1. Sleep At Night
This is the most important (and time consuming) change you can make in your daily, ahem, nightly, routine that will sharpen your sword (your brain) and keep you energized longer throughout the day. It begins with getting to bed and turning out the lights at a similar time each night. When you sleep, your body and brain undergo important processes, like repair and recovery. There are four levels to a sleep cycle, and level 4, REM (Rapid Eye Movement) is the final and the most important for cognitive function: learning, concentrating and higher-level thinking. It takes 70-90 minutes after falling asleep to reach REM, and then that part of the sleep cycle lasts 90-110 minutes. Ideally, we’ll experience four sleep cycles a night, lasting about 90 minutes. Conservatively, that’s 6 hours once you fall asleep. Experts recommend adults get 7-9 hours a night. (Poll: How many hours a night do you get? Type your answer below.)