Have you ever heard the saying to get up on the wrong side of the bed? Of course, there isn’t a wrong side to your bed. In popular culture, it means you’re in a bad mood.
I used to hear that a lot. Not necessarily that I was in a bad mood, but I was definitely stressed, feeling overwhelmed, unmotivated, and lacking energy.
Why did I feel that way?
There were a lot of underlying causes for it, but it all came down to hitting the snooze button.
Because the way how you start your morning really matters. If you’re cutting your sleep time short, you’re tired and unmotivated to get up. And once you master to get up, after hitting the snooze button a few times, you think of ways to get back to sleep rather than meeting the day.
There is a relationship between hitting your snooze button, not getting up straight away, and your productivity.
In today’s blog post, I invite you to re-assess your relationship with your alarm clock and see how you can make it work more in your favour. After all, your wellbeing is important, and it shouldn’t be compromised.
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How To Be Productive
In today’s world being busy means being successful. We see it all the time, everyone is rushing everywhere, adding another task to our to-do list.
The need to be busy comes from within. It has a lot to do with what we regard as important, what gives us meaning, and how we define success.
But being busy for the sake of being busy, can have its pitfalls. Not only do we rush from place to place, not knowing where we are and what needs to be done next. But above all, we are not productive.
And that is a slippery slope to burnout. Why?
Because not all busy is productive.
That was a big eye-opener for me. I would have a long list of daily tasks, but I would rarely get to the bottom item! You may fill up your days with important commitments, but your efforts may not produce any real results.
Do you know that you don’t have to be busy, and you can still be productive? You don't have to tackle every item on your to-do to feel accomplished. There are ways you can elevate your productivity without the busyness and burnout.
It all starts with the snooze button in the morning.
To be productive means to match your time and energy you’ve got with the demands of your day. Because human nature is to evolve, you will always look for ways to fill up your days. In a way, you are your own source of creating tasks to complete.
To win the game, you can't jump from one chore to another, putting one fire after another. You need to become productive. But being productive doesn't come down to how well you can prioritise your to-do list, or how quickly you can accomplish your tasks.
There is one important element that cannot be overlooked. So, let’s have a look at what happens to your productivity when you hit the snooze button.
What Happens When You Hit the Snooze Button
We all know how important rest is. A good night's sleep can really do wonders for our body and mind. Sleep is the time when your body restores, repairs, and regenerates. During sleep, your body goes into an anabolic stage.
It means that your voluntary muscles stop performing their work and take their needed rest. All your systems, like for example immune, skeletal, or nervous, are being restored, your body tissues are being repaired and your bones are being rebuilt.
But sleep is also the time when your body balances hormones.
Two hormones are involved in the sleep cycle – melatonin and cortisol. Your brain starts producing melatonin (the sleep hormone) when it gets the signal that it’s dark and ready to go to sleep. When melatonin is in charge, cortisol (the stress hormone) goes down.
The balance between those two hormones is essential for your body to function properly. You may already start connecting the dots and recognising that if the level of cortisol is high, you have trouble falling asleep or even having a good night's sleep.
But you may still wonder how this all ties to hitting the snooze button and your productivity.
Well, sleep happens through stages and cycles. There are stages of non-REM and a stage of REM (rapid eye movement, the sleep of dream). Each sleep stage lasts 70 to 90 minutes. Once the cycle is completed, your body is ready to wake up.
So, when your alarm clock rings, it interrupts the sleep cycle. When the sleep cycle is interrupted, that’s it. If you go back to sleep, your body doesn’t carry on with the previous sleep cycle, it starts a new one.
This information is pivotal to understanding how your quality of sleep can be damaged if you hit the snooze button.
When the alarm rings and you won’t get up but go back to sleep, you’re telling your brain to start another sleep cycle. So, when your snooze rings five minutes later, your brain is foggy, and you feel more tired and confused.
And when you get up, feeling like that, you don’t feel like being productive.
Get up When the Alarm Rings
Sleep is one of the most important processes your body performs. Your body and mind need to function properly, to produce energy for you to meet the demands of your days. But if you skip sleep time, and get your cortisol levels high, your body can’t go through the process to restore itself.
Because sleep happens in cycles, you want your body to complete a full cycle and get up before another one starts. Interrupting a sleep cycle is not ideal, but signaling your brain to start another one, because you hit the snooze button can cause even more damage.
When you start your day, feeling tired, unmotivated, and lacking energy, it’s hard to get excited about the tasks you have planned for the day and your productivity suffers.
The relationship between your alarm clock and your productivity may be one of the most important relationships you have. And the beauty is that you are fully in control of the quality of this relationship.
So, how will you feel if you get up when the alarm rings?
Join my newsletter to get the latest action steps on how to eat a healthy plant-based diet, de-stress, manage your time better, prioritize yourself, and anything in between so that you INCREASE your energy, SAVE time, and INVEST well in your wellness!
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