00:00:00:11 – 00:00:27:19
Speaker 1
Welcome back. I’m Kate from Psych for Life®. The first step in getting enough sleep is knowing how much sleep is enough. Up until 20, 15. The National Sleep Foundation had very strict guidelines. And now they’ve switched to providing ranges. Some adults need around 6 hours, where others need up to nine to function at an optimal level. Everyone is different.

00:00:28:08 – 00:00:57:02
Speaker 1
I know that if I get less than 7 hours of sleep, I’ll have brain fog and I won’t have a lot of energy the next day. But how can we figure out our optimal sleep range? Well, it turns out the best tool for doing that is keeping a simple sleep diary. A study by Rogers Caruso and Aldrich found that keeping track of your sleep wake patterns in the sleep diary was actually as effective as the most sophisticated tool out there.

00:00:57:02 – 00:01:25:17
Speaker 1
A Polysomnography to monitor sleep So what is a sleep diary? It’s pretty simple. It’s a journal where you keep track of things like when you fell asleep and woke up. If you took a nap during the day, how much caffeine and alcohol you consumed and how much exercise you got, and whether or not you felt sleepy in this video will guide you through the process of starting and maintaining a sleep diary.

00:01:25:23 – 00:01:30:11
Speaker 1
And don’t worry, you don’t need any fancy equipment, just a notebook and something to write with.

00:01:35:02 – 00:01:58:19
Speaker 1
As you watch this video. Consider writing out your responses in a notebook or close your eyes and picture yourself writing down your responses in your head. Keep in mind, there are no wrong answers here. The goal is to assess our sleep so we can improve. We’ve provided a sleep diary template that you can either print or copy into your notebook.

00:01:59:09 – 00:02:22:18
Speaker 1
Here’s a list of all of the questions. And then we’ll talk through them one at a time. Here are the questions you’ll fill out in the morning. The morning questions are reflecting on the night before. What time did you go to sleep? How long did it take for you to fall asleep? What time did you wake up How would you rate the quality of your sleep?

00:02:23:17 – 00:02:52:11
Speaker 1
Was your sleep interrupted? How many times? Here are the questions. You’ll fill out before you go to bed. How would you rate your energy levels today? Did you take a nap? When did you consume caffeine? Today. Did you consume any alcohol after 6 p.m.? Did you exercise today? And if so, for how long? Since this is the first day, we’ll be filling out the entire template.

00:02:52:17 – 00:03:09:01
Speaker 1
But going forward, you’ll answer the first five questions in the morning and the rest before you go to bed. You might just want to keep your diary next to your bed so you can spend about 30 seconds in the morning answering the questions. So let’s start with today’s date.

00:03:11:06 – 00:03:28:08
Speaker 1
We’re going to be doing this over a period of ten days. So you want to be tracking the individual dates. If ten days sounds like a long time to be doing this, knowing that the reason we need that much data is so we can start to see patterns. And also keep in mind, this takes one minute per day.

00:03:28:14 – 00:03:56:08
Speaker 1
I’m writing it down in my work notebook, so it’s not something separate I need to find. So let’s start with. What time did you go to sleep And a little note on this one. It’s super common for us to get in bed and then start doing other things at times. Maybe we’re reading, maybe we’re scrolling social media. So if I got in bed at 10 p.m. and scrolled social media until 11, the time I need to write down is 11.

00:03:57:00 – 00:03:58:03
Speaker 1
Go ahead and write your answer.

00:04:02:21 – 00:04:21:16
Speaker 1
The next part is how long it took us to fall asleep. That’s the time you spend lying in bed waiting for sleep to come. I was so tired last night, it felt like I was asleep when my head hit the pillow. So I’m going to write down one minute Go ahead and write your answer.

00:04:26:08 – 00:04:50:12
Speaker 1
For what time did you wake up? You’ll want to put the time that you actually got out of bed in the morning. So for me, last night, my alarm was set for six 15 this morning, but because I stayed up late, I ended up hitting snooze twice. So I need to write down that I actually got out of bed at six 35 Also, as we’ll see a leader videos, ideally we want to avoid hitting the snooze button.

00:04:51:08 – 00:05:06:03
Speaker 1
The next question is how many times your sleep was interrupted over the course of the night? For me last night I woke up to my dog itching one time. So I’m going to write down one and I’m going to write down the reason why dog itching this happens all the time.

00:05:08:10 – 00:05:26:11
Speaker 1
I know for me a lot of times my kids call out to me during the night. So we work overtime. Track the reasons our sleep is getting interrupted so we can pay attention to our environment. And determine what we can control. I’ve captured my information for the day. Part of why we write this down is because we know everyone’s different.

00:05:26:18 – 00:05:32:05
Speaker 1
When we capture these trends for our self, we understand how they’re specifically impacting us.

00:05:35:10 – 00:05:57:10
Speaker 1
Now, let’s move on to the evening diary. This is the part that you will normally do right before you go to bed. And an assessment of how you felt during the day. First, we’ll want to track your energy levels. Go ahead now and think about your energy levels. How are you feeling right now?

00:05:59:13 – 00:06:25:05
Speaker 1
How have you felt throughout the day? Completely out of it. A little bit higher or wide awake. Today I was a little bit tired. I kind of felt like I was dragging. And I know why I stayed up too late last night. So I’m going to be writing down slightly tired. Next is, did you nap? That’s a yes or no question.

00:06:25:16 – 00:06:45:19
Speaker 1
If you did nap, you want to track for how long? I rarely have time to nap. And I do notice when I do, it kind of interrupts my sleep. So I’m going to write no nap. The next two questions are about caffeine. And alcohol consumption. I had two cups of coffee in the morning and none in the afternoon.

00:06:47:20 – 00:07:13:01
Speaker 1
Did you have any coffee or soda yesterday? If so, when and how much? We know that coffee tends to interrupt our sleep. But did you know that alcohol does too? We tend to think of alcohol is making us slightly sleepy, but it tends to interrupt our sleep, which is why we generally want to avoid consuming alcohol after 6 p.m..

00:07:13:13 – 00:07:38:18
Speaker 1
I did have one glass of wine while my friend was over and it was after 6 p.m.. I’m to write down one glass of wine Finally, we’re going to capture our exercise. I went for a 30 minute run so write that down. If you track your stats, you might want to look that up and write down how many steps you got.

00:07:39:01 – 00:08:03:12
Speaker 1
Or if you don’t track your steps, you might write down what type of exercise and the duration. I’ve captured my information for the day. Part of why we write this down is because we know everyone’s different. When we capture these trends for ourselves, we understand how they’re specifically impacting us. Well, now we filled out the sleep diary. We’re going to track our sleep this way for ten days.

00:08:03:17 – 00:08:15:03
Speaker 1
That way we can see what our patterns are and where we need to improve. While you’re doing that, go ahead and check out our next video for an overview of tips on how to improve your sleep. See you there.