This sleep tip is to “be unproductive”. This may sound strange. Because what does being unproductive have anything to do with sleep. The connection is the adrenal glands. And when the glands get tired, it is called adrenal fatigue. Adrenal fatigue can cause poor sleep. And poor sleep can cause adrenal fatigue. So it is a cycle. Once you have adrenal fatigue, it takes a long time to fully recover from it. And the first step in recovery is to get 8 or more hours of sleep.
Many people in modern life have adrenal fatigue and don’t know it. That because we taught to be as productive as possible — multitasking by checking email while in grocery line. Or they have too many tasks in their day that order online grocery delivery.
Our physiology is not meant to be always on the go-go-go. Look at animals, they always have a lot of leisure time where they don’t do anything at all. We as human animals should learn to do the same — that was actually how our physiology was built.
If you don’t learn to be unproductive, and if are 100% productive every minute of your waking hour, then you will eventually get adrenal fatigue, whose symptoms can be low blood pressure, low blood glucose at the middle of the night (causing wakening around 1am to 3am), or irregular cortisol profile (where high cortisol at night cause you not to be able to sleep).
From AdrenalFatigue.org…
“Waking between 1 AM and 3 AM may indicate low blood sugar resulting from inadequate glycogen reserves in the liver, low adrenal function and cortisol, or both. This is often the culprit when panic or anxiety attacks, nightmares, or fitful, restless sleep occur between 1 and 4 AM.”
and …
“When the adrenals fatigue, adrenal hormone levels may become low, leading to another possible source of nighttime sleep disruption – low blood sugar.”
Being unproductive is good for health as mentioned in the book The New Health Rules on page 181…
“If you are a very driven person who has no patience for an unproductive day, what you might really need is … an unproductive day. … If a whole day seems nuts, make it a couple of hours and do something that seems like a complete waste of time. Take an easy walk on flat ground, sit on the lawn with a book, or people-watch in a cafe”