How to Use Your Mind: A Psychology of Study: Being a Manual for the Use of Students and Teachers in the Administration of Supervised StudyKitson, Harry Dexter
Science
How to Use Your Mind: A Psychology of Study: Being a Manual for the Use of Students and Teachers in the Administration of Supervised Study
Kitson, Harry Dexter
Study skills
SLEEP.--"About one-third of an average human life is passed in the
familiar and yet mysterious state which we call sleep. From one point
of view this seems a large inroad upon the period in which our
consciousness has its exercise; a subtraction of twenty-five years from
the life of one who lives to be seventy-five. Yet we know that the
efficiency and comfort of the individual demand the surrender of all
this precious time. It has often been said that sleep is a more
imperative necessity than food, and the claim seems to be well
founded." It is quite likely that some students indulge in too much
sleep. This may sometimes be due to laziness, but frequently it is due
to actual intoxication, from an excess of food which results in the
presence of poisonous "narcotizing substances absorbed from the
burdened intestine". This theory is rendered tenable by the fact that
when the diet is reduced the hours of sleep may be reduced. If one is
in good health, it seems right to expect that one should be able to
arise gladly and briskly upon awaking. By all means do not indulge
yourself in long periods of lying in bed after a good night's rest. If
we examine the physical and physiological conditions of sleep we shall
better understand its hygiene. Sleep is a state in which the tissues of
the body which have been used up may be restored. Of course some
restoration of broken-down tissue takes place as soon as it begins to
wear out, but so long as the body keeps working, the one process can
never quite compensate for the other, so there must be a periodic
cessation of activity so that the energies of the body may be devoted
to restoration. Viewing sleep as a time when broken-down bodily cells
are restored, we see that we tax the energies of the body less if we go
to sleep each day before the cells are entirely depleted. That is the
significance of the old teaching that sleep before midnight is more
efficacious than sleep after midnight. It is not that there is any
mystic virtue in the hours before twelve, but that in the early part of
the evening the cells are not so nearly exhausted as they are later in
the evening, and it is much easier to repair them in the partially
exhausted stage than it is in the completely exhausted stage. For this
reason, a mid-day nap is often effective, or a short nap after the
evening dinner. By thus catching the cells at an early stage of their
exhaustion, they can be restored with comparative ease, and more energy
will be available for use during the remainder of the working hours.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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