Stress Management

*This post contains affiliate links. I may earn a small commission for links to any products or services from this website. Your purchase helps support my work in bringing you real information about living the FitLife with a busy schedule.

3 ways to get more quality sleep as a busy professional is my 3 best tips for sleeping better each night so you can kick ass, stay focused, and be more productive.

Sleep is tough when you’re busy.

You may be working full-time and have a side hustle (me). You may be working full-time and have older parents and/or kiddos to take care of. Or maybe you just work a lot of hours and are exhausted at the end of the day and too stressed to sleep.

Often the name of the game is to get more sleep, the recommendation is 7-9 hours a night. You may be looking at me like I’m crazy. And honestly, I couldn’t agree more. On average during the workweek I get 6 hours of a sleep a night. I’m tired all the time and can’t stop thinking about how I can’t wait to get home and go to bed early. This has yet to work for me. I do get more sleep on the weekends. But honestly, I don’t feel that great on 6 hours of sleep a night. And by Thursday, I’m The literal Worst. I’m cranky and have a short temper. I don’t want to work out, cook, or write another post. It’s awful.

Since working full-time and doing my side hustle (since last August), I think I’ve had a few work weeks when I’ve gotten 7 or more hours a sleep. And those weeks were great. I felt I could do so much and was extremely focused. So I know this, but why don’t I do it? Well the 3 ways that I’m going to share with you are the 3 main reasons I’m not currently sleeping well or enough. But these were the 3 things I did in the past on those weeks that I slept more and felt amazing.

3 ways to get more quality sleep at night.

#1 time management.

When I had my weeks of more sleep, it really came down to time management. I was organized and had short to-do lists each day (instead of the laundry list of tasks that I’m used to making). I was more productive instead of busy. The actions that weren’t producing results for me (scrolling on social media for 20 minutes at a time literally every hour, hanging around at the gym for almost an hour after class was done, having no plan for dinner which resulted in way too much time on Pinterest trying to figure out what to make with what I had in the house). To sum it up, I was wasting a lot of time and having resistance to the most important activities I needed to complete each day. My lesson, determine where you’re spending time that’s keeping you up later at night. Reduce the amount of time doing these activities, and limit your daily to-do list. We can really only focus on a few things a day anyway. Give yourself a guide for how you’ll run your day so you know what to focus on.

#2 create a sleep routine.

In my LUCC Your Body Program, we spend an entire month working on a sleep routine. It’s crucial as it lets your body know that it’s time for sleep and it’s time to prepare for sleep. Our bodies love habits and routines. So do the same things each night before bed to let your body know it’s time to prepare for sleep.

Here were some things I did when I was successful. I turned off electronics 30 minutes before bed (the TV and computer, I put my phone in the kitchen). I set an alarm on my phone for 10pm that said “Time to shut it down!” This alarm really helped, even though often I’d just turn it off and keep working (but only for a little bit). I read, from a real book and my old school Kindle, with no backlight, as part of my routine before bed. I also had a routine of letting Butters out to go night night potty, then I would brush my teeth, floss, and use mouthwash (my dentist would be proud). Some nights I washed my face, but not that often. Then I would read in bed. I started my routine roughly 30 minutes before I wanted to be sleeping.

#3 I did some form of meditation.

This was were Alexa really came in handy. We got rid of all our clocks in our bedroom and now just rely on Alexa to tell us what time it is. She’s also really great for playing meditations. I would meditate for 5-10 minutes every night after reading and pass the F out. I’m pretty sure I’ve conditioned my body to equate the act of meditating to going to sleep. Because when I try to meditate in the morning or attend a meditation class at work, I PASS out. lol . That right there is an example of creating a habit. During the meditation, I focused on deep breathing and relaxing all my muscles as much as possible. It was amazing.

With these 3 steps alone, not only did I get more quality sleep (I slept through the whole night, even with Butters breathing and tossing and turning) and got more sleep (about an hour more than currently). Taking a step back and realizing what I was doing that allowed me success reminds me of how important that is when something feels off or we feel we aren’t progressing. Look at what was successful for you in the past and what you can include from that.

How many hours of quality sleep do you get a night? Do you feel well-rested in the morning?

Where I’m linked up:

Inspire Me Monday | Inspire Me Monday | Totally Terrific Tuesday | Coffee and Conversation | Inspire Me Wednesday | Wild Workout Wednesday & Fit and Fashionable Friday | Healthy Living Link Party | Think Tank Thursday | This is How We Roll

*EffiFit LLC is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.