Hello everyone!
Today I want to talk about the really important topic for everybody. Nowadays, our life is rapid and often we just do not have time to sleep normal 8 hours a day. However, we want to feel good and active at the same time. Just a few days ago I asked myself a question: how do I sleep less and feel great? I managed to find some literature about the theory and process of sleeping where I found a few great advice for not-sleepers. Now I want to present them for you.

Firstly, I need to tell a bit about the structure of our sleep. Literally, it can be divided into four phases:

1. The phase of light sleep, for instance when you fall asleep for 5 minutes on the lecture :)
2. Second phase - partial sleep. Your brain is trying to switch itself of, but the enviroment around you preventing brain from doing so. The example could be when you're sleeping in the subway.
3. Third phase - deep sleep. It is the most important part. During that phase your body receives a full rest and your brain is not working at all.
4. The last phase is called fast-phase sleep. Your brain is trying to reorganize your memories and as a result you see the dreams. This phase is also important; however, not like the third one.

So, as we see, we can remove first two phases, prolong the third one and keep the last but in the minumum quantities. It is a great solutions for a hard-workers like us :)

I tried a lot of advice, but not all had worked. So, what I discovered I need to do to achive that goal? 

• Permanent schedule of sleep. That means that you need to go to bed wake up strictly at one time no matter what is the day on the calendar! If you need to get up at 6 a.m. every working day, do so at weekends too. Also, you need to get up during the 4-th phase. How to find it? Just try experimenting with the time you get up within 10-20 minutes. When you feel that it is easy to get up, it is your time.
• You need to drink at least 2 liters of water during the day. That makes the recovery processes during 3-rd phase more efficient. Also, you need to refuse consuming alcohol and nicotine, as they are affeting in the opposite way.
• Physical activity during the day. The more you move, the more the temperature of your body is. That activizes your brain and body. Important: you need to make such an activity in the beginning of the day, to lower the temperature by evening; other way, you won't sleep.
• The vast quantity of light needed. The light destroys melanin, the enzyme that makes you feel asleep. So try to be on the sun or under the lamp as much as you can during the day.
• If you have a free time after the lunch, try to sleep, but no more than 30 minutes. During that time you will enter 3-rd phase, which gives a good rest, and your stomach will stop sending the annoying signals which makes your brain feel asleep.

Also, there are some more practical advices who still can not sleep after following previous:

• Your bed is created only for sleep. If you will do such an activities as homework there, your brain will forget the main aim of the bed. In other case, going to bed will automaticlly mean sleep.
• Do not think about anything before you go to bed. Just end with your things and sit at the sofa for 20 minutes before sleep, doing nothing.
• Oppositely to previous stack of advice: sleep in full darkness. The production of melanin will rise and you'll sleep deeper and better.
• Try to keep a temperature of the room cool. That will decrease your body temperature, so your level of activity will fall down too.
• And very inportant advice: if you can not fall asleep for 20 minutes after applying all these recomendations, do not try more. Get up and do something, then try again in an hour. Iterate this as many times, as possible.

I hope these advice will really help you to sleep better. If you have some additional ideas, please write them in comments :)

P.S. Of course, I have not invented all methods by myself. All of them could be found on the net with more detailed description. I just tried to aggregate the most important, make them clearer and share my own expierence.