This time, when I had to make a trip to India and back to US in a few months, I didn’t want to be incapacitated with jet lag. While I did find options of getting no jet lag through medications, I was only interested in natural ways of preventing jet lag all together and if I do get jet lagged then the easiest way of getting over it.

I couldn’t avoid jet lag completely but was able to overcome it within three days on both trips (to India and back) – which is great considering my previous experiences have been of weeks and months.

As you must have already made out from the article title – ‘Beat Jet Lag With Sleep’, my strategy of combating jet lag is mainly via sleep. So here are some tips for you on using sleep to beat jet lag:

How To Beat Jet Lag With Sleep

• Don’t try to adjust your sleep pattern to your destination time before making the journey. It will make you tired, sluggish and irritable. Your long distance travel will become even more painful. You are going to get jet lag anyways. So have good sleep while you can.
• Ensure that you get a good night sleep after boarding based on your current time zone. This will ensure that you remain rested. For me, the last few days were anyways so hectic that I was all set to drop dead with tiredness. Even if you get a good 2-3 hours sleep it is all right – as long as you sleep.
• After your first sleep, take as many naps as you can. For this, take help of soothing music, meditation, closing your eyes and just resting … whatever works. Sometimes, we get so engrossed watching one movie after other (in flight entertainment), that we forget sleeping all together. Hence, take a break after each movie. You will feel better and might be able to get 40 winks before you start with the next one.
• Once you reach your destination, ensure that you sleep the first night well. If you are arriving late evening / night, then sleep right away (or in a few hours), if you arrive morning/noon, then try to stretch till evening and then go to sleep. You don’t need to wait till night to go to sleep. Since you are dealing with tiredness, lack of sleep and jet lag all together, even if you sleep in evening (that’s around 8 for me), it is all right.

  NOTE: If you can’t stretch, then don’t make mistake of stretching too much. Get your first sleep without bothering about timing. So that you can cover up for the sleep you missed and your tiredness. This will ensure that then you deal with jet lag only and not the other two.

• Wake up the next day in the morning and get some sunlight. Have as much of a normal day as possible so that your body can adjust to the new time zone. If you can stay awake entire day, it’s great. If you can’t, take a mid noon nap for an hour. Not more than that. This will help you to stay awake for the rest of the day.
• From now on, just listen to your body to know when to sleep. If you think you need to sleep more, sleep at 8. If you think you need only normal sleeping hours, sleep at your regular time.

Following are few tips to deal with jet lag which are not related to sleep -

• Have lot of fluids – while traveling and later on.
• Avoid caffeine, alcohol and soda.
• Eat all meals provided by air lines.
• Eat meals at regular hours after reaching destination.
• Take break and do some walking / stretching in the plane and off it.
• Exercise and expose yourself to sunlight as much as possible.
• Jet lag takes some time to go so adapt to odd hours for a few days and make most of them.
• Keep your schedule light for the first day so that you can adjust based on your body’s demands easily.
• Ensure that you make yourself as comfortable as possible while traveling – give thought to your clothes, footwear and luggage.

What are your tips to fight jet lag ?

photo : Mayr

Beat Jet Lag With Sleep is a post from: Avani-Mehta.com Download & Share: The Fabulous Motivators E-Book.

This week as I observed how my three year old niece’s sleep timing was changed from late riser to early riser, I stumbled upon one of the simplest ways to change our sleeping pattern. It doesn’t matter whether you want to become an early riser / sleeper or a late riser / sleeper, I believe this tip to change your sleeping pattern should be helpful in either case. All you need to do is follow these three pointers –

How to Change Your Sleep Pattern

Determine your desired waking and sleeping time.

Based on ideal number of hours you need to sleep, decide what time would you like to wake up and go to sleep every day. It doesn’t matter what time do you wake up and go to sleep right now. Simply decide on your ideal sleeping and waking timings.

Reset your sleep clock by one hour.

If you would like to wake up early, then do so by an hour. If you would like to wake up late, then stay awake more for an hour. Don’t cover the entire distance between your current waking/sleeping time and your desired waking/sleeping time in one go. Change your timings one hour at a time but do so without fail. Stay consistent with this change till it comes naturally to you. And then, reset again.

