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Feeling Grumpy? Get More Sleep
6 November 2018
Janie read The Simplest Way to Drastically Improve Your Life: More Sleep by Tim Herrera and appreciated the timely reminder of how important it is to make getting enough sleep a priority.
Tags: janie read, sleep
Last week as I perused The New York Times, The Simplest Way to Drastically Improve Your Life: Get More Sleep by Tim Herrera caught my attention. The article was a great reminder of how important it is to make getting enough sleep a priority. I know how important sleep is. (It’s been a frequent topic on the Allison Partners blog.) However, when life gets really busy, I sometimes sacrifice sleep to get things done. I realized that I’ve been doing that quite a bit over the past few weeks. This article was a good reminder that I’m not doing myself (or anyone else in my life) any favors by staying up too late.
Herrera shares many reasons that getting enough sleep is critical. Cognitive performance — particularly your visual attention and ability to form memories — deteriorates when you don’t get enough sleep; ability to learn new information is also impaired by sleep deprivation. But one of his other points really hit home with me. Herrera said, “You’re likely to be more cranky and react worse when presented with obstacles.” This got my attention because I’ve noticed that I’ve been grumpier recently, but I wasn’t sure why. I’ve found myself getting frustrated over things that normally wouldn’t bother me at all. I don’t know why I didn’t make the connection that it might have to do with my sleep. I’ve seen firsthand how not getting enough sleep affects my children. When my boys don’t get enough sleep, they are always grumpy the next day. Having Halloween fall on a Wednesday demonstrated this last week! Our normal routines were completely disrupted on Wednesday, so on Thursday, I focused on following our normal bedtime routines and making sure the boys went to bed on time.
This article reminded me that getting enough sleep is as important for me as it is for my children. I don’t want to be grumpy, so I am recommitted to making sure I get enough sleep each night. How do you make sleep a priority in your life?
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