We’ve written it before, but we’ll say it again now — 20% of us are getting less sleep since COVID started. A separate study from last March found only 45% of us are satisfied with our sleep; 38% of us are dissatisfied with it but aren’t taking control of it or changing habits to improve it.
To be fair, we weren’t doing much better prior to COVID. There was even a Federal Inquiry into why we’re all sleeping so terribly, which found that the overall cost of inadequate sleep is estimated to be $66.3 billion. Possibly the only time we’ll make it on a billionaires list.
There’s a list of supposed ways to improve sleep: ranging from stretching to masturbating, cleansing to snooze-inducing foods. The latest sleep hack? Well, it comes from TikTok.
One user, Emily Bronchu, told TikTok that her therapist shared a trick with her for when you can’t sleep. According to her, it came after she was lying in bed and just couldn’t sleep, “tossing and turning, tossing and turning, tossing and turning”.
Her therapist’s advice? Set a time limit. “If you’re not sleeping within 20 minutes, get up and write down everything that you’re thinking about and do it until you’re tired and then go back to sleep. And it works.”
If you’re wondering why the reasoning behind leaving your bed to get sleep, is that “if you stay in bed your brain will eventually connect with ‘I’m supposed to be awake when I am here’.” The sleep hack has, so far, racked over 100,000 likes and hundreds of comments. To be fair, this isn’t exactly new information to anyone whose been introduced to the concept of sleep hygiene, or read the book Atomic Habits by James Clear.
According to the Centre for Clinical Interventions (CCI) in WA, it doesn’t necessarily have to be writing. It can be anything calming or boring — like reading the phone book (if they even still exist?). According to CCI, you should make sure the area is dimly lit, or the lights are off entirely — bright lights will tell you it’s time to wake up.
Make it dull, and make it dim.