If you are into an IT career or have a stressful job, the chances of you struggling for a good night sleep on a regular basis are very high. The fact that you are reading this article kind of validates my point above. Now that we established why we are here, I will get into the point of this article quickly and will not bore you with the benefits of sleep or issues of not having a good night sleep or even worse - details around some clinical studies kind of content.

As a disclaimer for CYA purpose, I am not a medical professional and these are completely based on my experiences. Your mileage may vary with these tips and you should consult a doctor if you have any serious conditions around sleep or insomnia.

With that out of our way, here are our simple and easy to follow tips for improving the quality of your sleep.

#1 Find a hobby

More often than not, we tend to think that our job is our life and make simple problems at work much more complex thanks to our monkey brains. Just keep reminding yourself that it's just a job and only part of your life.

The best way to start moving in the right direction is by finding a nice hobby that you enjoy. For some people it's activities like swimming or exercise and for some others it's a nice walk in nature or playing golf. Whatever it is, as long as there is some physical activity involved you are good to go. Only you can decide what hobby works best for you.

#2 Keep the bedroom as bedroom

This may sound silly but in reality majority of us don't actually use bedroom as bedroom. We have TVs in there, we spend a ton of time with our phones before going to sleep, and in some extreme cases we even do office work in bedrooms. One tip that is guaranteed to work in improving the sleep - remove all the distractions from bedroom and keep the bedroom as bedroom with some pleasant items like scented candles or essential oils.

On a similar note, when we are struggling to sleep - staring at a clock creates more anxiety and makes things worse so consider removing the clock from your bedroom if you are in a similar bucket.

#3 Super obvious tip: Reduce the screen time

We all know this yet we all pretty much ignore it. It's very important to reduce the screen-time for our Instagram or TikTok or whatever app that's tempting you to keep using your phone on or before going to bed.

Few tips that might help you in this journey are:

• Adjusting phone home-screen such that none of those infinite scrolling apps are in your home screen. This way you don't have 'that' app staring at you the moment you unlock the phone.

• Disable all the notifications for social apps or infinite scrolling apps.

• And lastly consider changing the lifestyle to take relaxing walks every evening.

#4 Practice meditation and/or yoga

There are tons of articles around the benefits of meditation and yoga so I won't try to copy the content here or explains things that are not necessarily my expertise. All I can say is that it actually works. It's not going to change things overnight and you definitely have to put some effort for getting into the rhythm. Once you are in it, it's guaranteed that it will make your life better whether by improving your sleep or by improving your physical and mental stability.

If you want to get started with mindful meditation, check out our simple 3 step guide here

#5 Think of positive things that happened during the day

Messed up mind with full of negative thoughts is the worst thing that can happen to anyone before going to sleep. So try to focus all your energy on the positive things you have accomplished that day. It can be a good outcome in the project or something you did for your colleague which made their life happy. These thoughts kind of eases your mind and divert you away from the anger or conflicts or frustrations that were messing with your brain.

#6 Get out of your house

Many of us tend to feel very tired after a long day at work and prefer to become a couch potato after reaching home. However it's very important to take a moment and get out of the house (even if it's your patio or backyard) to be in touch with nature. This is where having a good hobby like gardening or playing golf helps to have some pleasant time outside while nature does its magic to detox your body and mind.

#7 Another super obvious tip: Eating healthy

As obvious as it is, we tend to ignore healthy eating habits and prefer junk. Not having a healthy lifestyle around eating deteriorates the quality of sleep in the long run. It's generally easier said than done to eat healthy so here are some of the tips that I followed which might help you as well.

• Quit or heavily reduce alcohol consumption. Alcohol and junk food kind of goes hand in hand together as we eat more junk while drinking.

• Stop the take-out foods and cook at home. Even if it's a super simple dish, it ends up being a much healthier option.

• Lastly, if you are open to Ayurveda tips, our article around simple tips for eating a balanced meal can be found here.

#8 Maintain consistent sleep cycle

The last and the most important tip of all is to maintain a consistent sleep cycle. This means going to bed at around the same timeframe (an hour here and there) and waking up every day at around the same timeframe. No exceptions to weekends or holidays. I am not necessarily the right person to explain the science behind it but I can confirm from my own experience that this tip actually helps and works in improving the quality of sleep over time !!

That's all from my end and hope this was helpful to you. Peace !!!

On a side note, if you have any other ideas or suggestion please leave them in the comments below for helping other readers. I will add the best ones to the article in future.