How to Manage Your Sleep During Exams?

Exams can be a daunting period for students and might take a toll during these stressful times. We’ve all gone through this test in life. It can be pretty sweet at times and again rough enough to make people lose their sleep. Nobody can feel better than a student how the pressurized exam schedules can cripple a healthy sleeping schedule. Sleepiness and laziness are the greatest evils that a student has to deal with during study hours.

However, To beat this devil the first thing that should be remembered is to get a night of sound sleep and become totally relaxed, physically as well as mentally.
A bare minimum of 6 hours of sleep is a compulsion and necessary to keep one's body and brain healthy and in control.

How to manage your sleep during exams?

• Chained to the rhythm- Nothing is more powerful than the art of discipline and consistency, especially for the students striving to do better. Similar to their academics it is equally important to have a scheduled dose of bedtime. The ancient proverb “Early to bed early to rise…” happens to be a phenomenally powerful mantra. Students, especially during their exams, tend to study overnight in order to cope with the syllabus but feel tired and exhausted in real time. Our brain needs proper time to accumulate and assimilate the information we absorb, so studying too much a day before does little good. Rather a good night’s sleep can boost your performance to the optimum, to deliver whatever is already learned to the best of your capacity.
• Make the environment- Whether you are studying, eating, or even sleeping it is extremely important to have a suitable environment. Many students with otherwise healthy schedules tend to get disruptive about their sleep during exam time. Sometimes all you need to do to correct things going wrong in life is just a change of environment. Keep your room cool, dark, and quiet. Exposure to light before bedtime might make it more difficult to fall asleep. Avoid prolonged use of light-emitting screens like smartphones or the computer just before bedtime, even for revision purposes. Use deeper shades of soothing color, soundproof windows, and panes in case you live in a clamorous area use a fan or other devices to create an environment that suits your needs.
  
• Kill the silence- Sometimes we find great difficulty in focusing on our studies or getting proper rest even though there is no proper reason for the disturbance. Studies show that an absolute mute environment can be as uncomfortable as an extremely boisterous one. Try using the Humming sound of a fan or some light, preferably a non-lyrical piece of music in order to kill the absolute silence.
• Contemplate thy plate- For getting a good rest it is extremely important to have the proper meal prior to your bedtime. Eating anything too spicy or tangy, consumption of processed foods, or even eating too much of anything, can totally disrupt the rest that a student requires. Spicy and processed foods contained complicated hydrocarbons which can be difficult to process for the body, moreover, the digestion process involving complex exothermic reactions also increases the temperature of the body making one feel sick and uncomfortable at night.
• Cut the caffeine- Chemically the compound caffeine behaves as a central nervous system stimulant. When it reaches the brain, the most noticeable external effect is increased awareness. People feel more alert and less tired, so it is often used as an ingredient in medications to treat or manage drowsiness, headaches, and migraines. Apart from medicines caffeine is also included in soft drinks such as coca cola and obviously in coffee. Many students use coffee to keep themselves awake till late at night often before the day of the exam, which often results in fewer hours of poor-quality sleep. Reducing or cutting off the caffeine intake before the day of the exam is highly recommended in order to have chemically stable and sober nerves for a peaceful bedtime.
  
• Cleanse thy mind- There is often a typhoon roaring in the mind of a student before the exams. From their personal preparation to the fear of failure, being judged, parental pressure, etc. But all these “What-ifs'' do not benefit the individual in any specific way other than bringing down the performance. Before going to sleep one must have a calm and clear mind, worry no further about what is to come, focus more on the present and feel confident about their preparation. Studying for hours the days before the exam often makes the student inculcate far less knowledge and only builds up stress and anxiety, which in turn gravely affects the student’s performance in the exam. It is very important to eat and study light but sleep tight to give the optimum effort in our exam.
• Unleash the power of forty-winks- Make sure that you only have a short nap for around half an hour which will keep your brain active whilst you are revising! Researchers have found that studying for short periods works best. Allowing yourself to keep focused for hours and hours just doesn't work and your brain stops absorbing the information after a certain period of time which makes you forget what you read. Often when studying for long hours throughout the day, it becomes extremely monotonic and the mind gets distracted. It is really helpful to take half an hour to an hour’s worth of a short nap to recharge and refresh the mind while staying away from electronic media devices.
  
• Demolish the screen- Totally avoid any kind of electronic media device such as smartphones, laptops etc. as the LCD screen emits radiations which when our eyes are exposed to can make the brain think that it is daytime, thereby making the nerves more active, and causing difficulty in falling asleep. Using books and notes before bedtime is way better and safer when quality sleep is the target.
• Be the monk- The ancient Indian invention of yoga is highly effective when one has to achieve a calm passive mind. Using yoga and the Sanskrit mantras before going to bed and after one can not only get the finest quality of sleep but get a mindful mind to focus on academics way better, also.