Sheena a MBA student, studies at a premier institute along with working as a part-time intern in a multinational company. Post work, she spends all her time studying, completing assignments to maintain good grades.
As the year moves on, Sheena starts to feel the pressure. She falls behind her assignment submissions, struggles to learn new concepts, and feels tired most of the time. With the intention to stay on top of things, she spends more time studying. Feeling pressurized, she keeps awake at night to complete her work and study. During the little time left with her, she is mostly tired and doesn’t feel like going out with friends. At night when she tries to sleep, she finds herself lying awake and worrying about all that she must do.
All this results in Sheena feeling increasingly overwhelmed and missing an important deadline. Her teacher notices the change in her and suggests focusing on her sleeping pattern along with other things to help her improve her mood and overall productivity.
Most of the times, many people choose to prioritize work or academic commitment over getting adequate sleep. But when we try to boost productivity by expanding our waking hours, we aren’t doing anyone any favors. Rather, we are less productive, less insightful as sleep deprivation impairs attention, concentration, working memory, long-term memory, reasoning, and decision. We are also more likely to get sick because chronic sleep deprivation leads to serious conditions like obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart diseases. You can relate to it if you have a few nights of less sleep, it leaves us physically drained and mentally foggy.
We undervalue sleep, yet it is fundamental to our present and future performance.
If you struggle to sleep, here are a few simple & practical strategies for getting a more restful sleep:
- Sleep-wake routine: waking up at the same time every morning helps your body get into the sleep-wake routine. While making a routine, ensure that you get at least 7 hours of sleep.
- Exercise: a daily walk, running or any form of exercise can improve the quality of your sleep. Exercise is energising and therefore should not be done too late in the evenings.
- Eat light: eating light meal for dinner will help you get better sleep. Big and heavy meals at night generally lead to heartburn and make you feel too full to sleep.
- Relaxing: relaxation techniques like meditation can calm an overexcited or stressed mind and help you fall asleep. While on the bed you can also try to tighten and then relax the muscles from your head to your feet, this will help you release tension from the body and sleep well.
Remember, sleep is vital to our well-being and forms the foundation of our resilience toolkit.