Tire yourself through physical activity.

Do some heavy exercises – run, walk, cycle, play, swim, dance … anything that tires you. If you wish to sleep early, work your body earlier, if you wish to sleep late, do these physical activities a bit later. One will ensure you get tired and fall asleep earlier, second will ensure you stay awake longer than your usual hours (but not for too long) and wake up late.

And that’s it, you are all set to break your sleeping pattern and change it as you desire.

What I like about this method of changing sleep routine is that it is ridiculously simple. It would be difficult to make mistakes and mess up with these three pointers.

I had found a way to change my sleep timings and sleep early the last time I was struggling with a jet lag. These pointers are actually a great update to that method of becoming an early sleeper. Read more about do’s and don’ts of changing sleeping routine – and do share some of your tips.

Books On Sleep:

photo courtesy of porcelaingirl

How To Change A Sleep Pattern is a post from: Avani-Mehta.com Download & Share: The Fabulous Motivators E-Book.

A Good Laugh And A Long Sleep Are The Best Cures In The Doctor’s Book. – Irish Proverb

Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning and focused effort – Paul J Meyer. Top 8 Productivity Hacks will help you become productive (as is obvious). It consists of some tips, tricks and ideas to make you more efficient.

Productivity Hack #1 : Plan Your Sleeping Pattern

A lot has been said about becoming an early riser. While I do agree that waking up early has it’s own benefits, it is not mandatory to do so. As long as we sleep for required amount of hours, our body and mind will function well.

• How Many Hours Of Sleep Do You Need:

  An adult normally needs 7-8 hours of sleep everyday. I used to believe that I needed 5. For a long period of time I functioned sleeping only for 5 hours. The rest, somehow got managed by over sleeping on weekends once in a while.

  If you fall under same category as me, you might be truly sleep deprived. In order to find out how much sleep you need, try sleeping and waking everyday without an alarm. You will be surprised to find that you sleep for 10+ hours everyday if you aren’t using the alarm. This will continue till all your sleep debt gets over. And then, you will notice that your sleeping hours will automatically be 7-8 hours. You don’t need an alarm to wake up.

  With all the commitments we have, waking up without alarm is difficult. Hence, for those of you who have morning commitments, the only way to test this is by sleeping early everyday and setting alarm as a last minute resort.

  The easiest way to find out whether you are sleeping for adequate hours is to observe how do you feel after sleep. If you are feeling tired and sleepy, then you still need to sleep.

• My Experiments With Sleeping Patterns:

  Out of curiosity, I tested out varied sleeping patterns this year. I tried becoming an early riser, late sleeper, all nighter etc. I found that getting into a sleep pattern is difficult. However, once the sleep pattern is formed, it absolutely made no difference when I slept and when I woke up as long as I completed my 8 hours of sleep (an hour here and there because we don’t need exact 8 hours sleep everyday).

  I haven’t tried either sleeping pattern for years to know if there are any advantages/disadvantages in the long term. But I do know that in short term, it really doesn’t matter what your sleep pattern is as long as it is fixed.

  What matters is that you have a constant sleep pattern. This is so that your body can set its internal clock accordingly. Sleeping at the same time everyday will help your body to adjust and function well.

• What Is The Ideal Sleep Pattern:

  As I experimented with varied sleep patterns, I noticed that in some cases my productivity peaked and in others, it went down. Basically, whenever I woke up very early or stayed awake late, my productivity was higher. This is because I like to work in large chunks of time together. I find myself more productive when I can sit at a task and work on it for hours. The more interruptions I have, the less productive I get. And hence, early morning period or the late night period suits me.

  Whenever I woke up sometime after 9, my day simply went away in household chores. Even if I did get some time in between for other work, I didn’t want to work on it since I knew I will have to get up again by the time I get in flow.

  One more point to consider is whether you can use all your waking hours productively. For a long time, I stopped working after sunset to spend time with self, family and friends. This works well when I go to sleep within a few hours. However, if I am following a late rising pattern then this would leave very few working hours.

