Keeping it rolling. Okay, continuing.

Anyways, yes your body has an idea of what it should be doing. This is parallel to you being tired, if you're tired, something is wrong and adjustments should be made. Remember as well, for best results keep it consistent for a few nights. It was recommended to me to aim for around two weeks by a friend, but it is possible you could cover it in a bit less time.

My biggest takeaway is the importance of paying attention to what your doing and what the results are. This seems like a obvious principal. Can you really say you know when exactly you went to sleep and woke up 4 days ago? Pay attention to the signs and you'll have somewhere to start and narrow down the time range on how much sleep you think you need. Do things on purpose and pay attention is a great rule for this experiment and others.

I kept reading, and the factors that come into play for how much sleep you need is a bit extensive. Everything down to your body weight can impact this. With this new knowledge, It was only a matter of time before I stumbled upon a much better idea and question. The idea was once again that people still can sleep well without much factoring. As well as they have to be able to control more than just knowing the general time needed to sleep. This lead me to the question. What else can a person do to make sleep work for them? Quality control seemed to be the answer.

Thankfully, there are some things that generally just make sleep work better for the average person (factors aside). How you ever slept for 9 hours and felt awful? Have you ever slept 5 or 6 and felt just fine? This is what I am talking about. I am still investigating, but here are some tips that I have used the last few nights and noticed some positive difference.

• The feet get cold first, wear socks to bed
• Ironically the rest of the body likes cool temperature in the room, so crack a window
• Get a good stretch before bed (good to wake up in the morning as well)
• Do not expose your eyes to a computer or television screen up to a hour before bed (read a book)
• If you eat a snack before bed, make if protein, not sugar or grain
• Drink plenty of fluids a little over a hour before bed, than drink next to nothing to avoid waking in the middle of night or waking with a dry mouth.
• Keep your room as dark as possible

These have worked well for me. I also suggest looking into sleep cycles, I will be looking into it soon.