前言

英文原文由Darius Foroux发布在The Bolg Of Darius Foroux中，我在Medium中看到这篇文章，下附原文链接：
Meduim link：https://link.medium.com/lbB3TSHGwY
中文翻译为博主自主翻译，若有不足之处，恳请在评论中指出。

正文

On average, you sleep 7 hours and 50 minutes per night. {{Considering : 考虑到}} that life {{expectancy : 期待}} for countries in the Western world is about 80 years — you’ll spend 26.6 years of your life asleep.
你平均每天睡眠7小时50分钟。考虑到西方世界的平均寿命大约是80岁。你的一生将花费26.6年的时间在睡眠。

That’s almost 1/3 of your time on this planet. And yet, we feel tired so often. Just look at the person sitting next to you at the office, on the couch, or at Starbucks.
这几乎是你在这个行星上1/3的时间。然而，我们常常感觉很疲惫。只要看看坐在办公室，沙发或星巴克里的人。

Sleep plays a big role in our lives — we depend on it. Have you ever had a bad day and said it was because of a lack of sleep? It {{sucks : 糟透了}}. That’s why we’re {{obsessed : 痴迷}} with sleep hacks and {{listicles : 点列式文章}} that promise us to sleep like a third grader that has nothing to worry about.
睡眠在我们的生活中扮演着重要的角色。我们依赖它。你是否有过糟糕的一天，而后会说这是因为缺乏睡眠。它糟透了。这就是为什么我们沉迷于睡眠技巧和点列式文章，他们承诺我们像一个无需担心任何事的三年级学生一样睡觉。

I {{continuously : 一直}} experiment with things that should improve your life. One of the aspects that I’ve focused on for the past four years is sleep.
我不断尝试可以改善你生活的事情。我在过去的四年间关注的一方面是睡眠。

Every day, I write down what time I went to sleep and woke up. I also rate my energy level during the day on a 1–10 scale at the end of the day.
每天，我记录下自己睡眠的起止时间。我会使用1-10的等级在一天结束的时候评定自己一天的精神状况。

On my scale, a 1 means doing absolutely nothing but eating and drinking. A 10 means doing 10 hours of focused work and 2 hours of exercise while traveling to the other side of the world (this almost never happens).
在我的评定标准中，1意味着除了吃饭喝水外没有做其他任何事情。10意味着10小时聚精会神的工作以及前往世界另一边旅游两小时（这几乎从未发生）。

Of course, I miss a day at times. But I have hundreds of entries by now, which helped me to analyze the effect sleep has on my energy level.
当然，我有时会错过一天。但是现在我有数以百计的记录，这些记录将会帮助我分析睡眠对我能量水平的影响。

What Improves Sleep?

When I started with all of this, I ranked most of my days as a 6 — that means about 4–5 hours of real work, browsing the web, reading news articles, checking my social media accounts, watching TV, hanging out. Pretty average stuff.
当我开始做这些事情的时候，我把我的大部分时间都排在6，这意味着大约4-5小时真正的工作、浏览网页、阅读新闻文章、查看我的社交网络媒体账户、看电视、闲逛，都是些很普通的东西。

I asked myself, “How can I become an 8 every single day?” I’d rather be an 8 every single day than to be a 5 one day, and a 10 the other — consistency is my goal.
我问我自己“我如何才能做到每一天都做到第8能量水平呢？”我宁愿每天得8分，也不愿意一天得5分，另一天得10分。坚持不懈是我的目标。

An 8 for me means 5–6 hours of work, 1–2 hours of exercise, and being in a good mood all day.
8分意味着5-6小时高效的工作，1-2小时运动以及整天的好心情。

I started by doing research on the web. I found dozens of articles with advice that everyone kept repeating. So let’s talk about what DIDN’T have an effect on the quality of my sleep and energy level.
我开始在网页上做研究。我发现自己找的十几篇文章中给出的建议都是重复的。所以让我们来谈谈什么对于我的睡眠质量和能量水平没有影响。

• “Use a sleep app”— I used Sleep Cycle app to track my sleep. The app works fine and looks nice. But having all this data didn’t help me sleep better.
  “使用睡眠应用程序”——我用Sleep Cycle这款应用软件来跟踪我的睡眠。这款软件运行良好，看上去不错。但这些数据无助于我更好的睡眠。

• “Read a book”— I love books, and I read a lot. If I have to recommend something to do before sleeping this would be it. But reading didn’t always helped me fall asleep. More often than not, I was wide awake after reading an {{awesome : 极好的}} book. Reading is good, but not a game changer.
  “读一本书”——我爱读书，我读过很多书。如果我必须推荐一些事情在睡前做，这就是我的建议。但是阅读并不是总能帮助我睡眠。通常情况下，在读完一本很棒的书之后，我更加清醒了。阅读是好的，但是这并不能改变游戏规则。

  • “No screens before bedtime”— I get the whole melatonin thing. But if I want to read a text from my friend at 11.05, I will.

