I know that the one area of my life that I can most improve is sleep. I tend to sleep 5-6 hours a night when it should be at least 7 hours. For years I’ve convinced myself that I don’t need a lot of sleep, that I’m one of those rare few people who can live on less sleep than most people. It’s a nice narrative to have, but I’m really starting to question if this is true.

My Garmin watch consistently rates my sleep as ‘Poor’ with feedback like this:

“Shorter than ideal, not enough REM

You slept a bit less than recommended, and your amount of REM sleep was low. You may feel more tired or moody today.”

In the last 4 weeks I have had 15 days with a sleep score under 60 and only 2 days with a score over 80. Those are not numbers to be proud of.

And yet I still go to bed later than I should, and on days when I do get to bed early, I’ll often wake up an hour before my alarm and sleep poorly until my alarm goes off. I don’t know what I’m going to do differently, but what I can’t do is pretend that this is good enough. I spend so much time trying to take care of my body, I need to make sure a good night’s sleep is part of that routine.