How-to Guide
Optimizing Sleep
Introduction
About 50% of adults in the US report unsatisfactory sleep. This guide will discuss ways to optimize sleep and increase sleep satisfaction and next-day functioning.
Principles
There are five main categories for sleep optimization:
- Time in Bed: Aim for ample bed time to achieve full sleep cycle. Example: For 7.5 hours sleep, be in bed longer than 6 hours.
- Consistent Bedtime: Stick to similar bedtime daily; regularity in sleep timing enhances sleep quality.
- Daytime Exposures: Daytime activity and light exposure affect sleep quality; stay active and seek natural light.
- Pre-bed Routines: Engage in activities that relax both body and mind before sleep.
- Sleep Setting: Create a sleep-friendly environment—control light, temperature, sound, and comfort.
Time In Bed
Give yourself enough time in bed to get all the sleep you need.
- Tracking: Setting a goal and monitoring how you're doing can help you stay on track with getting the sleep you want to get.
- Sleep Period: Refers to the time you spend in bed actually trying to sleep. So, for example, John reports that he went to bed last night at midnight and woke up at 8a and therefore he reports he got 8 hours of sleep. That’s not actually sleep time, that’s sleep period.
- Sleep Time is the actual amount of time one sleeps during their sleep period. Actual sleep time is reported by various sleep monitoring technologies (including clinical sleep studies and even consumer sleep trackers). John might report that he got 8 hours of sleep but his sleep tracker tells him he slept 6 hrs and 42 minutes. In actuality, it took 12 minutes to fall asleep and he had 85% sleep efficiency (which is normal sleep efficiency).
Key Points
When you hear that humans need 7-9 hours of sleep per night an expert organization like the National Sleep Foundation, just note that they are reporting these numbers based on how people report sleep, not off on clinical sleep time calculations. So when we talk about how much sleep people need, what we are really referring to is time in bed - not necessarily time spent asleep. And for most of us, that number is indeed going to be somewhere between seven and nine hours per night, in order to get the sleep we need.
Recommended Sleep Period Times by Age Range from the National Sleep Foundation
Age Group | Sleep Duration | Previous Recommendation |
Newborns (0-3 months) | 14-17 hours each day | 12-18 |
Infants (4-11 months) | 12-15 hours | 14-15 |
Toddlers (1-2 years) | 11-14 hours | 12-14 |
Preschoolers (3-5) | 10-13 hours | 11-13 |
School-age children (6-13) | 9-11 hours | 10-11 |
Teenagers (14-17) | 8-10 hours | 8.5-9.5 |
Younger adults (18-25) | 7-9 hours | New age category |
Adults (26-64) | 7-9 hours | - |
Older adults (65+) | 7-8 hours | New age category |
Bedtime
Bedtime Goal: These days our sleep patterns are in competitive warfare with appealing entertainment options that want our attention. Autoplay is yet another episode on Netflix, anyone? If you don’t have a bedtime goal, it’s easier to say yes to temptations that rob you of some sleep each night. Over a week, it can add up.
What gets measured gets managed. Peter Drucker, winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom
Daytime Factors
Daytime Light
Get at least 10 minutes of outdoor light within the first three hours of waking. Aim for at least 30 minutes of outdoor light each and every day. See uor How-to Guide on Smart Daily Light for more information.
Physical Activity
Physical activity can help you get better sleep. Follow our physical activity recommendations from our course How Much Physical Activity Do We Need - which are approximately based on the US government guidelines for physical activity. Plan to get at least 30 minutes of physical activity per day. This includes anything from going for a walk to activities that are more intense.
Note that exercising a lot more than what is typical for you can worsen sleep, so be sensible about how much activity you plan on getting on a given day.
Aim to finish strenuous exercise at least three hours before bedtime. High-intensity exercise – such as interval training, sprinting, and resistance training – results in many short-lived changes in our bodies that can disrupt sleep.
Mental Work
Tasks that require concentration actually help your sleep and brain health in general. Note that some of these challenging mental activities can be relaxing too, such as meditation.
Naps can be healthy and helpful, just use them judiciously. When you nap, the concentrations of sleep-promoting chemicals in your brain decline. This may make it harder to fall asleep and reduce the depth of your overnight sleep. For naps, consider these tips:
- Timing: The most common time for naps occurs between the hours of 2-4 pm in the afternoon. In this window, there is a natural decline in wake drive (i.e., wakefulness neurotransmitter in the brain). After this window, wake drive picks back up in its activity, which is often why it’s hard to nap if you miss this afternoon window.
- Power Naps are about 20 minutes in length. They allow enough time to nod off in that window but prevent sleeping long enough to get into deeper stages of sleep. Short naps can be remarkably restorative, improving elements of cognition for the remainder of the day.
- Longer Naps: Longer naps have their place but there are some reasons to avoid them. A good long nap can be a great way to reduce excess sleep pressure if you haven’t been getting enough sleep. The two main risks for longer daytime naps is 1) you wake up in a deeper stage of sleep from your nap and then feel groggy for the rest of the day, and 2) you sleep long enough to reduce sleep pressure enough that it harder for you to fall and stay asleep at night. But a good long nap after a period of sleep lose can be just what the doctor ordered!
Pre-Bed Routine
Strategies on to prepare for the best sleep possible.
