Sleep Schedules Aren’t For The Weak 😡 🫨
I’m not here to tell you when to sleep or wake up. I trust you, in that you can sleep and wake up at times that won’t cause major dysfunctions in your life. However, I will urge you to sleep and wake up at roughly the same time every day. Now hear me out, this isn’t an unreasonable demand, you want what's best for you and so do I. Without diving into all the science and research surrounding sleep schedules, let's just ask the simple questions and answer them ourselves. Why do we (college students) have inconsistent sleep schedules?
Now let’s be real with ourselves, I’ll start us off. We love using our phones, especially towards the end of the day when we don’t have anything else to do so we fill our time with scrolling on social media or watching something. Next, we have homework that we always do at the last minute. Sure the teacher assigned the homework 2 weeks ago but we would rather use our time doing anything but the assignment. Then when it's 9:00 PM and the assignment is due in 3 hours at midnight we begin stressing intensely as we scramble to finish the work in time. Lastly, we have social lives and friends/friend groups that keep us up late at night even though we may be better off sleeping. Now I’m not telling you to have no friends or life, I understand the late-night chats that go well past midnight, I’ve had plenty of those myself. What I will say is that everything needs to be in moderation or under control.You shouldn’t be going out to parties and coming back to your dorms at 2:30 AM and then talking for another 2 hours with your friends before ultimately falling asleep. This is bad for your body, brain, and mood apparently (according to research and studies which I promised not to bring up 😂).
We all know we should be sleeping 6 to 8 hours a night at our age however, we often tend to cut off some of our sleep hours for the things I talked about previously (phone, social life, homework). Now let me ask you a trick question, Is it easier to sleep less or scroll/socialize/procrastinate less? The obvious answer would be to sleep less but what about the long-term effects of sleeping less vs. doing bad habits less (scrolling/socializing/procrastinating)? Sleeping less and less as you age is fatal (it can kill you 🙂) however doing bad habits less and less as you age will ultimately help you win back control of your life and feel more fulfilled. The choice is yours, sleep less if you believe in YOLO 👍, but remember about the FOMO as well because you can only YOLO… if you’re alive 😂
Realistic, Actionable Advice 🎉:
Set a designated bedtime, I suggest midnight if you’re constantly sleeping after midnight.
Try not to have any assignments that are due at midnight, do them at least day before they are due. In general try not to stay up late working on any assignment, if your teacher gives you a week to do it, then spend 15-30 minutes daily during the daytime hours during the 1 week period, doing it so all your work doesn’t pile up and take away from your sleep.
Delete social media on your phone and keep them on your other devices such as your computer or tablet (maybe delete your most used apps on your phone if you can’t delete all social media).
Set a curfew for yourself or limit the number of days you go out/socialize with friends, maybe the weekends are days where you have no designated bedtime and on school nights you should be in bed by midnight so you can get 7 hours of sleep.
Try to not look at any screens in the hour before your designated bedtime, instead try reading a book of your choice until you get sleepy and want to fall asleep. This is my favorite method of getting ready for bed as it has helped me a lot.
Now on a darker philosophical note 🙈 :
Your past dictates your present, as your present does the same for your future.
Everything is intertwined, everything is connected.
If you were a fool in the past, life will give you a second chance called the present, however, if you continue down that path even in the present, you won’t live to see a future.
YOLO, you only live once…...
