Maintain a 8-hour sleep every night

I’m pretty sure that this issue has been mentioned A LOT of times before by a lot of people, but as teenagers, we tend to ignore this. Because of this, today we are going to talk about this thing - and based on the title, you might have been able to know what I’m talking about here: I’m talking about sleep! As high schoolers where we are maturing both physically and mentally, it is extremely crucial that we are getting an adequate amount of sleep. And by this, I don’t mean 6 hours or something like that - what I mean is from 8 to 10 hours! I know this may sound a bit insane, and you guys may be asking me: “Bach, that’s impossible! Do you know that I actually have a lot of work to do?” I know this too well, you guys - we all have different ambitions and things to do in a day - but remember, at the end of the day, sleep is something that you can’t just ignore! Try to sleep for less than 6 hours for at least 5 days in a row, and you will know the direct consequences of doing this - every moment in the day, you are always being tired, and you won’t be able to focus and do work effectively! Because of this, I find it very crucial that we are actually talking about how we can both manage the workload that we are having, while having the time to rest - and by that, I mean at least 8 full hours!

First and foremost, I need you guys to remember one thing - adequate sleep is very important! The reason that I will need to emphasize this over and over again is because a lot of the time, high schoolers may be ignoring the importance of sleep - “I have a lot of work to do, and by the way, how does a long sleep differ from a shorter sleep: I’m not sleeping for only 2 hours or something”. But again, with the reasons that I have explained above, the amount of sleep can have numerous impacts in the long term as well. I actually know a person, who in his childhood studied a lot (he is a lot older than me by the way), and he was very smart. When he got older, he did manage to get a job with a high salary, but then since he didn’t sleep much in his earlier years, he always felt not that “strong” and energetic, and he rarely can do heavy workouts. I know that we are not really seeing the benefits of adequate sleep yet, but truly, it is a very important component of life - it affects how the body functions as a whole. Because of this, please always remind yourself of this fact.

One tip that I would like to share to you guys about managing sleep time is to create your schedule. Typically, we would note everything we want to do, and then add them into your timetable, right? But this way, we are not really caring for our sleep - you may say to yourself “Ooh, when I’m done with everything, it will be 1 in the morning. Okay fine, but then I want everything to be finished, so let’s do it that way”. Because of this, I would like to tell you guys about something that my school counselor (also my club supervisor) has said in regards to this issue - she told me that let’s plan the schedule in the opposite way, by setting your sleeping time first, and then work your schedule backwards. This way, we can achieve three things: first, we can plan our time more logically and effectively - by challenging ourselves to do a number of things in a limited amount of time, we can make better decisions with our plan. Secondly, this can prevent wasted time - we don’t have much time, so we must do the best with it, right? But the important thing to note here is that we must follow this plan - remember, determination to actually try to sleep earlier is the only way that we can achieve this goal. And lastly, when you don’t have much time to do every single thing, it’s likely that you’ll be rethinking about your decisions of what you are doing. By being aware that there are certain things in your to-do list that are actually not that important, you can omit them and focus on more important things. In turn, this will make these works more high-quality: remember, quality is always better than quantity!

For another bonus tip: if you can’t try to sleep the whole 8 hours in a night (probably because you live from the school and have to catch the school bus early on), try to have some naps at noon. You may not not realize the importance of this, but naps, even those that are only 10 minutes, can heighten your energy level by a significant amount, which can make you become more productive in the morning. And in this small chunk of time, you don’t even have to sleep - all you need to do is to relax and let all that stress, whatever that is, go out of your mind for a while!