Healthy Sleep Tips

Healthy sleep habits can make a big difference in your quality of life. Having healthy sleep habits is often referred to as having good “ sleep hygiene .”

Try to keep the following sleep practices on a consistent basis:

Stick to the same bedtime and wake up time, even on the weekends.

This helps to regulate your body's clock and could help you fall asleep and stay asleep for the night.

Practice a relaxing bedtime ritual.

A relaxing, routine activity right before bedtime conducted away from bright lights helps separate your sleep time from activities that can cause excitement, stress or anxiety which can make it more difficult to fall asleep, get sound and deep sleep or remain asleep.

Avoid naps , especially in the afternoon.

Power napping may help you get through the day, but if you find that you can't fall asleep at bedtime, eliminating even short catnaps may help.

Exercise daily.

Vigorous exercise is best, but even light exercise is better than no activity. Exercise at any time of day, but not at the expense of your sleep.

Evaluate your room.

Design your sleep environment to establish the conditions you need for sleep. Your bedroom should be cool  – between 20 and 24 degrees Celsius . Your bedroom should also be free from any noise that can disturb your sleep. Finally, your bedroom should be free from any light. Check your room for noises or other distractions. This includes a bed partner's sleep disruptions such as snoring. Consider using blackout curtains, eye shades, ear plugs, "white noise" machines, humidifiers, fans and other devices.

Sleep on a comfortable mattress and pillows.

Make sure your mattress is comfortable and supportive. The one you have been using for years may have exceeded its life expectancy – about 9 or 10 years for most good quality mattresses. Have comfortable pillows and make the room attractive and inviting for sleep but also free of allergens that might affect you and objects that might cause you to slip or fall if you have to get up during the night.

Use bright light to help manage your circadian rhythms .

Avoid bright light in the evening and expose yourself to sunlight in the morning. This will keep your circadian rhythms in check.

Avoid alcohol, cigarettes, and heavy meals in the evening.

Alcohol, cigarettes and caffeine can disrupt sleep. Eating big or spicy meals can cause discomfort from indigestion that can make it hard to sleep. It is good to finish eating at least 2-3 hours before bedtime.

Wind down. Your body needs time to shift into sleep mode, so spend the last hour before bed doing a calming activity such as reading.

For some people, using an electronic device such as a laptop can make it hard to fall asleep, because the particular type of light emanating from the screens of these devices is activating to the brain. If you have trouble sleeping, avoid electronics before bed or in the middle of the night.

If you can't sleep, go into another room and do something relaxing until you feel tired.

It is best to take work materials, computers and televisions out of the sleeping environment. Use your bed only for sleep and sex to strengthen the association between bed and sleep. If you associate a particular activity or item with anxiety about sleeping, omit it from your bedtime routine.

If you’re still having trouble sleeping, don’t hesitate to speak with your doctor or to  find a sleep professional . You may also benefit from recording your sleep in a Sleep Diary  to help you better evaluate common patterns or issues you may see with your sleep or sleeping habits. 

Who is smart? Me or my device?

Alaxander Graham Bell introduced primitive telephone to human kind.  Thomas alva edison introduced electricity to us.  Albert Einstein, Thomas Alva Edison, and many other scientists created many devices which made in roads and become part of human life.  I'm not calling this as inventions for different reasons, which we will deal with later.

With Microsoft first thought of Smart tablet, but Apple introduced to the market a product named iPad.  Smart devices include phones, pads, tablets, wearables (includes watches, glass, shoes, monitors etc) which have flooded the market, and many other devices are yet to come.

Interesting fact is Graham bell could not make calls to his mother and wife as both were deaf.  However, telephone has not only provided voice communication but also shrunk the distance.  Traditional phone evolved into mobile phones (several studies on with their health hazards, but not a point on discussion here), made great in roads into many individuals.  Although the communication capability improved, our ability to remember the telephone number, dates, events are slowly fading away.  Now a days seldom people write the phone number, instead say, "give me a missed call".

By our reliance on functions of remembers, we are avoiding to use a great feature of our brain, long term learning.  This is attributed to students as well.  Thankfully, in India, still these devices have not penetrated to primary schools (though some governments are trying to their best), so that writing, maths skills are still manual.

What is the objective?  By using these smart devices, do we compromise on our smartness?  Do you want your smart phone to alert you to say "Today is your _____ birthday"?  Our relationship is just a reminder?  Think about it.

Now, geo coordinate based services pop up as you travel.  This means, our ability to plan our travel is compromised?  Evaluate your self.

At the same time, devices like health monitors are great advances, useful to help diagnose and save lives.   Telemedicine, is such an advancement where medical services can be rendered virtually any location.  Appreciate such utilities.

Let me know your views.

Being consistent

My interaction with people brings in this question. What is the importance and how's of being consistent. There are two groups of people, those who start well, slack during the execution, and drop on the side of failure, others start slow and build their momentum, bring in consistent to finish their task.

What is consistency?

Consistency in life is to make a habit of achieving the activity within planned time most of the time.  Yes, not every time!!  Do you know if you succeed every time as planned, your brain lowers its ability to think rationally.  Also, failure is the stepping stone for sucess.  Life is full of learning from every experience, and being consistent is also an experience.  Being consistent, builds self-confidence, motivation, social recognition and respect.

How to be consistent in Life?

In order to be consistent in Life, keep two aspects in mind.  First of them being methods of execution i.e. planning an activity and learning from experience.  Second being, way of thinking.  Aim to be truthful, honest and reliable, not a perfectionist.

Routine is the mother of consistency and peace. Routine is good for you, it enhances your experience of life by anchoring you with life's essential mundane activities. It is not necessary to make all of your day a routine but at least some of it should consist of habitual rituals that calm, center and fulfill you.

Bring in flexibility in your life, adjusting with others at times, helps build relationship.  Try to be consistent, does not mean you will bend backwards.

Things to avoid

1. Do not demotivate yourself.  Believe in your abilities to perform the task.  Take step back and see big picture, benefits, do research (not immerse your complete time), to build confidence to do things.

2. Don't be in a hurry to do things.  Have you heard "Slow and steady win the race".  This childhood story holds good for every age.  Plan your execution, and build milestones.  Every milestone, check the progress, you get chance to correct the course of execution.

3. No single formula fits all.  Always have "Plan B".  

4. Procrastination, biggest enemy of being consistent.  Proceed as per your plan, plan only what you could do.  This means you understand yourself and what you could do.

Benefits of Walking - Human Systems Approach

Are you certified on ______________ ?

Now a days, getting certified to do a task(s) has become need.  Let us introspect into the process of certification.

• Obtain the syllabus
• Get the material which contains the syllabus (pay off!!)
• Read the material carefully
• Obtain past questions of the certifications (available in the market) (pay off!!)
• Join a class/course which guarantees pass (pay off!!)
• Schedule a date for the certification exam (pay off!!)
• Prepare day and night towards the exam
• Give the exam and wait for the result
• Hurray!! You are certified for the current version

Congratulations!! You are proud certified professional!  Basically you have completed the syllabus (hopefully) and not took shortcuts by reading previous question papers solved for you.  If you have done the later, there is no value addition created for your career.  Objective is to understand the concepts and apply your thoughts to generate new ideas or innovate.

Are you innovating???

• Next release is expected later this week!!

Oops!! Start the cycle again!