A good night sleep is the path to improving productivity.

Let’s Talk About Sleep

It may sound weird, but the best way to improve your productivity is to getting a good night sleep.

I’ve gained perspective and experience through all life stages between my 20s to my 50s. Rushing to get work done and only coming out of it with an even longer list of work to push through. It’s never-ending, and I wasn’t much fun to be around.

So, it’s annoying to hear the message influencers are pushing that you can sleep when you are dead. Nope, you can’t! You’re dead!

Beware of those who preach to wake up by 5:00 AM because all the cool kids hang out there. Well, let me tell you, those ‘cool kids’ are likely in the middle of a vicious burnout cycle.

Science has proven that a good night’s sleep requires a minimum of 7 hours.

The adverse effects of a lack of sleep include:

• Reduced reaction times, even worse than the effects of alcohol.
• Reduces your immunity by 75%.
• Increases your risk of dementia.
• Makes your sense of pain more intense.
• And the worst is it makes you less fun to be around because you’re less likely to find jokes funny.

Stop torturing yourself!

I’m not the only one who has learned from watching movies, and television shows that torturing a human is as simple as not letting them sleep. So anyone who is pushing the ‘sleep when you are dead narrative’ is actually torturing you.

Don’t do that to yourself! You are a divine being who is here to experience the world. And you can’t do an excellent job if your health and wellness are limited to getting in a couple of hours of extra work.

Create your best life.

Doing your best in life can be measured by your productivity or better measured by the quality of what you create and how you make others around you feel.

If your life situation’s only quiet space to work on your best dreams is at 5:00 AM, I’m not saying stop. But make sure you are tucked into bed and snoring away sometime between 9:00 PM and 10:00 PM the night before

If your to-do list looks like it will never end, consider being more honest about your capacity and stop over-committing.

Instead of trying to tuck some hours away for personal time ask yourself how much capacity do you have each day to give?

The myLife tool you didn’t realize you needed.

You need to find ‘space’ to flush out everything on your plate and in your head. So you can filter out the make-work stuff from the stuff that improves your life. You can try out the myWeek tool today for FREE! Download a PDF from mylifeplanners.ca when you sign up for my newsletter.

I’d suggest trying it out near the end of your work day or sometime between Friday and Sunday before the weekly demands add up and can distract you.

All you need is the pages, a pencil, and a block of time, anywhere from 10 minutes to more if you have it. Let your thoughts rage on the page, and use the structure to visually see what you have to get down alongside the amount of time you have in a day.

I promise you will bring more CLARITY into your planning and be more INTENTIONAL with your time and energy.

If you would like to listen to me chat more on the topic, check out my Plan for Wonder podcast, available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts or right on my website at mylifeplanners.ca/podcast

Content provided by Women Belong member Crystal Reynolds