• How To Form A Sleep Pattern:

  I have written at length on ‘How To Become An Early Sleeper‘. The concepts mentioned there, will work for any kind of sleep pattern that you want to form.

  Apart from that technique, what one can also do is start moving one hour closer towards the ideal waking/sleeping time. Once you get comfortable waking/sleeping one hour early/late, repeat – till you reach the desired time. This way you can form your desired sleeping pattern comfortably.

  I am pursuing this method right now to start getting up early. One huge advantage with this method is that your body doesn’t fight much – since there are no drastic changes in sleep timings. This method however, takes a lot of time since we have to go step by step.

• When You Can’t Help Sleeping Irregularly:

  In spite of everything you know about benefits of having good and constant sleep time, there will times when you simply can’t help having irregular sleep patterns. Your job is such, you have a kid at home, you have to travel too much etc. In these times, two things can help -

  1. Take Power Naps
  2. Meditate

What is your experience of forming a sleep pattern? Are there any tips you can share? Share in comments.

Sleep Pattern Basics – To Create Your Own Sleeping Plan is a post from: Avani-Mehta.com Download & Share: The Fabulous Motivators E-Book.

Sometime back I wrote about How to Become an Early Sleeper where I highlighted all the do’s of becoming an early sleeper. Following are some of the don’ts; Common mistakes made while forming a sleep pattern:

Follow half the pattern

Becoming an early riser and an early sleeper go hand in hand. So does becoming a late riser and a late sleeper. A lot of times, we pick up one of these two aspects that we want to change and focus on it. What we forget is that we cannot change one and keep the other constant.

I tried waking up early and not bother about sleeping early. It did work. For a week or two. And then my system crashed since it was stretching. The problem with this is that when we are stretching we often dont come to know of it. Its only when our body reaches its peak of stretching and starts showing signs of fatigue and drowsiness that we realise that we made a mistake.

Make big jumps. 2-3 hours of change at once.

While trying to change sleep patterns, try going with smaller changes – 30 mins at a time. It is easier to adjust.

I tried to change my pattern from no pattern to becoming an early riser. In the initial days, this resulted in extreme drowsiness and tiredness during the day. If I slept through the day, there would be no sleep at night. And my old pattern resumes. I had to stretch through a few days of staying awake and fighting sleep during daytime to get into rhythm.

Assume incorrect sleeping hours.

Thanks to highly inconsistent sleeping patterns, I had mistakenly assumed that I need only 5 hours of sleep. The truth is, I can function with five hours sleep, but that’s not my optimal number of sleeping hours. Currently I sleep for 6 hours. And still, lapse and sleep more once a week. Now, my ideal sleep hours seems to be 6.5.

Skip more than a day

This is applicable for any habit that we create. Do not skip more than a day. It is difficult to resume the habit once we are on a more than one day break.

Once, when I lapsed, two days turned to three and then four and then there was no habit at all. It was like starting all over again. I now wake up at the same time all week round with not more than one day break. And this has helped me form my habit.

Common Mistakes Made While Forming A Sleep Pattern is a post from: Avani-Mehta.com Download & Share: The Fabulous Motivators E-Book.

Have you ever found it difficult to fall asleep? I began to have sleep problems after relocating to US. I couldn’t sleep normal hours. My mind was way too alert, fresh and full of ideas to go to sleep. Either I slept as late as 2 or 4 in the night or I stayed awake for straight 24 to 30 hours before falling asleep. Initially jetlag got all the blame. However, over a period of time when the problem persisted, I knew I had to formulate someway to sleep regularly between 10-11 pm.

I set on to find out what are the possible methods to fall asleep (early). And after lot of trials and errors, this combination of multiple methods has worked for me:

1. Wake up early

Wake up early in the morning at a fixed hour – 5am in my case. How to wake up early? Some pointers which helped:
a. Get out of bed immediately as alarm buzzes.
b. Don’t think anything before getting out of bed.
c. Wake up consistently every day no matter how bad it seems. It takes 30 days to form a habit, hence continue doing so for atleast 30 days.

