7 Simple Tips to Improve Your Sleep Effectively

It seems like none of us are getting any sleep lately, and this was a problem before the pandemic! Sleep is extremely important and if you aren’t getting enough it can affect your mood, productivity, overall health, and your relationships with others. Thankfully, bad sleep habits can be improved and there are several tips to improve sleep out in the world.

Often, our bad sleep habits are simply formed whenever we miss sleep or get bad sleep for a period of time. The keyword being ‘habits’ because they can certainly be fixed and changed so you are sleeping well once again.

You’ve got access to lots of tips to improve your sleep, and here are a few of them!

How to Get Better Sleep with 7 Tips to Improve Sleep

These first few tips to improve sleep start with going to bed, while the rest deal with the day before you get your rest. Both of these time periods are important, as the actions you take during the day often have a direct impact on how you sleep at night. Don’t think that sleep preparation starts when the sun goes down, instead, sleep prep for the next night begins when you wake up!

1. No Electronics in Bed

This is a hard one of tips to improve sleep, as most people have their phones as the last thing they see when they go to sleep and the first thing they see when they wake up. Moreover, it’s been very well documented that the blue light the screens give off stops the chemicals in our brains that make us feel sleepy.

Instead, why not curl up with a good book instead? It’s a tough habit to break and you need to be mindful the first few nights, but eventually, you can get to the point where you leave the phone by the bedroom door.

2. Try to Calm Your Mind

If you are looking for the answer for how to improve sleep quality, this is one of the first things you need to do in bed. If your mind is racing with the thoughts of the day, it is never going to be able to sleep. Therefore, you should try to calm it down.

Before bed meditation helps some and breathing exercises while counting down help others. Find out what works the best for you and try to do it every single night.

3. Get Comfortable On A Bed

If your mattress, pillow, or blankets are uncomfortable, make sure to get them replaced with comfortable models. It might be a bit expensive to have to buy a brand-new mattress or set of bedsheets, but if a comfortable bed helps you get some serious deep sleep in… then there’s no choice.

Get your bed to be a comfortable and warm environment, and you’ll fall and stay asleep much faster. Getting out of bed might be another problem, but we are going to get to that when we come to it.

4. Get Sunlight During the Day

It might seem a little counterintuitive that one of the ways to improve sleep is to get some more sunlight in your system. However, sunlight can warm your body up and create more serotonin, which is one of the hormones required for sleep. It’s also one of the things that confirm our day-night cycle as humans.

Make sure to get sunlight whenever you wake up and during the day as well. Even a brisk walk outside is enough. You can also buy certain lamps that mimic real light for the natural light for office.

5. Make Yourself Comfortable At Work

If you are comfortable at work, especially during the later hours, you can get tired much faster. One of the best ways to keep yourself comfortable is to use an ergonomic chair. Ergonomic chairs can be bought from an ergonomic chair store, and once you find the one that works for you, you can be more productive and comfortable at the same time!

The ergonomic chair is one of the items that boosts your productivity, not staying up all night and burning the midnight oil. If you want to know the answer to how does sleep affect productivity, the answer is that it does!

6. Exercise at Your Desk

Being lucky enough to have a standing desk means that you never have an excuse to not work out. If being on your feet for the majority of the day wasn’t enough to make you tired, then you should try to incorporate some exercises at your office standing desk.

Some good exercises at standing desk include squats, leg raises, curls, or even just walking in place. Some people have even begun attaching treadmills to their desks to get even more of a workout in.

The exercises can burn fat, build muscle, and also get you asleep faster to boot. That’s a good trifecta to have for an office desk!

7. Have a Wind Down Routine

We often have a wind-down routine at the home before bed, but you also need one for the office. Try to establish a routine that has you winding down and doing less and less mentally challenging tasks before you leave the office. If you can, do your best to make sure that you keep the feeling of being ‘wound down’ until bedtime!

Pros and Cons of Getting Good Sleep

Getting Good Sleep

• Improves mental focus
• Improves your attitude towards others
• Keeps you alert

• It can take a while to get into a good sleeping rhythm
• Having a consistent sleeping schedule can be hard depending on your situation

Taking Care Of Yourself

People become sleep deprived for several reasons, but with all of them, it is almost never worth it. Sleep deprivation and sleep debt can really start to mess with your mind and your physical health. If you can, do your best to get anywhere from 6-8 hours of sleep a night.

Your body should thank you for it, and so should everyone else who depends on you to be well rested and alert. Plus, no one likes feeling like a sleep deprived zombie the night after you stayed up!