“Sleep is the golden chain that ties health and our bodies together.” - Thomas Dekker

As an ambitious woman with many responsibilities you may find yourself working late into the night as you try to juggle the demands of family life with your workload and keeping on top of all of the ‘behind the scenes’ activities that keep life running smoothly.

Whilst you may feel like you’re being productive and getting stuff done, late night working, more often than not, leads to sleeping less which has the knock-on effect of poor daytime performance.

This is obviously less than ideal because this is exactly when you need to be showing up at your best.

Don't get caught in a vicious cycle

When you don’t get enough sleep, or your sleep quality is questionable, it can lead to lack of concentration and focus, impaired problem-solving skills, and can also make you easily irritable.

All of these can impact on your ability to work efficiently and may even lead to you needing to work late again to make up for the extra time it’s taken to complete tasks during the day.

It can become a vicious cycle and breaking the cycle can seem impossible when you’re caught in the middle of it.

However, the consequences of not breaking the cycle could be even worse.

I won’t go into all of the health implications here but, let’s just say, you don’t want to go there!

So how can you break the cycle?

It’s one of the simple but not easy kind of thing really.

Make getting more, and better quality, sleep your top priority.

Easier said than done, I know but here are three practical tips to help you take the first steps towards making your sleep more restful.

1. Impose a non-negotiable work curfew

Decide upon a time that you will stop working each day, and stick to it.

You can choose any time to begin with, and whether you start with 6pm, 8pm or 10pm under no circumstance break this curfew.

Once you’ve implemented this you can work towards bringing the time you switch off from work more into line with a regular working day.

Each week bring your curfew forward by 15 – 30 minutes until you have shortened your work day to where you want it to be.

2. Screen free time

Allow at least 90 minutes of screen free time before going to bed and don’t push back bedtime til 1am to accommodate this!

Screens emit blue light which causes a conflict for your sleep-wake cycle as it affects your melatonin and cortisol balance. The blue light emitted by screens, including your TV, is similar to the light of the morning sun and this can confuse your body into thinking it’s morning and time to wake, rather than late evening and time to prepare for sleep.

Creating screen free time later in the evening can help your sleep-wake cycle to come back into balance.

3. Relax

If your first thought when you read this was “Ha, that’s easy for you to say, there’s so much to do, how on earth can I relax??” trust me I’ve been there too. More times than I care to remember!

Indulge me here, when you take a step back and look at the bigger picture it really does make sense.

When you relax and unwind at the end of your day, you’ll not only find that sleep comes more easily but that you’ll enjoy more restful sleep and wake in the morning feeling more refreshed. It’s a double win.

If you find it hard to relax, deep breathing exercises can be incredibly helpful, or you could try using an app to follow a guided mediation. Perhaps you might like to simply run yourself a bath and enjoy soaking in the warm water and include relaxing essential oils to really enhance your experience.

The recipe for better work-life balance

Who wouldn’t want to feel energised, focused and motivated and have the ability to achieve more each day?

When you can be super-focused and productive during your (normal office hours) working day and have time and, more importantly, energy to enjoy your evenings too this has to be one recipe for better work-life balance.

Getting more sleep, and/or improving the quality of your sleep is one very easy way to achieve this.

Need more support?

If stress, anxiety & overwhelm is having an impact on your sleep, and your productivity and efficiency are suffering as a result, you don’t need to struggle on alone.

I’m here to help!

CLICK HERE to discover how I can support you.