Ideas for this were taken from Steve Pavlina’s How to Become an Early Riser

2. Link waking up early to a pleasure

Choose your morning activity wisely.
Initially I tried shifting exercise time to morning since that seemed the ideal thing to do. I simply hated it. Waking up early – still sleepy and moving so much did not work. This became a cause for pain and waking up early got all the blame for it. As I started associating pain with waking up early, things started to get even more difficult.

I struck jackpot with reading – one of my passions. Now, I read with a morning cup of tea and some light music in the background. I look forward to waking early for my own time in morning for personal growth.

TIP: Find out something you would love to do for the first hour in the morning. (And do that ofcourse!)

3. Don’t take more than 15 mins for afternoon nap

An hour long nap in afternoon can possibly make up for the sleep lost in morning in the initial days. Mind/Body gets the required rest and hence finds it difficult to fall asleep at night. A 15 min refreshing nap is all right but not more than that.

4. Have dinner atleast 2-3 hours before desired sleeping time

Effects of late dinner (Less than 2 hours period between dinner and sleep):
a. A late dinner means your metabolic rate and body temperature will increase when they should be decreasing. This means spending lot of time in bed tossing and turning. It takes quite a while to get sleep after a heavy meal.
b. There are 5 phases of sleep – drowsiness, light sleep, deep sleep, deep sleep and REM. Deep sleep is when the body rests and repairs itself for another day. A late dinner would mean missing out on deep sleep in the early part of the night. And hence feel less rested the next morning.

Effects of early dinner(More than 3 hours period between dinner and sleep):
Being hungry is as disruptive to sleep as being too full. A light snack before going to bed in this case is effective.

I usually have dinner between 6-7 in the evening.

5. Choose your dinner/supper wisely

Always keep your dinner/supper light. Avoid foods which help staying awake and have food items which promote sleep.

Some Food Items which keep you awake (Caffeine, Nicotine products):
a. Tea
b. Coffee
c. Soda
d. Cigarette

Some Food items which help you sleep (High carbohydrate with some fat):
a. Cereals
b. Milk
c. Chocolate
d. Banana
e. Potatoes

6. Stop television, laptop, work atleast 2 hours before your desired sleeping time.

Inorder to go to sleep, your mind needs to have settled down. A mind full of thoughts, worries and to dos will not be able to sleep. Hence avoid everything thats highly stimulating, distracting and cause of lot of thoughts.

It is said that we carry on in our sleep and dreams whatever activity we do before going to sleep. The reason being that even though our conscious mind is asleep, sub conscious mind is still working on the last input. Imagine your subconscious mind working entire night on your worries or imaginary violence/fights picked up from television. Be very selective in what you wish to think about and expose your mind to in the last few hours before sleep (ideally entire day) since it will affect the quality of your sleep.

The last few hours have become family time for me. I spend time with hubby, play games, talk about the day, read something inspiring, listen to some soothing music … whatever catches my fancy for that day. But – no television, no novels, no laptop and no work in any form at all.

7. Develop sleep rituals before going to bed

Create an evening routine right before going to sleep. Do the same thing in the same order to cue your body to slow down and relax. As your form a habit for this, your body will start getting signals that it is time to go to sleep the moment you start with your routine.

I love taking a hot water bath and play soft instrumental music in background.

8. Go to bed

Don’t stay up all the time and wait till your eyes get all droopy before going to bed. Go to bed at your sleeping time. Lie down, relax. Sleep will automatically come.

If you feel too fresh and alert, stop trying to go to sleep and pick something else. But stick to point 6 – no television, laptop or work.

Some other tips I found for sleeping early:
1. Read something at night – preferrably some subject you don’t like.
2. Drink a warm glass of milk
3. Take a hot water bath
4. Meditate
5. Listen to music
6. Count numbers
7. Pray
8. Do some monotonous household activities like washing utensils, cleaning house etc

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How to Become an Early Sleeper is a post from: Avani-Mehta.com Download & Share: The Fabulous Motivators E-Book.