What’s on Your To-Do List?

Spring is in the air.  We have jumped the time on our clocks forward one hour; daylight hours are growing longer each day.  Now that our days are longer, what does your to-do list look like?  Mulching, cleaning the gutters, trimming the bushes, planting a garden, painting the house.  Does it include getting more sleep?

Don’t you just love it when a scientific study tells us what we already know?  A University of California Berkeley scientific study concluded that lost sleep leads to seriously grumpy behavior.  The study linked both not getting enough sleep and poor quality sleep with selfish behavior and arguments with spouse or coworkers the following day.  The researchers at UC Berkeley coined the term “ego depletion.”  Ego depletion is when sleep deprived people display a reduced ability to make appropriate choices in a social or work situation.  It seems tired people make choices which represent what people see as the easy solution; not necessarily what the same people, well rested, view as the best or ethically correct decision.  The study pointed out that being tired reduces our inhibition and reduces our ability to think logically.

A Harvard Medical School study used a test designed to track our decision-making ability.  People made decisions when they were well rested and when they were sleep deprived.  When sleep deprived, their effective decision making process was greatly reduced.  You might think that a cup of coffee helps; but no, even caffeine did not help the people make good decisions.

Are you a teen or do you remember the teen years?  Teens are so full of potential, so full of life, and so sleepy.  Teens are at an important stage of their growth and development.  Because of this, they need more sleep than adults need.  The average teenager needs at least nine hours of sleep each night to feel alert and well rested.  That means if a teen stays up to 11 p.m., the teen should sleep until 8 a.m.  Since most high schools start before 8 a.m., most teens do not get the sleep that they need on a daily basis.

Mrs. Cleaver always checked to make sure that Beaver was not reading a comic book under the covers using a flashlight.  She always told the boys to turn off the light and go to bed.  Well, according a recent study she was right; we sleep better if we quietly relax before going to sleep.  A modern source of sleep deprivation and the resulting lack of energy and bad moods is that Smartphone sitting on the desk next to you.  Ok, not the phone itself but how you use it.  Do you have the phone next to your bed to check your emails and texts until you fall asleep?  If you do, the consequences are your sleep quality is compromised and you will wake up exhausted.  The adverse effects caused by the exhaustion due to the night use of a Smartphone follows you into the following workday.  Smartphone morning depletion left the workers in a study with a reduced ability to concentration on assigned tasks.  The workers, basically, were no better off than the kid who stayed up all night reading comics then fell asleep during class the next day.

Now, checking if your kids are sleeping includes checking that the cell phone and other electronics are turned off.  The best solution would be for the electronics to be in another room.

The actual amount of sleep each person needs is different.  Nevertheless, we all need sufficient rest to recharge.  The bottom line, as you are creating your list of projects you need to complete, be sure to include “get enough sleep” on your list.

  “And on the seventh day God finished his work that he had done, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done. So God blessed the seventh day and made it holy, because on it God rested from all his work that he had done in creation.” Genesis 2: 2-3

Cheryl Gowin and Dennis Gowin, Hope for Tomorrow Counseling Center.  Call us if you have any comments or questions; 434-808-2637.