My son was reading a book about the human body recently, and one fact that stood out to him is that we spend approximately 22 years of our lives sleeping.
Using time wisely has been playing on my mind a lot and this fact really caught my attention.
I had a thought that if I had just 1 hour less sleep each day, I’d be adding a whopping 15 days each year to my “awake life”. That’s a lot!
And if I can manage this over the next 24 years, I’ll have a whole year more of waking time in which to change the world. Cool, huh?
Now, if you’ve been around these parts for any length of time you’ll know that I wholeheartedly promote sleep as one of the most important health care and self care pieces missing from many women’s puzzles. So I’m absolutely not advocating docking your sleep in favour of doing more stuff, but – and this is a big but – if you can manage an hour less sleep a night… why not?
Can’t quite manage an hour less?
Why not just start with half an hour or even 15 minutes. 15 minutes less sleep each night will get you an extra 4 ‘awake’ days a year. Not insignificant.
But the key is to be doing some important. If you’re going to be cutting sleep, you need to be adding something worthwhile in its place… otherwise just choose the sleep!
Now over to you: is there a project you’ve been wanting to sink your teeth into for a while? Do you find yourself saying “If only I had more hours in the day?” Want to take on that volunteer role you didn’t think you had time for? Want to cook more, practice your instrument more, write more, sew more, run more? Read that book, learn that new thing, master that skill?
Can you afford a bit less sleep each night? Maybe that’s the answer.
