Those of you who live in the US probably don’t consider time zone issues a topic of great importance but in my case for example (and I’m sure I’m not the only one), the situation is quite different.

I live in Europe (GMT+2) and since a *lot* of the people I keep in touch with are from the US, I frequently have to pretty much live like one of you guys and this means going to sleep considerably later than I should.

I consider myself a nutrition/healthy lifestyle enthusiast and therefore, am frequently in cognitive dissonance territory. Why? Because on the one hand, I know quite a bit about sleep and why it’s important but on the other hand, I sometimes have to stay up very late due to time zone issues and end up doing the exact opposite of what I know I should be doing.

In the past, I used to simply shrug it off and accept that a domainer’s gotta do what a domainer’s gotta do.

However, as time passed, I finally decided that enough is enough.

Nowadays, I do everything humanly possible to sleep like a normal person again.

Is it easy?

Nope.

But what’s the alternative?

If one were to simply stop caring about sleep and embrace unhealthy sleep-related habits over a period of many years, I can pretty much assure you that the results wouldn’t be pretty.

Maybe you eat healthy food.

Good for you, I eat healthy food as well.

Maybe you’re in reasonably good shape.

Good for you, I’m in reasonably good shape as well.

But I’m sorry, that’s just not enough. Eating good food and staying in shape is great and everything but by not including healthy sleep habits in the equation, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

Don’t, just don’t.

I’m quite sure that most of those who will be reading this post have unhealthy sleep habits. Maybe due to time zone-related issues, maybe for another reason.

I wrote this post to encourage all of you to start paying considerably more attention to sleep and am practicing what I preach by doing just that. You might think that your productivity will suffer and that may very well be the case initially but in the long run, I strongly believe that you will be better off in terms of productivity as well.