Sleep is the Key, Reignite Your Willpower, and Try a Checklist
Hi Folks! Connor and Nick here from Healthy Living With Nick and Connor. Thanks again for being on our email list, it means a lot, and we are excited to share our weekly email with you. We hope you enjoy it! Here is what we hope you take away from this one:
We are all in the same boat, willpower can be hard, and when you are tired or stressed, it is even harder. Start working out your willpower muscle to up your willpower game.
The key to a healthy and happy life may be a little less exciting than you were hoping, but a lot easier. Get 7-9 hours of sleep a night, and try to maintain a consistent sleep schedule. Boom.
Find areas in your personal life or work life where you can start instituting checklists. Having a checklist will ensure that you don’t make silly mistakes, and you can save your mental energy for other tasks. Life is complex, so keep them simple, keep them short.
Starter Mindset Tip: Our Good Friend Willpower
Let’s start with the most helpful information about willpower: we all struggle with it, you are not alone, you are not weak, and our busy lives do a great job at draining whatever supply of it that we do actually have. BUT, if you have fallen out of the habit of using willpower, there is hope, you can train it like a muscle to start building your willpower back up again. The thing about willpower is that if you are tired, or stressed, or distracted, then willpower is a very hard thing to rely on. Unfortunately, in our busy world, we are often tired, stressed, and distracted, so how do you combat this? You start taking advantage of how intuitive our willpower system is. You make sure to practice using it when your body is primed to, and that starts in the morning. Self-control and willpower are highest in the morning. Try to spend a little time every morning on a goal, something that you have been wanting to do but just haven’t got around to it. After that, start adding in small willpower workouts throughout your day such as: focusing on your breathing at certain points in the day, being aware of your posture, writing down what you spend your money on in the day, whatever you like, get creative. What you choose does not matter. What is important here is that you start using your willpower ‘muscle’ again. We want to get you in the habit of noticing what you are about to do, and choosing the more difficult thing instead of the easiest. Your brain will get used to this pause before you make a decision, and you will be able to apply it in all areas of your life (McGonigal, 67). So, start small, make sure to try this in the morning, notice yourself thinking more before you make decisions, work out that ever important willpower muscle. Willpower workouts may just be the most effective thing you can do to start implementing changes to your daily life, so get after it.
Health Recipe: Consistent Sleep Schedule
Timing: Extra sleep during the week, less sleep in on weekends
Level of Difficulty: Easy - Hard depending on your lifestyle
Serving Size: As often as you can for maximum benefit
Spice Level: Nice and mild and energizing once you get in the habit of it
INGREDIENTS
Just yourself, your bedtime alarm, your wake up alarm, and that comfy bed of yours.
REASONING AND BENEFITS
Seven to nine hours of sleep every night people, that is the key to a happy healthy life. On top of that, if you can keep your sleep times and wake times consistent, you will be well on your way to sleep mastery. Depending on your lifestyle, this may seem like the hardest thing to do in the world, or the easiest. No matter what group you fall under, this is a recipe that you should really focus on when you are trying to maximize your sleep game. Do you change your whole sleep schedule on weekends to try and catch up on sleep you missed through the week? We have two recommendations here: (1) Try to go to bed earlier throughout the week at consistent times to give yourself more hours of sleep. (2) Don’t sleep in as long on weekends. Try to wake up around the same time that you do throughout the week to keep your body in a consistent wake/sleep rhythm so that the Monday morning wake up isn’t as hard. We all love a good sleep in, and I’m sure you are already rolling your eyes and cursing us for trying to take away your sweet extra hours of sleep on weekends. Just hear us out, if you are serious about amping up your sleep game, this is a recipe to really take seriously during this process. We ask you for this: go to bed and wake up at the same time every day for a couple weeks and see how you feel, see how easy it is to go to bed, and see how you feel when you wake up in the morning. We aren’t telling you to shut your life down, just see how it feels after a couple weeks, be aware of the benefits, and make consistent sleep times the majority, not the minority. And oh ya, make sure that the times you choose allow for 7-9 hours of sleep.
INSTRUCTIONS
Set an alarm clock for your wake up time, AND your bedtime. The annoying alarm clock beeping is just as important at night as it is in the morning.
Make sure your timing allows you to get somewhere between 7 - 9 hours of sleep
Do this for one week straight to feel the benefits, longer if you can. After that, keep it consistent as often as you can. Think twice about staying up late two nights in a row.
When you inevitably enjoy a later night out with friends or family, instead of leaning into that big sleep the next day, wake up just a little beyond your normal sleep time, and catch up the next night by going to sleep a little early.
Don’t make this a hard line in your life. After you try this for a week or longer, allow yourself to enjoy your late nights every once in a while, just try to avoid making that your norm. Remember how good you feel on consistent sleeps, and make that your norm.
PRO TIP: If you enjoy TV at night, It is so easy to let those episodes on Netflix keep rolling beyond when you want to go to bed. Before you sit down to watch a show, have a set time when you are going to turn it off to start your bedtime routine.
* You can make your night time alarm clock for when you want to go to bed, or set it 10-30 minutes before your bed time to allow yourself to wind down and get your mind ready for sleep.
** We know it sounds crazy to skip your weekend sleep in if you enjoy that. Just hear us out and give it a shot. If you find you really need it, then it is probably because you didn’t get enough sleep during the week. Try and fix that first.
*** Our bodies like consistency, our internal clocks like consistency, we operate more efficiently, our bodies don’t have to try and figure out what is going on. Do this for your body, stop confusing it.
Dessert Quote:
“The fear people have about the idea of adherence to protocol is rigidity. They imagine mindless automatons, heads down in a checklist, incapable of looking out their windshield and coping with the real world in front of them. But what you find, when a checklist is well made, is exactly the opposite. The checklist gets the dumb stuff out of the way, the routines your brain shouldn’t have to occupy itself with… Against the complexity of the world, we must. There is no other choice. When we look closely, we recognize the same balls being dropped over and over, even by those of great ability and determination. We know the patterns. We see the costs. It’s time to try something else. Try a checklist.” - Atul Gawunde, “The Checklist Manifesto,” 177-184
Now we want to hear from YOU! Please let us know what you think of today’s newsletter, and send us an example of how you applied the health recipe to your life! We would love to share how you introduced this week’s recipe into your life’s unique menu. Thanks and have a great Sunday!
Sources:
Learn more about willpower:
McGonigal, K. (2013). The willpower instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It. Penguin.
Learn more about the importance of sleep:
Walker, M. (2017). Why we sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. Simon and Schuster.
Learn more about the power of the checklist:
Gawande, A. (2010). The Checklist manifesto: How to Get Things Right. Picador USA.