Modify Evening Light
Exposure to intense (enough), full-spectrum white light in the hours before bedtime increases alertness and delays sleep. Starting two hours before your goal bedtime, mitigate the negative consequences of artificial light on sleep by:
- Dimming light intensity
- Filtering blue light entering your eyes
Bedtime Alarm
Set a smartphone alarm for 60 minutes before your target bedtime. Have this alarm automatically repeat every night. Do this so you can give yourself a warming to start winding down your activities and also to start your pre-bed routine.
Set your alarm for 9:00 PM if you plan to go to bed at 10 PM.
Get into Sleep Mode
In our hyper-connected, 24/7 societies, we need the discipline to unwind at the end of the day, and this is made easier by ingraining a smart pre-bedtime routine.
- Avoid stressful activities in two hours before bedtime. Different people find different things stressful, so we can’t be too specific on what you must avoid. Examples of activities many people find stressful include being with certain people, having difficult conversations, reading the news, checking work emails, checking financial portfolios, and watching unnerving TV programs (such as horror films).
- Make a To-Do List. Spending five minutes writing a to-do list for the next few days helps some people calm their minds and fall asleep faster. Do this within an hour of bedtime.
- Last 30 Minutes Before Sleep: Do something relaxing. Read a novel in dim lighting, meditate. or even try some deep breathing to help you unwind.
Try a body scan meditation, such as one of these:
- Hot showers or baths (10 mins at 105 °F (40 °C)) within an hour before bedtime. This will increase the temperature of your skin. Doing so helps your body radiate heat out from its core, which is key to falling asleep quickly.
- Red in Bed: For light in bed before sleep, use the mnemonic ‘red in bed’. Red and amber-toned light enables you to see fine but it doesn’t tell your circadian system that it is daytime (which keeps you awake by masking your sleepiness).
Sleep Environment
Sleep in darkness, while in a cool, quiet, and comfortable room.
Darkness
Sleep in the darkest room you can create for yourself.
- Eliminate Artificial Lights: Remove unnecessary sources of artificial light from your bedroom during sleep. Focus especially on eliminating sources of white and blue light. Use light blocking stickers to block light sources from electronics.
- Block Outside Light:
- Blackout blinds are a straightforward way to do this.
- Alternatively, use an eye mask during sleep.
Temperature
Ambient temperatures that are too high or low intefere with sleep.
- Cool Bedroom. Raise your skin temperature before bed, but keep your bedroom cool. This help your body lose heat energy to the environment. If your bedroom is too warm, use a fan aimed at your torso. The fan will also drown out noises that could disrupt your sleep.
- Warm Feet: Keeping the skin of your extremities warm is important to losing heat from your core. Wearing socks to bed in a cool room, or putting an extra blanket at your feet, can help you both fall asleep faster and sleep a little longer (this only works in a cool room not a hot room).
Warm feet, quick to sleep.
Sound
Noise pollution at night can disturb sleep.
- Earplugs: They are useful to suppress any form of noise that could disturb your sleep( e.g., garbage trucks, a loud bed partner, a dog scratching by the foot of the bed).
- White Noise: A white noise machine or fan are practical ways to minimize the likelihood of unexpected sounds disrupting your sleep.
- Pink Noise: Pink noise is like white noise but balanced across the frequency spectrum. Sleeping with pink noise in the background has been shown to augment memory consolidation in both younger and older populations.
Mattress
This link from Consumer Reports for more information on finding the right mattress according to your needs and interests.
Bedding
Sheets should allow for effective thermoregulation and moisture control. They should also feel comfortable based on the time of year.
- Winter / colder: Warmer flannel sheets may be preferable.
- Summer / warmer: Find sheets that allow adequate thermoregulation and moisture wicking to keep your dryer if you sweat.
- Ground or Earthing Sheets: Grounding is the process of transferring the discharge of the electrical energy directly to the Earth with a low-resistance wire. There is some (but limited) evidence that grounding sheets or mats can help athletes recover faster from intense exercise.
- Use as little light as possible when using the bathroom. Light promotes alertness and can shift the timing of your body’s clock.
- Try a meditation. If you wake up and can’t go back to sleep, try a meditation while lying in bed. Learn a simple meditation that you can eventually do without audio guidance (such as one of these: 1, 2, 3).
- If you struggle to get back to sleep, get out of bed. If you wake up and don’t fall asleep again within half an hour, get out of bed and do something relaxing, such as gentle stretching or a seated meditation. Don’t turn look at electronic devices at this time but you can listen to audio. Your clock system is most sensitive to light at this time!
Related Resources
How-to Guides
Courses
Temperature Regulation
Trackers
Sound
- White noise machine (travel sized)
Supplements
- Qualia Night
- Tro Zzz
- Tryptophan
- Magtein (Magnesium L-Threonate)
- Glycine
- Melatonin (low dose, time released)
- Hydrogen Water
- Lemon balm
- Phosphatidylserine
How to Optimize Light for Health - TEDx
Podcasts
- humanOS Radio Podcast - The official podcast of the Sleep Research Society
- Collective Insight Podcast - Dan Pardi on sleep regulation mechanisms
Blogs
- A lazy way to improve your health and Performance sleep extension
- Sleep longer feel better practical ways to get more sleep sleep extension
- How to fall asleep faster: Warm feet quick to sleep
- Meditation and sleep: Towards a productive way to spend restless nights
- Writing a To-Do list might help you fall asleep faster
Book Recommendations
- Why We Sleep by Professor Matt Walker