin when it’s dark, which signals the body to slow down and prepare for sleep, and when our body sense sunlight or any other artificial light especially blue light, it reduces releasing melatonin which signals the body to be prepared for being awake.
For your brain to sense the 24 hours cycle well, you need to develop a healthy sleeping habit and stay consistent with your bedtime.
I won’t emphasize much on eating healthy and exercising in this article, but they are equally important. Never underestimate a healthy diet and being active on daily basis. If good, enough sleep is a steering wheel of a moving vehicle, a healthy diet and being active are it’s wheels.
This Simple Sleeping Habit Made a Huge Difference for me?
I’ve recently committed to a consistent sleep schedule, going to bed and waking up at the same time every day. After just a week, my brain started automatically signaling my body when it was time to wind down for sleep.
Building a new habit isn’t always easy—it pushes you out of your comfort zone. You have to let go of behaviors that once felt enjoyable. Imagine waking up without your phone right next to you. Instead of grabbing it first thing in the morning, you have to stand up, walk over, and get it. Feels inconvenient, right? That’s the challenge of forming new, healthy habits—but the short-term discomfort is worth the long-term benefits.
To improve my sleep quality, I leave my phone on my desk, away from my bed. This simple and easy sleeping habit helps me sleep undisturbed and wake up without the distraction of a screen within arm’s reach.
Sounds Intimidating? Don’t Worry
Sleeping on time, exercising, and eating healthy sound a bit intimidating but these are very easy. We can really take advantage of the power of developing habits. Everything seems to be intimidating at the initial stage but once you form it into a habit, you would continue to do it unintentionally. Or in other words, it would happen by itself.
Start from today, the most common sleep schedule is from 09:00 PM to 5:00 AM but it depends on how comfortable you are and how your day ends.
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