GETTING BACK TO BASELINE
It’s true that some people need more rest than others, and the best way to determine how many zzz’s you need to function normally is with a sleep vacation, says Singh, in which you take a week to allow your body to sleep as long as it wants. Most of us don’t have that kind of luxury, but maybe you can find a day or two to set aside extra bed time.Then pay attention to how much you sleep when you don’t set an alarm. And listen up, weekend sleep warriors: You can’t undo the Monday-through-Friday damage simply by sleeping in on Saturdays and Sundays. “You certainly feel better after catching up on sleep, but people who go five days of short sleep [defined as less than seven hours per night] aren’t back to baseline for attention skills for at least four nights,” Veasey says. To fully recuperate, you need to get your body back on its natural schedule. Exactly how long this takes is unclear, Veasey says, because most studies have not lasted long enough. What’s known is that your feelings of well-being rebound before your cognitive performance—so pay closer attention to your focus and performance than whether you feel rested.
PROVEN SLEEP SOLUTIONS Ready to get out of zombieland? Here are three realistic strategies. 1. Pick a bedtime and stick to it—every night.
There’s a very clear linear relationship between a consistent bedtime and the amount of sleep you get, says Karla Gleichauf, senior data scientist at Fitbit. People whose bedtimes are consistent within 30 minutes per night get an average of 35 minutes more sleep per week than those whose bedtimes vary by two hours over a week.
2. Shift your body clock with strategically timed light.
If your body clock is mismatched to your work or life schedule, the best way to shift it is with light, which influences how your body secretes sleep hormones like melatonin, says Amy Bender, senior research scientist at Calgary Counselling Centre in Alberta. Someone who wants to become more of an early bird can dim overhead lights and shut off electronic devices at least an hour before bed and then seek bright light in the morning. To train yourself to stay up later, seek out sunshine or bright lights late in the day. The same principles can help you adjust to a new time zone.
3. Embrace the nap.
Falling asleep on the job was once considered a firing offense, but that attitude may be changing as businesses and sports teams adopt napping as a performance strategy. Consider skier Mikaela Shiffrin, who took a nap between ski runs on her way to an Olympic gold
medal in Pyeongchang. If you can swing it, using that post-lunch slump as a time to grab a few zzz’s could help you think better. A 2016 study enlisted nearly 3,000 adults age 65 and older to examine the relationship between napping and cognitive function. The results found that people who took a nap of an hour or so after lunch scored higher on cognitive tests than those who didn’t nap or who napped for 90 minutes or more. Even more interesting: Napping didn’t prevent people from sleeping at night.