For a number of my students every year, one of the first things I have to do is to make sure they are sleeping properly. The signs are easy to recognise: when they are trying to solve a particular problem (let’s say, figuring out how to respond to a question), their eyes sometimes glaze over. Sometimes they blink and keep their eyes closed a beat too long. Sometimes their eyes are red the moment I see them.
Students with sleep issues can often be very high-performing students, but the fact is, they could perform much better if they were sleeping better. Some poorly performing students can even make a jump in their academic performance just by being more mindful of their sleep. In fact, I am willing to bet that when they become more disciplined about their sleep, their lives get better in general.
I’ve written about sleep before, but this is such an important issue, that I feel the need to write about it again. To be perfectly honest, I sometimes suffer from insomnia — I’ve been calling myself a semi-regular insomniac for years. In the last month, I’ve actually had a number of weeks of bad sleep, to the point where I realised that I had to deal with it head-on. In the past, my go-to solution had been to go to my doctor for sleeping pills, but this time I wanted to get to the root of the issue. I wanted to really understand why I was feeling and sleeping so badly.
It was therefore with immense pleasure that I found The Sleep Solution by W. Chris Winter, a specialist sleep doctor. The science he presents in this book has been so helpful to me, I’ve been recommending it to my friends and family (particularly those who complain about not being able to sleep). It’s an added plus that Winter writes with a conversational tone that is often laugh-out-loud funny, even if some of his jokes can fall a little flat.
You can read a review of the book here, and you can check the availability of the book at the NLB (Singapore) here. People who have an NLB Overdrive account can get the book here (but most of you should go with the physical book since comprehension tends to be higher).
If you’re a parent or student dealing with sleep issues, go read the book. Well, if you’re human, just read it anyway. You’ll feel better. I’m not even finished with it, and I’m sleeping better already — I’ve even let go of my identity as a “semi-regular insomniac”. It’s that good.