Good morning, guys.
Man, I feel like that guy from those YouTube commercials.
"Look at my car.
"What's more important than my car is books."
Oh, there's just a bike.
So it's four am, and I'm running on very little sleep
because I am headed down to the airport to go to VidCon,
which is awesome.
My flight is at six am.
That is self-imposed torture,
so I can only blame myself for it.
But I am running on very little sleep because of it,
so I figured why not do a quick video on sleep?
Now, if you've been watching my channel
for any length of time,
you probably know that I advocate getting up
at a specific time of morning.
I personally like getting up early
because it gives me time to go through a morning routine,
but I mainly just recommend getting up a consistent time
so you have a sleep schedule.
Now a lot of people will say,
"This is cool and all,
"but how do I reconcile this with my desire
"to go out and party
"and stay up 'til three am every weekend?
"How do I get up early on the weekdays,
"but then, you know,
"deal with that on a weekend?
"Should I still get up at the same time
"and just take the hit to my sleep schedule?"
And some people have an even more legitimate reason for this
where they have inconsistent work schedules.
Their boss is scheduling them at all hours of the day,
and they don't really know when
they're gonna be scheduled until maybe
a couple of days beforehand.
So, here's the quick answer to the question,
"How do I deal with a lack of a sleep schedule?"
Tip number one, this is the big tip, be young.
(laughs)
This comes from a lot of personal experience.
I know for a fact that when I was 18 years old
I could deal with getting three hours of sleep in a night.
I could deal with a completely hectic,
erratic sleep schedule.
It was all hunky-dory.
I could, you know, bounce back from it
within a matter of hours, and I was good.
Maybe some coffee.
Now that I'm 24 years old,
I know for a fact that my body's ability
to adapt to a hectic sleep schedule
or a lack of sleep,
is majorly diminished.
I need my hours of sleep,
and I do better when I have a sleep schedule.
That being said, the hours of sleep you get
are far more important than the sleep schedule.
Now if you look at the National Sleep Foundation's data
on the hours of sleep that people should get on average
for certain age ranges,
between the ages of 18 and 25
it's between seven and nine hours.
Some people can deal with six,
some people need 10 to 11,
so it's very variable, very dependent on the person,
but on average it's that seven to nine hour range.
So regardless of what schedule you have,
even if it's weird, even if it's erratic,
you wanna be sure you've got that seven to nine hours,
even if that means on the weekend mornings,
if you stay out and party, or you have to work,
get up later on,
that way you're getting those hours of sleep.
I'm actually taking a course right now on Coursera
called Learning How to Learn.
And one of the videos, they talk about how sleep actually
reduces the size of your brain cells
and allows your brain to flush toxins out
that are generated when you're thinking
and conscious during the day.
So sleep is very, very important,
and I actually wanna talk more about sleep on this channel,
so I'll be doing some more research,
but basically, get sleep,
and make sure you're getting those recommended
number of hours.
That being said, the importance of a sleep schedule
is for a few reasons.
Number one, a sleep schedule allows you to
basically get your body's internal clock
to be regulated.
And what that does is it helps you fall asleep more quickly,
it gets you on a more consistent schedule,
it makes sure that when you wake up in the morning
at a consistent time you are more energized,
you're basically tuning your body to waking up
at that specific time,
which lets you get into the flow of your day easier.
So, essentially, you need to work within the parameters
that your life has set for you.
And oops, I had a light go off.
Well, I guess I'm not really caring too much
(laughing) about the technical aspects of this video.
It's just a time constraint I suppose.
But yeah, work within those constraints, you know.
Your fundamentals are the hours of the sleep you're getting.
And after that, you can work to tweak other aspects
of your sleep experience to make it better.
So, maybe you can't be super consistent
about a routine,
but what you can do is make sure you're
not reading in bed,
or looking at your phone in bed,
exposing your eyes to blue light,
which is in the daylight spectrum,
doing things that don't keep your body consistent
with a sleep experience of bed.
So make sure your bed,
the only context of your bed is sleep context.
That'll allow you to fall asleep easier and faster.
And then also, if you can,
maybe try staying out less late on weekends,
or try getting a job with more consistent hours,
or talking to you boss about your sleep schedule.
Who knows, maybe they'll be pretty accommodating.
So anyway, I'm gonna echo edit this video
while I'm on the plane,
hopefully catch some Z's when I'm done editing it,
and then have fun at VidCon.
So hey, if you're gonna be at VidCon,
I'll be there all weekend.
I'm on Twitter @TomFrankly.
You can tweet me up if you want to meet me
if you happen to be there.
Otherwise, next week I've got an excellent video coming.
It's gonna be much better filmed than this one,
and it's got a lot of editing in it.
That's the reason it's not out this week
is 'cause VidCon has cut all my editing time.
So, hopefully this has helped you in some way,
and I'll see you next week.
(bright techno music)