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Logan Wooldridge

Essential Tips for Improving Sleep Quality and Consistency

Updated: Dec 7, 2024




When was the last time you experienced a restful night's sleep and woke up feeling truly refreshed in the morning? If you're anything like me, it can be challenging to achieve either amidst the hustle and bustle of modern life. I only discovered many of these after dedicating several years to my training and nutrition, but I wish I had known them beforehand. It would have not only made it easier to adopt those habits initially but also to maintain them consistently. Studies on sleep have shown that it provides the following benefits:

  • Replenishing energy thereby ensuring optimal physical condition

  • Maintaining Synaptic Stability (providing a solid foundation for proper cognitive function)

  • Regulating one's immunity (decreasing the chances of falling ill)

  • Memory consolidation (which contributes to one's ability to learn new information & skills)

  • Removing neurotoxic waste

Here are my top tips to enhance your sleep quality at night, leading to improvements in various aspects of your health that can serve as a foundation for further progress in the future.


The most crucial aspect is the time you wake up. Regardless of your choice, it's important to maintain consistency. To facilitate this consistency, I like to factor in the time needed for my morning routine, then add my commute time to work, and finally include an extra half hour to an hour. Once you have calculated this total time, I set my wake-up time that many hours before the start of the workday. While the occasional day off should not disrupt the routine once established, until your chosen wake-up time becomes a habit that you naturally wake up around, it's advisable to aim for consistency every day, whether it's a workday or not. To solidify your new wake-up time, I find it beneficial to remain in bed even if I wake up early until the designated time.


Next is The environment you sleep in as it is these that are the easiest controllable variables that impact the quality and duration of sleep.

  • Light: Blocking out any street lights with blackout curtains, turning the cellphone upside down so the screen can't turn on and light up the room, not having a TV or clock in the room that uses a light are all things I do to make sure the room is as conducive to my rest as possible. When going to bed, I don't always notice the small lights such as those on a TV or from a digital clock, but when I wake up in the morning, it seems to be lighting up the room. So, we can imagine how it is impacting our ability to go to the deepest levels during our sleep cycles.

  • Sound: No noise is best if you can achieve it, but for a couple of reasons, it can be difficult. Perhaps you have a lot of traffic on a nearby street or have family members who need to be on a different wake/sleep schedule than yourself (no one can be silent all day every day). In such a case, as low-level noise as possible that gives your mind something to focus on can be very helpful. I have used multiple things before in exactly this way to help me deal with my own intrusive thoughts, such as audiobooks, speeches, nature sounds, or white/brown noise on YouTube, or calming familiar music.

  • Temperature: A cooler temperature in your room throughout the night has been shown to be associated with the onset of sleep. Studies have also shown that keeping the hands and feet warm helps in reaching the lower levels (Non-REM) of sleep. Personally, I have found that I actually sleep best in a warmer temperature, so give yourself some room to experiment if you find it useless or even counter-productive at first. My biggest caution here would be not to set the temperature at more than 80 degrees, not only as a personal opinion but also because it is the highest temperature at which those who perform studies on sleep say it is safe to sleep without possible repercussions.


Then we can dial in the duration of sleep every night. This often lies somewhere in the 6-9 hour range, but I have met, and read of others, who land on both extremes. My recommendation, as always, is to start with experimentation in the average at first to see what has you feeling the most rested the following morning. With that information, you can adjust your bedtime to your unique sleep needs.


And finally, we can begin to look at what we do leading up to sleep, what I refer to as a Winddown Routine. In practice, everything leading up to this will take at least a month, not just to do the first time but to spend the time necessary to ingrain them into your habitual sleep environment. So for now, let's just say we will work on reducing all those environmental factors not only when you sleep but also in the half-hour leading to it. We will cover "Building a Winddown Routine" in another post.


While keeping in mind that everything in life comes with ups and downs, here is an abbreviated form to make taking action a bit easier.

  1. Consistency in waking up time, even if you need to take a nap during your day or stay in bed for a bit before getting up.

  2. Control the sleep environment; it should be dark, quiet, and colder in the room than where you spend your day, but keep those hands and feet nice and warm.

  3. Experiment with sleep duration; most people should get between 6-9 hours.

  4. Establish a wind-down routine.

Don't forget to give it time to establish as a habit.


Finding the time to determine the initial step toward a healthier lifestyle can be challenging, but I trust this has simplified the process for you. Feel free to experiment with all the suggestions simultaneously or one by one. In any case, I hope this has provided you with ample food for thought and at least one idea to incorporate into your daily routine. Share your experience by leaving a comment, and visit our Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube channels for consistent content related to the health and wellness journey.


Wishing you progress on your path and health throughout your day.

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