Sleep experiment results

Some literature suggests that lack of sleep is a serious impediment to your daily performance. Recommendations including keeping a sleep journal where the total hours fallen short of an 8-hour night’s sleep is tracked. For instance, if you only obtain 6 hours of sleep, you would add 2 to the sleep debt total. Then, you simply try to ‘pay back’ the debt by getting extra sleep here and there.

I attempted to do this for one month and had terrible sleep. One challenge is that my heightened awareness of the sleep process and my anxiety over being in sleep debt made it difficult have a relaxing, enjoyable sleep. Another factor was that I was not tired enough to fall asleep when I finally eliminated my debt. As a result, I began thinking. Soon, I became so involved in my thoughts that I simply had to get up and capture the ideas.

Perhaps a little sleep debt is what is needed. The desire to fall asleep might be a good thing. I will try the experiment again, factoring in some degree of sleep debt.