The American Psychologists’ Association published in their journal called ‘Emotion’ that people who stay up late are not as happy as early risers.
More than 700 respondents, ranging from ages 17 to 79, were surveyed and asked about their emotional state, health, and preferred time of day.
Not surprising since all the framework people in the Western world subscribe to is built on a 9-5 (or 7-8 depending on where your work and volunteer!) skeleton of existence.
If you want to be less like Sean Parker who is a highly successful and mad insomniac and more like a tweeting Dolly Parton then here’s a list you might want to take heed of:
1.Compile your to-do list the at least the night before. It’s not because you’ll be chewing up work time that you need to do this the night before. It’s because you are more likely to absorb what you have written subconsciously while you sleep, and more importantly maybe, sleep better because you lie in the knowledge that you have everything organised for the next day. An old Greek proverb goes: “Wise man cooks before gets hungry”. You know what I mean.
2. Early risers more likely to sleep more. Because most of us aren’t in fact lucky enough to have the cushion of a salubrious bank account like Mr Parker, it’s likely that we still have to get up and go to work if we do in fact go to bed late.
Lack of sleep does affect your ability to concentrate, in turn your productivity. In fact it makes you stupid. Especially if your in the pub guzzling beers until closing time.
Psychologists recommend 8 hours of rest per night, but they’ve got it wrong too. The ideal sleeping pattern is a broken one, where it comprises of two or more sessions per 24hour period, aka siesta. However having too many siestas in will result in the meltdown of your economy like Spain and Greece.
3. You Snooze, You Lose. Setting a precedent of procrastination is dangerous, I should know. If your alarm rings at 6am, get up you lazy bastard. If you want to slide into the never ending pit of turning up to the office thinking of excuses for your own sloth, then by all means stay in bed for another 7 minutes, ok another 7 and so on and….
4. Leave a glass of water by your bed. Shock your organs into waking up by slamming them with half a litre of water when you wake up. It will help you wake up even more. Water is life. If you’re not going to exercise in the morning, this is the least you could do.
