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Sleep. Shut-eye. Zzzzzs. Dudus....
Whatever you want to call it, humans (and other apes) need it, and a lot of us don't get enough of it.
There is a huge amount that we don't actually know about sleep but the current recommendations are 7-9 hours of quality sleep per night. This varies with age (younger people tend to need more and older people tend to need less) and with individual differences (some people are perfectly happy on 4hrs of sleep, some need a good 8hrs to be happy) but it's a good goal to aim for, even if you are someone who feels they don't NEED 7-9hrs.
How to improve sleep duration?
When you are sleeping you go through cycles, from light sleep (stage 1) to deep sleep (stage 3). The deeper stages of sleep are what let you feel refreshed and restored the next morning. These cycles (1-3) repeat throughout the night taking roughly 90minutes to go through a full cycle. The thing is, the stages change duration with each cycle. The early cycles tend to experience longer periods of deep sleep, while the subsequent cycles have more and more light sleep and spend less time in the restorative deep sleep.
This shift of the sleep cycles also ties in to our natural circadian rhythm so to a certain extent, the later you sleep, the lighter you sleep!
All this means that if you want to increase your sleep duration, it is a good idea to try go to sleep earlier, rather than sleep in later. How to improve sleep quality?
Most people can identify with having periods of terrible sleep quality. Ignoring external circumstances like a new puppy or baby or massive stress, there are some things we can do to improve our sleep quality:
Obvious things:
Avoid Caffeine or Alcohol from about 4hrs before bedtime. Caffeine is stimulant and alcohol definitely impacts on the sleep cycle....You may be "passed out" more than asleep ;)
Keep your room dark. Duh.
More "Primal" techniques:
Try to stick to a routine. This goes for going to bed, and for waking up. Humans tend to need some form of routine to stick to and the circadian/Day-night rhythm is one of the strongest evolutionary rhythms we have, so taking advantage of it instead of working against it is a good idea. Try to go to bed at roughly the same time every night and wake up at roughly the same time in the morning. Eventually you probably wont even need your alarm clock. Also try to start settling down in the hours leading up to bedtime. Try not to overstimulate the brain or get started with a new project.
Avoid artificial light as the evening moves on. Obviously we can't go completely caveman and just go off to bed as soon as the sun goes down, but picking a time an hour or 2 before bedtime to start reducing the amount of light, and especially harsh blue light from LED's, TV's, phones etc lets your brain slip back into that circadian rhythm and realise it's sleepy time. (Personally i've noticed when staying at off the grid cabins with no electricity and only candle light, by 8:30PM I am STRUGGLING to keep my eyes open. At home in the city I'm barely aware it's dark outside at that time)
Keep it cool. This may seem weird to some people but you sleep better being slightly cold than slightly hot. There are actually cooling pads, the opposite of electric blankets available if this is a problem for you!
Make your bedroom only for sleep (or 1 other thing :P ). Try to avoid watching TV, working or
sitting on your phone before trying to fall asleep. You KNOW that getting into a heated Twitter war right before trying to sleep is a bad idea, but we all do it still!!
(I'm not a fan of taking any sort of medication for sleep, but Magnesium supplementation can be very calming and can definitely help some people, with very little fear of side effects.)
All in all Sleep can be something that many of us neglect because it may not be as important as nutrition or exercise, but the negative effects of bad sleep slowly but surely add up and dodgy sleep patterns could be something that's holding you back when you seem to have everything else dialled. Sleep also plays a huge role in overall stress management, and I'm not sure there's anybody who lives in a modern city who couldn't do with better stress management!
Be kind to yourself, realise that sleep is an important part of working hard and doing your best, so why not try to improve it!?