If You Get Less Than Six Hours of Sleep Per Night, You’re Average

If you're getting 7 or 8 hours of sleep per night, you're totally hitting the jackpot.  Most of us are getting quite a bit less than that, and we're having more nap failures than nap successes too.  

If sleep is supposed to be a natural part of life, it sure seems like it should be easier to get, right?  But we have lives and stress and piles of laundry that can keep us up, not to mention phones that we intend to check real quick before getting into bed and then we end up on Tinder til midnight.  And then a child has a nightmare or throws up and more sleep is lost than gained.

The amount of sleep we get each night is decreasing overall, according to a new survey from Mattress Firm.  The poll said we averaged five and a half hours per night in 2019, compared to six hours and seventeen minutes in 2018.  And, on average, we had 105 terrible nights of sleep in 2019 compared to 99 the previous year.

Do you ever try to take a nap?  I can't do it, but I am in awe if you can shut your brain off and just conk out in the middle of the day like that.  I will lay there for twenty minutes and almost drift off, and at that point, I realize I might have some small nap success and I actually get excited about it, and that jolt of energy wakes me up.  It's so dumb, I can't even.  So I give up and get up and continue to wonder how nappers do it.

People took 115 naps last year, but also reported an average of 102 failures where they laid down, but couldn’t fall asleep.  Good for them for really giving it a good go, and trying more than a hundred times to make it happen.  That is some serious nap ambition.

The secret to success in all of this is probably finding our own personal sweet spots, and guarding that time like crazy.  Some people function best on six hours of sleep and eight makes them feel drugged.  If I get six and a half or seven I feel like a million bucks and any more than that makes me feel like I've wasted the day.  Whatever works.  And then there's the challenge of making it happen every night without a child's nightmare or a dog's dry heave waking us up.

Does thinking about this make you tired?  Maybe it's time to try that nap again...