Episode 003

TRANSCRIPT

Cue is restful ambient sleepy-time music …

Welcome to Plan for Wonder, I’m Crystal the talking head, founder, and creator of myLife Planners. The Canadian version is found at mylifeplanners.ca

I want to talk about sleep.

WTF: Waking up early.

I want to address the loud elephant in our room put there by trending influencers claiming that the 5 AM club is where the cool kids hang out.

To start off, I think someone lost the memo on the value of a solid night's sleep, which requires a minimum of 7 solid hours. So that means if you are waking up at 5 AM, you must be counting sheep by 10 PM the night before. So maybe that schedule works for them, but life isn’t the same for everyone.

One of the symptoms of adding years to my life experience is questioning everything I was influenced by from my earlier years.

I’ve been there, done that. In the early parenting years, the early mornings were my only option to get some quiet time to myself. Bedtime was a struggle for about ten years between the two of my kids. So by the time they were finally out, I was barely awake.

Those were different times, and I honestly understand each season has unique needs. We all find ourselves in cycles of survival at points.

‎Science Vs: Sleep: How Do We Get More? on Apple Podcasts

I don’t have the research at my fingertips, but I have listened to and bookmarked the podcast Science vs. and one of their episodes on the science behind sleep. Links to this can be found on the show notes at mylifeplanners.ca/podcast under Prioritize Sleep. What is also great, they offer a full transcript if you prefer to quickly read through the highlights.

But I don’t want to send you away yet, so the insights I garnered are:

• 7 - 9 hours required, or we aren’t at our best.

• Without enough sleep, science has shown our reaction times are slower. In fact, lack of sleep has worse reaction times than being drunk from alcohol.

• Anything less than 7 hours of sleep impacts your health by reducing your immunity capacity by 75%. Something about how specific fighter cells are produced during sleep.

• In the long term, a lack of sleep can increase your risk of dementia.

• You are more likely to feel more pain.

• You are less likely to find jokes funny.

• There are parts of our brains that are only active when we sleep. They are the centres of our minds that process our waking experiences and make connections. So imagine you are struggling with a challenge or issue, your time asleep is when your brain works to help you work things out.

Even I have learned from watching movies, and television shows torturing a human can be as simple as not letting them sleep. Think about it. Any advice encouraging one to choose productive use over getting a couple of extra hours of sleep is torturing you, and you are coming to it voluntarily!

So if your best opportunity for uninterrupted time is between 4 and 6 am, don’t let me tell you any different. But please ensure that you are either heading to bed before 9:00 pm or have an opportunity for daily naps.

Or let’s be even more real, consider what you do have the capacity for, and don’t overcommit to more than that.

I think what the real question should be, not what hours in a day can you tuck away for some personal time, the better questions should be, how much capacity do you have each day?

Work with what you have and where you are.

I get it; time is sacred. So making the most of what we have is important. But like many views, the 5 AM club can be more detrimental to your ability to human during the day than anything you might get ahead of on.

After diving into this topic and the last episodes on planning for rest, I will be developing a unique worksheet that can help you work out planning for rest and prioritizing sleep while also being proactive and productive. So visit mylifeplanners.ca and sign up for the newsletter. Not only will you get a free download trial of both the weekly and daily myLife systems, but you will also get notified when I have tools like this to share.

Thank you so much for being here.

The space you take up in the world matters, not just to me, but even more importantly, if you need reminding, you matter the most in your own life.