The Cost Of Daylight Savings

That's kind of the real impact is all this irritability, bad decision making and health outcomes that come from having our sleep disturbed. So today I want to talk about four ideas to help you keep your sleep momentum going to not be too disruptive this next week. And as we transition into the new time zone here in the United States for most of us, Start your week. Great. Start your week with a coach. I'm your host, certified high performance coach Sean Butner, and we're going to talk about something that will help you advance in your life this week. So let's go. Hey, everyone. Welcome to this week's blog. I'm your host, certified high performance coach Sean Butner. And today we're going to be talking about the sleepy cost of daylight savings because I think we can all agree daylight savings is the worst. Like it's one of the stupidest, most arbitrary things we do as a society. And I think it's outlived its purpose. Because no matter what story you, you hear about why we do daylight savings, whether it's for farmers, which is kind of ridiculous, or just because they would work, sun comes up, stop work, sun goes down. That's way easier than trying to figure out a clock. You heard train scheduling. So in order to time when the train would show up at your town and leave, you had to coordinate time across everything from the 1800s. That would be holdover. I've heard stories about trying to save coal during World War I for the war effort and, you know, all sorts of crazy things. And at the end of the day, it doesn't matter how it started. It's we still have it in part of our society and what is it really giving us. And you can go on the Google academic paper search and see all these different papers on how daylight savings increases heart attacks the day after it happens or car crashes because people are tired and they've, you know, they're just extra fatigued because their sleep schedule is messed up or strokes or a whole litany of bad outcomes just because we decided to shift the whole society by one hour one way or the other. And of course, in the fall, like happened today when I'm recording this video, it's not as bad potentially if you get that extra hours of sleep. But if you have kids, you know, you just end up staying up one hour on the beginning because they're not ready for going to sleep a little bit earlier. So stuff like that. So, you know, that's kind of the real impact is all this irritability, bad decision making and health outcomes that come from having our sleep disturbed. So today I want to talk about four ideas to help you keep your sleep momentum going to not be too disrupted this next week and as we transition into the new time zone here in the United States for most of us, and we'll go from there. So I remember I went to college in Indiana in early 2000s. And so for about half of my time in college, Indiana did not have daylight savings times. And it was the best time ever. You know, being from Chicago, like it was a little bit annoying trying to figure out if we were on Easter time or Central time when I'd call home to, you know, say hi to my folks or friends that, you know, went to school in Illinois. But yeah, otherwise it's really nice not having to switch your, your schedule. Your sleep doesn't get as disruptive because you're still kind of getting up or going to bed at whatever time you normally would. It's not this hour shift like you're traveling across the world. And so when Indiana voted in the early 2000s while I was in college to do daylight savings, it was a huge bummer. You just, I didn't realize how much disruptive it really was until I had to do it again, having a little break from it in college. And so it got me thinking, since we're living through it right now, like, what are some things that we can do to help mitigate the impact to our sleep? So really the whole idea is to keep your sleep schedule consistent and then to slowly shift over time. So that's the first point is how can you ease into shifting your bedtime and wake up time incrementally towards, you know, when you normally, normally would or where you want to right now? Because one of like all the sleep science share, you know, from like Matt Walker and Arianna Huffington and a lot of TED talks you can watch online say that the one most important habit anyone can have is in sleeping is keeping it consistent and when you go to bed and when you wake up. So if we're switching it by an hour, maybe you shift by 20 minutes today and tomorrow 20 minutes more towards when you need to get up. So you, maybe you're getting up, you got up at 7 yesterday and now you're going to get up at 6 and then maybe tomorrow 6, 26, 40 and so on to kind of incrementally step your way to the new wake up time, new new bedtime so that your clock is still going on that. Right. Second thing to do is to watch your Morning or before bed routine. Man, having a hard time talking to the guys. So what that means is, you know, are you winding down? Are you dimming the lights? We'll get to lights and temperature in a bit. You know, do you have the same process to help you get ready for bed, to help trigger your brain to be like, okay, need to shut off, time to go to sleep. Third thing to do is to watch caffeine because if you're sleepy at a different part of the day, you might drink coffee a little bit later or you might overdo it with coffee to try to feel alert and focus. And then caffeine has a really disruptive impact on your sleep. So now is the time to be paying attention to, like, do I have, have I been having more coffee today? Am I going to this week because I'm sleepy? Because my sleep schedule is a little goofed. Also, watching booze is always what a lot of the sleep researchers say because that also impacts the quality of your sleep. And so it's not just the duration of trying to get seven to nine hours, but also trying to get a deep sleep in that time to help the brain recover. And before we continue with the last point here, I want to let you guys know that on November 15th, I'm hosting my transformative high performance habits workshop or monthly workshop. So this is my monthly program where I take a habit, a set of strategies, we explore those, we go through, any resources that I have found helpful or my clients have found helpful. And we're talking about sleep hygiene this month on the 15th. So if you haven't already, make sure you go to the link for below in this video and get signed up and you can attend this one for free on me to test it out. But if you want the recording, you'll have to get into the program, which is like 20 bucks. So 20 bucks a month. But anyways, if you are struggling with sleep, if you'd like kind of a refresher on the basics and some advanced ideas for sleep hygiene and some tools and resources and things that I use that I really love to help me stay asleep. As someone that's struggled insomnia for a little bit in my life at times, make sure you sign up at that link. Okay, the fourth and final thing we're going to talk about here is that when you go to sleep, do you have a low light environment and are you as part of your wind down sequence, dimming the lights, kind of signaling to your body that it's sleep is going to be here soon and then what temperature are you going to have your room at? Right. And the science says that cooler is better. It's much easier to be in a cold room and fall asleep than it is to be in a really warm room and fall asleep. I think the recommendations range from like 64 degrees to 68 degrees. If you can manage that or somehow make that happen, that'll help you have a higher quality of sleep. So again, you know, make sure your schedule is consistent when you wake up and go to bed every day, even on the weekends. And if you have to, if you're struggling with this one hour shift, which a lot of people, most people don't, I don't think. But if you are incrementally shifting this next week from before daylight savings to what day like savings is now, will help you get over the disruption quicker. Watch your caffeine, watch your booze intake and then make sure you kill all the lights, get rid of lights the hour before bed and make sure your room is cool when you're ready to sleep. And that'll be it for the video this week, guys. So again, join me on Transformative Performance Habits monthly on the link below and we'll talk to you soon. Take care, Sam.