Another barrier comes purely from within, however: what scholars call “ bedtime procrastination,” when we simply put off going to bed because we are doing other things that seem more important at night (but that we regret when it’s time to get up). If all of this seems obvious, why don’t we sleep more? Physical conditions, poor sleep hygiene, work, stress, and young kids are all common barriers to proper sleep. Sleep deprivation, however, lowers happiness by degrading emotional-memory recall and encouraging a scarcity mindset, pitting people against others.

Well-rested people are more social and have more positive emotional experiences with co-workers and romantic partners. residents found that people who increased their quantity of sleep over a four-year period got about the same happiness benefits as they would have from eight weeks of therapy, or from winning up to $280,000 in a lottery. One recent study of more than 30,000 U.K. I t is no major revelation to most people that adequate sleep improves well-being. Want to stay current with Arthur's writing? Sign up to get an email every time a new column comes out. And to do that, we need to stop seeing sleep as purely physiological and start considering its transcendent significance. Instead of worrying about how we can more efficiently induce sleep, we need to stop resisting it. And we Americans are not unusually afflicted-one 2016 study reported that worldwide, 10 to 30 percent of the population experiences insomnia some studies find rates as high as 50 to 60 percent.īut behind this torment resides an opportunity to increase our quality of life, if we can change our relationship with our slumbering selves. Insomnia affects between a third and a half of U.S.

It is easy to regard sleep as a torment: hard to attain and then hard to give up, day after day after day.Īccording to the CDC, about 70 million Americans have chronic sleep problems. When you should be sleeping, you want to be awake when you should be awake, you want to stay asleep. “ How to Build a Life ” is a weekly column by Arthur Brooks, tackling questions of meaning and happiness.į or many people, the cruelest part of daily life is the transition between wakefulness and sleep.

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