“So get critical tasks out of the way first,” Buxton says. Best take advantage of it, because it’s a very small window for the sleep-deprived brain, opening about one hour after waking and closing two hours later. Because, unfortunately, this is it it’s the most alert you’ll be all day.
“That’s the path for despair,” Buxton said. “You want the light effects, which are the alerting effects.” If that’s not going to happen, though, and you live and work in New York City, your morning walk to the train will suffice.ĩ a.m.: Get your toughest tasks done first. You will want to procrastinate your creative work in favor of your busy work, telling yourself that you’ll get to the thinky stuff after you’ve had some time to wake up. “The evidence is mixed, but there are theoretical reasons that you should exercise earlier in the morning, especially if you’re going to be outside doing a run,” she said. jog, says Lauren Hale, a sleep researcher at Stony Brook University and a spokesperson for the National Sleep Foundation. “If you wear your sunglasses, the right frequency of sunlight can’t get into your eyes,” which means you don’t get as much of the cognitive boost as you could, Drummond said. So within the first hour or so of waking up, get outside and get some natural light, if you can.Īnd you get bonus points for an a.m. “It’ll boost alertness, it’ll up your body temperature, it’ll reset your circadian rhythms.” But don’t wear sunglasses. “First thing in the morning is one of the most important times,” he said. Surrounding yourself with as much bright light, especially natural light, as possible will help you feel more alert, explains Sean Drummond, a psychiatrist at the Laboratory of Sleep and Behavioral Neuroscience at University of California, San Diego. caffeine routine, if you’d like to borrow it, is a small espresso.Ĩ a.m.: Get outside. That coffee will be much more helpful midday.” His own personal early a.m. “There’s the least reason to have coffee then. “After that sleep inertia phase, there’ll be a rebound period of alertness,” Buxton said. You’ll be feeling very groggy just after waking up - this is something researchers call sleep inertia - but after 20 or 30 minutes, the fog will clear a bit. (For reference: One eight-ounce cup of regular coffee has about 100 milligrams of caffeine.) Use it wisely. Experts recommend no more than 400 milligrams of caffeine a day. It’s exactly like the snooze button,” Buxton said.Īlso: Have (a little) caffeine. “The junk will help, but only for about 20 minutes. Stick to whole grains, protein, maybe a little fruit. “Anything that causes that sugar spike and insulin spike is followed by a crash, so it’s going to make you more sleepy later,” he said. Like with your snooze button, you’re going to have to exercise some willpower here, too sleepy people tend to crave simple carbs and sugar, Buxton says, but those are a bad bet for the sleep-deprived. Research suggests that eating within an hour of waking up will boost your mood and cognitive performance for the early part of your day. You’d do better to set your alarm for the latest possible moment - when you actually have to get out of bed and start getting yourself together - in order to get the most sleep possible.ħ:30 a.m.: Eat breakfast. “Don’t insult yourself like that.” It feels good in the moment, but those nine-minute extra increments of dozing aren’t actually restorative sleep and won’t make you any more alert.
No snooze,” says Orfeu Buxton, a professor in the division of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School. But, very broadly speaking, here’s the best way to structure a sleepy day so you can make it to the end.ħ a.m.: Your alarm goes off. Maybe not all of their advice will directly apply to you, because you work nights, or you work from home, or you work extremely long days. (It’s true that some people, known as short sleepers, can thrive on just four or five hours of sleep a night, but as this group accounts for just 1 to 3 percent of the population, it’s highly unlikely that you’re one of them!) Still, the scientists we spoke to acknowledged, sleepless nights happen, and sometimes they happen to busy people who’ve got stuff to do the next day.Ĭonsider this a customizable template. Each of them wanted to be incredibly clear, up front, about this: You really, really need seven to eight hours of sleep to function like a proper human being.
Cant stay awake at work how to#
The Cut talked to sleep researchers to figure out how to get through a day after you’ve had a sleepless night. You’d like nothing more than to go back to bed, but you’ve got a long day of work staring you in the face. Photo: JGI/Jamie Grill/Getty Images/Tetra images RF
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