Improve Your Sleep With a Sleep Scorecard
This is part of my blog series Practical Self-Help for Introspective People.
Hey, friends!
One way to charge our self-esteem battery is by improving our sleep. And my favorite tool to accomplish this is a sleep scorecard.
Get started
Using Google docs or a notebook, create a log of how well you sleep each night. Use a 1–5 scale, with 1 being a bad night and 5 being a good (but not necessarily perfect) night. In fact, any night in the top 20% should be scored as a 5.
Also, record what contributed to how well you slept. This is where the magic happens. After a week, you'll see patterns emerge. After a week, you'll start making predictions, running experiments, and testing hypotheses. And your sleep will gradually improve!
Personally, I started tracking my sleep four months ago, and I learned a lot about myself.
Many things will wreck my sleep: working late, having too much caffeine, being constipated, eating a large dinner, peeing at 3 am, feeling stressed at work, and watching scary movies before bed. (I'm amazed I get any sleep at all!)
As I developed better bodily awareness, I started changing my routines, and my sleep gradually improved. Some changes were easy, like limiting caffeine and taking a fiber supplement. Other changes, like eating a small dinner and managing work stress, are difficult, and I'm slowly addressing these and their underlying causes.
But that's me. What about you?
What helps your sleep? What hinders it? Start tracking this with a sleep scorecard. And start experimenting with various solutions.
It's like that famous quote from Grace Hopper: "One accurate measurement is worth a thousand expert opinions."
So start tracking your sleep today.