Getting a Full Nights Sleep

Many of my students (and colleagues) struggle to get a full nights sleep. As great as it is to live in a time of the internet and social media, it does mean that sometimes time escapes from me and before I know it... I've spent three hours blog hopping.

These are three websites that I suggest to my students (and friends) that may help you get some more shut eye.

In my study skills classes we are talking about how to study without distractions and http://www.getcoldturkey.com/ came up. Students can use it to set times where social media is “blocked.” For example, they can set 6:00pm-8:00pm as their homework time and have Facebook, Twitter, and 9gag blocked.  

To be honest, I find that site a bit cumbersome, and personally I use minutesplease.com/5minutes/facebook.com as a way to, “reward” myself when grading without worrying about getting sucked in. You just put how many minutes you want to visit a site and then the site name and it will open a window that is only open for that long. So, minutesplease.com/15minutes/gmail.com puts me on my personal gmail for 15 minutes and then closes the window. This is great if you want to do something like put aside 10 minutes every morning to read news. This lets you stick to that limit without getting sucked into the internet for too long.

Not all of us are night owls

On another note, I’ve had some students complain that working on the computers at night keeps them up. It's true, the light of a computer screen messes with your brain's natural clock. Luckily, https://justgetflux.com/ is a nice download. It works with your time zone to change your screen's lighting based on the sun. In layman's terms, When the sun has set it uses warmer colors that don’t mess with your body as much and let you go to sleep more easily.

Finally, I occasionally rock http://sleepyti.me/ This site helps you find the ideal time to fall asleep. The idea is that we sleep in cycles that normally last about 90 minutes. When we wake up in the middle of a cycle, we feel like we didn't sleep well. The calculator lets us find the best times to fall asleep so that we can wake up at the end of a cycle. This way even if you don't get as much sleep as you would like, you won't wake up feeling like you slept badly. 

What about you? Any great sites you use to limit time online or help your body go to sleep faster?