#DONT SLEEP YOU GOTTA STAY UP HOW TO#

You’ll be feeling very groggy just after waking up - this is something researchers call sleep inertia - but after 20 or 30 minutes, the fog will clear a bit. (For reference: One eight-ounce cup of regular coffee has about 100 milligrams of caffeine.) Use it wisely. Experts recommend no more than 400 milligrams of caffeine a day. It’s exactly like the snooze button,” Buxton said.Īlso: Have (a little) caffeine. “The junk will help, but only for about 20 minutes. Stick to whole grains, protein, maybe a little fruit. “Anything that causes that sugar spike and insulin spike is followed by a crash, so it’s going to make you more sleepy later,” he said.

Like with your snooze button, you’re going to have to exercise some willpower here, too sleepy people tend to crave simple carbs and sugar, Buxton says, but those are a bad bet for the sleep-deprived. Research suggests that eating within an hour of waking up will boost your mood and cognitive performance for the early part of your day. You’d do better to set your alarm for the latest possible moment - when you actually have to get out of bed and start getting yourself together - in order to get the most sleep possible.ħ:30 a.m.: Eat breakfast. “Don’t insult yourself like that.” It feels good in the moment, but those nine-minute extra increments of dozing aren’t actually restorative sleep and won’t make you any more alert. No snooze,” says Orfeu Buxton, a professor in the division of sleep medicine at Harvard Medical School. But, very broadly speaking, here’s the best way to structure a sleepy day so you can make it to the end.ħ a.m.: Your alarm goes off. Maybe not all of their advice will directly apply to you, because you work nights, or you work from home, or you work extremely long days. (It’s true that some people, known as short sleepers, can thrive on just four or five hours of sleep a night, but as this group accounts for just 1 to 3 percent of the population, it’s highly unlikely that you’re one of them!) Still, the scientists we spoke to acknowledged, sleepless nights happen, and sometimes they happen to busy people who’ve got stuff to do the next day.Ĭonsider this a customizable template. Each of them wanted to be incredibly clear, up front, about this: You really, really need seven to eight hours of sleep to function like a proper human being.

#DONT SLEEP YOU GOTTA STAY UP HOW TO#

The Cut talked to sleep researchers to figure out how to get through a day after you’ve had a sleepless night. You’d like nothing more than to go back to bed, but you’ve got a long day of work staring you in the face. Photo: JGI/Jamie Grill/Getty Images/Tetra images RF

Dont sleep you gotta stay up