Managing sleep during the pandemic lifestyle.

How I mastered my sleeping game with the change in lifestyle during the pandemic.

The pandemic bought different norms in many aspects to earthlings, Regardless you like it or not it has become the new normal for almost a year now, I would assume it’s going to be the way for another couple of years more for the least. I belong to one of the largest lots of working population on earth “The People who work on computer for a living”. We were not much impacted with job security or change management as it was really a cakewalk to get used to working from home ( WFH as we all say) and many of us appreciated this new norm because of the added perks like working in your PJ’s, less travel/traffic, more family time etc.

Highly recognised work-life balance problems of pandemic lifestyle were lack of options to stay fit, mental health issues relating to state of being confined to the living quarters, lack of social interaction etc.

However, the deficiency of quality sleep is often less discussed.

Photo by Claudia Mañas on Unsplash

I noticed a considerable dip in my sleep time ever since the prolonged period of working from home has become the lifestyle. One late night around 2 PM, After a lot of twisting and turning I woke up from the bed as I felt it is pointless to be in bed and not able to sleep. I was standing on my room’s balcony staring at the opposite apartment block, I see a lot of rooms, most of them have lights turned on. These days in pandemic people sleep rarely before 12 PM. I wasn’t alone in this struggle. Many are yet to recognise this as a struggle even. I somehow slept that day. Later on that weekend I sat down with a notepad to list down my problems with sleep. The list goes like this

• Low deep sleep time- As per my fitness watch, the average deep sleep for a month was around 45 mins from every 7.5 sleep daily. Which was way less than required. A good average deep sleep time should be 13 to 23 percent of your total sleep time. That means the minimum needed deep sleep time for 7.5 hours sleep is 59 mins, but that’s the minimum, you need more for sure. 90 to 110 mins is a good time to have. Deep sleep is when your memories are consolidated, physical recovery initiated, the brain detoxifies itself, it helps with blood sugar level and metabolism balance, the immune system will be energised and learning & emotions will be processed. And there’s nothing such as too much deep sleep. the more you get, the better the sleep
• Awake times during sleep- Awake time during sleep was one of the significant factors for my sleep loss. It was almost 4 or 5 times which I think as per my conscious memory, These were mostly to sip some water as I was feeling dry throat or thirsty. As per my fitness watch my awake time during sleep is around 10–12 on average. Again not a healthy number
• Lack of motivation to wake up & Morning sombre mood- Unsurprisingly, I wake up every morning with less motivation to do things, mostly in a sombre mood. My partner used to describe me as a grumpy kid of mornings.

Recognising the issues is just step one, I looked for solutions, few articles over the internet helped me with solutions, in fact, many solutions. However, I choose to get some professional help around it for more structured solutions. With the help of a good therapist, I was able to narrow down MUST DO things for an average person to achieve good standards of sleep time. It's been several months now since that wonderful conversation with my therapist and I started practising some really cool updated habits.

I’ve been asked to add 4 practices to my daily life and follow it rigorously

1. Sleep Hygiene- Get a warm water shower, go to bed with fresh clothes on. It's a big NO to wearing clothes which you were wearing before taking the night shower.
2. Leave the phone & laptop ( or any gadgets) in my living room- We all know the neon light from screens isn’t going to help much to sleep fast, But what’s stopping most us is that urgent phone call you might get in the middle on the night isn’t it?. Trust me that is not going to come ever. You can leave the phone in your other room or living room.
3. Avoid mouth breathing- Remember the dry throat problem during sleep, Here’s the villain for that. Breathing through the mouth is the reason behind your dry throat and that’s what makes you feel thirsty. Your nose is built to prepare the air you breathe into the body temperature but your mouth isn’t functioning the same way, hence the dehydration at the throat. There are products like Somnifix or NexCare (Not affiliate or sponsored links) mouth tape to stick on to your lips while sleeping and dispose of after the sleep. Though I was able to avoid mouth breathing with conscious efforts. Also, I regulated my dinner to be less quantity, it helped in reducing snoring as well ( Understood this when my wife appreciated no snoring sleeps)
4. Keep a sleep journal- A sleep journal is consisting of 2 sections. 1- a graph on which days of the month are sectioned at the X-axis and hours sectioned at the Y-axis to update night sleep and short naps through the day. the 2nd section is a weekly review of my sleep, my observations. The sleep journal is updated every morning. I usually do this along with my morning tea. This little activity worked magic in me. There are days where I sleep just 5 hours. So when I update my daily graph, I know I am more vulnerable to bad mood swings and poor concentration at work. I try to get short naps or more coffee during those days if required. Overall this is a way to reflect on me and analyse the relation of mood changes (on the positive and negative side) along with my sleep time.
5. Bonus point: Wake up regularly at a specific time- I added my own target to wake up every day by 8.15 AM to see it grow as a habit. regardless of my sleeping time, I try to wake up at this time, do some reading, eat breakfast and sleep again.

The results were incredibly interesting after a month, These days I sleep off within ten minutes after reaching the bed, dry throat issues are completely gone, I even stopped keeping a bottle aside bed table. I wake up with an improved amount of motivation to spend time on my hobbies. And the sleep journal.. that is going to stay with me for the rest of my life I believe.