Just go to bed

Almost everything looks better in the morning

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome to Before Breakfast, a production of I Heart Radio.
Good Morning, This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is to just go to bed. If you
have reached the evening and are feeling overwhelmed or sad

(00:26):
or exhausted, do yourself a favor and go to sleep
as soon as you can. Most likely everything will feel
different when you wake adequately rested in the morning. So
despite the widespread perception, most people do get enough sleep
from a total hour perspective. In fact, the number of

(00:48):
hours people sleep per day has been rising over the
past few decades, according to the American Time You Survey.
But what tends to happen is that people in an
irregular fashion, getting too little sleep in the first half
of the week and then crashing in the second half.
It makes for exhaustion and an inability to maintain good habits.

(01:13):
While sleeping less in the first half of the week
might seem productive because there would be more space for
work and chores, if you just crash and make up
the hours in the second half of the week, you
haven't saved any time at all. You've just moved it
around at the cost of a lot of unpleasantness. Far

(01:34):
better to sleep the same amount every single day. In
other words, we all need a bedtime. I tell people
that you should only stay up past your bedtime if
you have a really good reason. However, you don't need
a good reason to go to bed before your bedtime.

(01:54):
If you are exhausted for some reason or another, there
is no reason to stay up. Don't fool yourself that
you are going to get something great done. If you
are exhausted, you are not going to finish any of
your personal projects. If you are exhausted, you are not
going to get ahead on work. Don't remind yourself how

(02:16):
far behind you are and forge ahead. Don't try to
have quality time with your spouse. That won't really be
quality time at all. Just go to bed. If you do,
one of two things will happen. One is that you
will sleep to your normal wake up time. If you
have gone to bed prior to your bedtime and wake

(02:39):
up at the normal time, then you have likely either
made up a small sleep debt or have banked a
little extra rest. Either way, you will feel incredibly well
rested when you wake up. When you get enough sleep,
you feel like you can conquer the world. I am
willing to bet that whatever seemed overwhelming the night before

(03:02):
will no longer feel overwhelming. It will feel doable, and
so you will do it. Sleep is a superpower. The
other thing that might happen is that you will wake
well rested before your alarm. This tends to happen if
you don't have a sleep debt to work off, and

(03:23):
you are exhausted for other reasons, like an emotionally or
physically rough day. When this happens, well, congratulations, you now
have found time. It's found time at a point of
day when people often hit their peak of energy. If
you are up before your family or before you need
to be, you could read, or work, or exercise, or

(03:47):
do something creative, or sit there and ponder life quietly
if you don't want to disturb anyone else. I am
not particularly a morning person, but when I travel from
the East Coast to the West coast and thus pop
up at five am feeling like it's eight am, I
am able to do all manner of great things before breakfast.

(04:10):
Going to bed earlier than normal can give you the
superpower in normal life. In any case, it's better than
trying to Ford John to solve everything in an exhausted state.
You won't solve everything. You will probably solve nothing and
get frustrated. So just go to bed. Life will feel

(04:34):
better in the morning. In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening and here's to making the most of
our time. Hey, everybody, I'd love to hear from you.
You can send me your tips, your questions, or anything else.

(04:58):
Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at
Before Breakfast pod that's B the number four, then Breakfast
p o D. You can also shoot me an email
at Before Breakfast podcast at iHeartMedia dot com that Before
Breakfast is spelled out with all the letters. Thanks so much,

(05:18):
I look forward to staying in touch. Before Breakfast is
a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from
my heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.