One of the simplest ways to increase the amount of happiness you feel is to get more high-quality sleep. Today, I'll be sharing the science showing why you should give up some of that precious evening time and hit the pillow a little earlier each night.
The research on sleep and mood
If you're human, you've experienced first-hand the crappy days that can result after a poor night's sleep; you're grumpy, spacy, forgetful, annoyed or some combination. Science strongly confirms your experience and shows how sleep deprivation affects mood. For example:
A study from the University of Pennsylvania showed a marked increase in anger, stress, sadness and mental exhaustion in a group that got less than 4.5 hours of sleep a night for a week. There was a dramatic improvement in mood when they resumed a normal sleep schedule.
A large study by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman showed that:
Increases in sleep quality is associated with very large increases in reported enjoyment in daily activities. A poor night sleep was one of two factors that most upset daily mood at work. (the other, by the way, was tight deadlines) Functional brain studies showed that those who are even moderately sleep deprived are 60% more reactive to negative emotional stimuli. "It's as if the brain is reverting to more primitive behaviors in terms of [the amount of] control they normally have over their emotions" says Richard Walker, the UC Berkeley researcher who headed up the study.
A study out of the University of Michigan showed that an additional hour of sleep had more effect on happiness than a $60,000 raise!
Are you sleep-deprived?
Our go-go-go culture is one where we tend to stay busy and stimulated for hour after hour. It is really easy to adapt to having too little sleep; we just get accustomed to those feelings of tiredness and it becomes our new normal.
But there are some clear indicators when you need more sleep. Ask yourself these questions:
Do you sleep less than 6 hours per night? Do you need an alarm clock to consistently wake up on time? Do you often find yourself 'nodding off' during boring meetings, while watching TV or anytime you are in a quiet space? Do you fall asleep within 5 minutes of going to bed?
If you answered yes to any of these questions, you are not getting enough quality sleep.
If that's true, what can you do? Set yourself a bedtime
Kids need lots of sleep, so they get a bedtime. But do you do the same for yourself? Waiting until you feel tired makes it easy to get carried away by those shiny distractions - reading one more chapter, watching one more show, sending one last email or finishing one last quest/mission (you know who you are... ).
We manage what we measure. Locking in a bedtime will help you keep that commitment. And if you stay up later, those feelings of being up 'past your bedtime' can often encourage you to get horizontal sooner than otherwise.
This news article is brought to you by HAPPINESS - where latest news are our top priority.
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