The Number One Secret To Sleep That No One Tells You

On average, you sleep 7 hours and 50 minutes per night. Considering that life expectancy for countries in the Western world is about 80 years—you’ll spend 26.6 years of your life asleep.

That’s almost 1/3 of your time on this planet. And yet, we feel tired so often. Just look at the person sitting next to you at the office, on the couch, or at Starbucks.

Sleep plays a big role in our lives—we depend on it. Have you ever had a bad day and said it was because of a lack of sleep? It sucks.

That’s why we’re obsessed with ‘sleep hacks’ and listicles that promise us to sleep like a third grader that has nothing to worry about.

For the past 12 months, I’ve experimented with many things that should improve your life — one of the aspects that I focused on was sleep.

I’ve kept a spreadsheet since January of this year—every day I write down what time I went to sleep and woke up. I also rate my energy level during the day on a 1–10 scale.

On my scale, a 1 means doing absolutely nothing but eating and drinking. A 10 means doing 10 hours of focused work and 2 hours of exercise while traveling to the other side of the world (this almost never happens).

When I started, most days were a 6 — that means about 4–5 hours of real work, browsing the web, reading news articles, checking my social media accounts, watching TV, hanging out. Pretty average stuff.

I asked myself, “How can I become an 8 every single day?” I’d rather be an 8 every single day than to be a 5 one day, and a 10 the other—consistency is my goal.

An 8 for me means 5–6 hours of productive work, 1–2 hours of exercise, and being in a good mood all day.

I started by doing research on the web. I found dozens of articles with advice that everyone kept repeating.

So let’s talk about what DIDN’T have an effect on the quality of my sleep and energy level.