circadian rhythm, which regulates the natural ebb and
flow of your sleep-wake cycles.
Use an app as an alarm clock. Apps like Sleep Cycle
wake you only when your sleep has entered one of its
lighter phases, preventing that awful feeling of being
woken up in the middle of deep REM sleep (your
deepest sleep phase).Hormonal Helpers
Our behaviors are often motivated by our brains, but
sometimes they originate in the body. In many ways,
willpower is like a marionette puppet, with chemical
messengers called hormones at the strings. Unlike
neurotransmitters, which allow individual neurons to
communicate with their next-door neighbors, hormones are
long-range messengers, being released in one part of the
body and having impact in another. For example, a
hormone called leptin may come from the fat cells around
your belly, directed toward a region in the brain that
controls energy expenditure. Or cortisol, secreted by your
adrenal glands just above your kidneys, may impact parts of
your brain involved in memory.
By understanding the relationship sleep loss and stress
have with these master hormone controllers, we may
achieve the strongest domain over our willpower—which is
to say, we’ll rarely have to use it.