“Don’t obsess about the mythical eight hours of sleep,” says Prof Russell Foster, “it’s an average.”
The default state is not a single block of sleep but bimodal or polyphasic.
Prof Russell Foster
The National Sleep Foundation tells us that the healthy range is between six and ten and a half hours, “so it’s about finding what your sleep needs are.”
“The question you should ask yourself is, do you feel that you can perform at your peak during the day?” says Russell. “Also, if you oversleep extensively on free days and particularly when you go on holiday, that can really unmask your endogenous sleep pattern.”
Listen to the Sleep Special for more clues as to whether you are getting enough sleep.
2. If you wake in the night, don’t panic
A study of sleep in the pre-industrial era found that there was a bimodal pattern of sleep: given the opportunity humans will go to sleep, wake up after a few hours and interact, then have another episode of sleep before waking up in the morning.
“The default state is not a single block of sleep but bimodal or polyphasic,” says Russell, “and the problem is that most people don’t know that.”
If you wake in the night don’t get up and start doing your emails. Stay relaxed, keep the lights low, find something soothing to listen to, and you should soon drift off again.
3. Make big decisions after you’ve slept on them
If you have a life-changing decision to make, don’t do it when you’re tired – sleep on it.
In the day, we’re bombarded with information. But when we’re asleep our brain has the time and capacity to begin to process it. “You’re not only retaining facts, and the stuff that’s come in during the day, but you’re manipulating and playing with that information,” says Russell.
Research has shown that we’re better at performing tasks after a full night of sleep. “If you want to come up with innovative solutions to complex problems then a night of sleep can enormously enhance your capacity to do that. Sleeping on it really does have a basis in science!”
