The Sleep Management Plan

So far this book has been very helpful to me. I have looked at several books related to sleeping. The ones I always found recommended sleeping at least 8 hours if not 10. I wanted a book that showed me how to sleep less. So far it is working. I am sleeping about an hour less per day. I've found out that just because I feel tired when I wake up does not necessarily mean I need more sleep. It's basically just a habit. The book pointed out an interesting fact, that our periods of deep sleep occur in the first 4 hours of our sleep cycle, not later. Also that sleep times is very much a societal thing. There is native culture in Africa that the men sleep on average only 3 to 4 hours per night and the women only a little more. Much of my sleep problems had to do with my beliefs about the need for sleep. This book presents lots of evidence that 8 hours of sleep may be too much. People with depression were put on a treatment of less sleep and it was an effective at reducing or eliminating their depression. There was also an interesting study done. They studied 3 groups of people and put them into an enviroment in which they had no way to tell what time it was. Each group slept 8 hours. But one group was told that they slept 6 hours, the second group was told they slept 10 hours and the third group was told they slept 8 hours. It turns out that all the groups reacted to what they were told about how much sleep they got rather than what was true. The people who were told they only slept 6 hours complained about being tired. This may show how much our beliefs about sleep affect our perceived need for sleep.

This book is excellent. It contained the information I was looking for. So many sleep books deal with insomnia and I'm not an insomniac. I wanted a book to help me get out of bed in the morning and this book has done it. I highly recommend this book.

This book is annoyingly written, and could be condensed, but I wasn't bothered by that.The point is that you can reduce the amount of sleep you get. My sleep schedule used to be all over the place. I'd sleep late on weekends, not be able to sleep during the week, and generally be tired.Now I've reduced my sleep needs by a little over an hour a night and I'm soon going to reduce it by more. I get up at the same (early) time every day and I have no problem sleeping at night.Sleeping is now a non-issue in my life. Imagine having an extra 7-14 hours in your week, being more alert and energetic, and never having insomnia. That's what this book did for me.