Sleep prep is a choice. How far will you go to catch the best Zzzzzzzz?

You know the feeling. You wish sleep didn’t get in the way of your life, but you know how fab it feels when you are asleep.

Yes, there are never enough hours in the day. So what can you do?

Lifehack has published “19 Ways to Fall Asleep Fast“, with useful, solid, standard advice.

photo by Paparuchas

photo by Paparuchas

However, you may find some – perhaps most – of the tips hard to follow in a student lifestyle:

  • Limit alcohol?
  • Stop looking at your phone, TV and computer?
  • Go to sleep at the same time every night?
  • Adopt a regular bedtime routine?

Sounds a bit much, eh? No wonder advice on sleep is common, while following that advice is less so.

But it doesn’t have to be this way.

If your bedtime routine is causing you problems, a good way to frame the situation is to view it with importance. That is, decide how much impact your sleep (or lack of it…) has on the rest of your life. The part of your life where you’re awake.

Well, where you *should* be awake…

What you decide is for nobody but yourself. View it as your choice. Any change you make is with you in mind. How far you take things is a personal matter.

When you’re tired and struggling to cope with the daily routine, something’s gotta give. You can’t be stubborn and have all the things you’re used to. There is no quick fix.

With care, you can make the most of your sleep and do more with your time. Listen to yourself.

Are you getting enough sleep? Are you getting too much sleep? Are you being disrupted and interrupted in the night? Is it quality sleep? How do you feel when you wake up in the morning? What is your mood like during the day?

Questions like these are crucial to understanding where things are going wrong and what you need to do to get back on track. Sleep accounts for around a third of your time on this planet. What happens in that time has knock-on consequences to what happens while you’re awake.

Do you go to bed when it suits your lifestyle or when it suits your body? If it’s more the former, you may not be doing yourself any favours.

For instance, it’s frustrating that some people seem to be able to sleep for four hours and wake up with a spring in their step every morning, but we’re all different. Some of us need double that just to cope with the basics!

Before you scream with rage, there’s hope yet. With a bit of change and a better routine, you may find that you don’t need as much sleep as you think. Change the quality of the sleep you get, rather than increase the number of hours.

To get you there, take the Lifehack advice seriously, and check out these posts from TheUniversityBlog’s archives to get you buzzing when you’re awake and to calm you down when it’s time to snuggle under the covers:

Goodnight. Sleep tight!