  “睡前别看屏幕”——我做了所有能促进褪黑素产生的事情。但是如果我想在11.05阅读朋友的短信，我会去做的。

• “Crack a window”— I live in the city centre. Not a smart idea because of noise polution.
  “打破一扇窗”——我住在市中心，由于噪音污染，这不是一个明智的想法。
• “Drink {{herbal : 花草}} tea” — I like tea, especially {{chamomile : 洋甘菊}}, but it had no effect on my sleep {{whatsoever : 任何}}.
  “喝花草茶”——我喜欢茶，特别是洋甘菊，但是这对我的睡眠没有任何好处。
• “Sleep with a notepad” — Every evening I plan my next day, so this becomes obsolete. I already know what I’m going to do tomorrow, so I don’t have to write down things that keep me up. And when I go to bed, I don’t want to write, I want to sleep.
  “带着笔记本睡觉”——每天晚上我都计划第二天的工作，因此这就有些过时。我已经知道第二天我要做什么，因此我不必写下让我熬夜的事情。当我上床睡觉时，我不想写东西，我想睡觉。
• “Have a bath” — I only have a shower.
  “洗个澡”——我已经洗了
• “Change your sheets” — I want to sleep well every day. Do I have to change my sheets every day as well?
  “换床单”——我想每天都睡好觉，我也必须每天都换床单吗？

STOP WORRYING ABOUT SLEEP!

别担心睡眠了！

That’s the only sleep hack that actually worked for me.
实际上这是唯一对我有用的睡眠技巧

I read this sleep hack in How To Stop Worrying And Start Living by Dale Carnegie. A book that was published almost 70 years ago.
我读了戴尔·卡耐基的《如何停止忧虑，开始生活》一书中的睡眠技巧。一本出版于近70年年前的书。

You probably know this feeling when you go to bed way too late: “Tomorrow will be tough. I’m only getting 5 hours of sleep.”
当你很晚才上床睡觉的时候，你可能会有这种感觉：“明天将会很艰难，我只睡5小时”

Well, you {{reap : 得到}} what you {{sow : 播种}}. When you tell yourself you’ll be tired tomorrow, guess what, you’ll {{yawn : 哈欠}} all day.
种瓜得瓜，种豆得豆。当你告诉自己明天会很累的时候，你猜怎样着？你会打一整天的哈欠。

When you change your belief about sleep, you’ll no longer depend on it. We use a lack of sleep as an {{excuse : 借口}} to be lazy or {{procrastinate : 拖延}}. I bet you’ve done this too: “I’m too tired for X. I’m going to watch Game of Thrones instead.”
当你改变你对睡眠的看法，你就不再依赖它。我们用缺乏睡眠当作懒惰或拖延的借口。我打赌你也会做同样的事情：“我太累了，不想看X了，我要去看《权力的游戏》”

The truth is that no one ever died after one bad night of sleep. I’m not an advocate of sleeping less than 7 hours. In fact, research shows it is harmful to your health when you always have a sleep deficiency.
事实是，没有人会在一个糟糕的睡眠之后死去。我不提倡睡眠少于7小时。事实上，研究表明，总是缺乏睡眠对你的健康有害。

But if you get less sleep every once in a while, it is not the end of the world. If I really can’t sleep, I read a book, or even get out of bed and do something useful with my time until I get tired. You can still be effective if you’ve slept 5 hours one night. Just don’t make it a habit.
但是如果你每隔一段时间睡眠不足，这并不是世界末日。如果我真的睡不着，我就读书，甚至起床去做一些有用的事情，直到我累了。如果你有一晚只睡了5小时，你仍然可以保持高效。只是不要养成这样的习惯。

Relax Your Mind

放松你的思想
Next time you go to bed late because of a party, or you were working on your dream — tell yourself you’ll feel good in the morning.
下一次因为派对而晚睡，或者你在做你的梦——告诉自己，早上你会感觉很好。

Since I’ve applied Carnegie’s advice, my energy level is consistently an 8. It still happens that I can’t fall asleep, but I don’t make a big deal out of it — I stop my thoughts about sleep and think about something else.
自从我采纳了卡耐基的建议，我的活力水平已经始终如一的保持在8。虽然我仍然无法入睡，但我并没有因此而大惊小怪——我停止了自己关于睡眠的思考，转而思考其他的事情。

The point with sleep is not to overthink it. When you stop giving sleep attention, you can focus on what matters — to get some rest so you can wake up full of energy the next day.
睡眠的关键是不要想太多。当你不再关注睡眠，你可以把注意力集中在重要的事情上——得到一些休息，这样你第二天醒来时就会充满活力