Welcome to the ninth day of the 30 days writing challenge of this year. You can find a list of all the articles I wrote at the end of each article. Please have a look at the end of it to understand how can you participate in this one.

Getting A Good, Relaxing Sleep?

Well, yeah. Absolutely. We are wired in such a way that approximately one third of our lives is spent sleeping. I would very much prefer not to have to do it, and be as awake as possible, 100% of the time, but that's the package I got and I highly doubt I could change it now, especially after I started to use it, if you know what I mean. On top of that, recent studies shows that sleep is playing an important role in forming our general image about the world and integrating all the cognitive weight we get while we're awake. Dreams and dreaming are important activities which help a lot in putting all the puzzle pieces together, while our main cognitive faculties are taking a rest.

From this point of view, it's obvious that we really need to have a good, relaxing sleep, not only to avoid the crankiness in the morning, but also to make sure we're actually make sense of the world.

What follows is a very short list of best practice to help you improve your sleep patterns.

1. Keep A Consistent Sleeping Routine (Including Weekends)

If you wake up at a certain hour during weekdays, but linger in bed during weekends, try to avoid that. This pattern will put some extra adaptation effort during the first couple of days of the week, and that will result in a continuous, recurrent pattern of bad sleep. Instead of "gaining some more sleep" during weekends, try to implement one of the following best practices to increase your sleep time altogether.

2. No Blue Light 1 Hour Before Going To Bed

The so called "blue"light, the one generated by electronic devices, is one that comes with a relatively high cost on your eyes and brains. While it helps you staying awake, it has a lingering effect, meaning it will help you stay awake for longer than you really want. So, in order to make sure you're not overloading your system with unnecessary sensory information, try to avoid screen time with at least one hour before going to bed.

3. Adjust Your Wake Up Hour Incrementally

If you want to make changes to your wake up time, saying you want to go from 8 AM to 6 AM, becoming that fancy hipster who gets a lot of stuff done in the morning, start by making very small adjustments. 5 minutes every 2-3 days will do wonders, until your body realizes what is going on. You may think the adjustment period can be drastically shortened by "stealing" half an hour in a single try, but it doesn't work like this. Your sleep patterns are running on the "other" system (the one called "subconscious") so you need to play nice with them.

4. Try To Have Some Before Midnight

There is this popular saying that the sleep you get before midnight is the most "effective" one and I have to agree with it. The quality of the sleep you get during those 2 hours (if you are able to fall asleep at 10 PM, that is) is far better than whatever you get in the morning hours. So it pays big time to cut some activities that may go later in the night in exchange of a 2 hours sleep chunk that will make you a much more productive and balanced person the next day.

So, this was my (very short) list of best practices for getting a good, relaxing sleep.

How Do I Participate In This Challenge?

The criteria for @challenge30days account to vote your post are:

• post must be at least 300 words long
• post must be original
• post must be on best practices
• post must use the #challenge30days tag

Previous Posts In The Challenge

• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Keeping A Successful 30 Days Challenge
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Selecting Relevant Crypto Projects (Day Two)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Surviving In The STEEM Universe (Day Three)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Working Remote (Day Four)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Working From Coffee Shops (Day Five)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Learning A New Language (Day Six)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Choosing A Crypto Exchange (Day Seven)
• January 2019 Challenge 30 Days - Best Practices For Running (Day Eight)

Steem on!

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I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.

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