Separate Work and Sleep Space??
It’s well established that we all need a good night's sleep to be productive the next day. We all need sleep regardless of what we do during the day for work or study.
Space can often be an issue for small business owners. As a knit and crochet designer, you need space for yarn, knitting needles, and/or crochet hooks and space for WIPs and finished projects, at the bare minimum. You also need space for the admin and content part of the business, such as a desk, chair, space for photo/video shoots, etc., and a comfy seat for knitting and crocheting.
Imagine how little sleep you would get if you were employed by someone else - trying to sleep in your place of work. You wouldn’t get your eight hours if you were sleeping at the office or trying to sleep in your mechanic shop or clothes store.
When I started my business, I had two spaces in my house - one for my business, aka my office/craft room and one for me to sleep, aka my bedroom. Then my bed broke (one of those beds with wooden slats under the mattress, and some broke so that the mattress was lying on the ground), so I could no longer sleep in my bedroom until I got another bed. Thankfully, I had a bed up in my office/craft room, so I grabbed a few essentials and started sleeping upstairs in my office/craft room.
At first, I thought this was great. I had five steps from bed to my desk. One of my biggest bugbears about working for someone else was the commute to work, which often meant two buses there and two buses back. It always added at least two hours to my working day. Now, I had five steps, so I was sitting at my desk in two seconds, ready to start my working day.
For a while, it was great. The easiest commute there is. But things started to change when I realised I wasn’t sleeping well. I put that down to my having a lot to do, and as a small business owner, I am responsible for everything that happens, so I usually have a reasonably extensive to-do list (although I have gotten better at keeping my list to things I can accomplish in a single working day and not push to the next day), but that didn’t account for how badly I was sleeping every night, even nights when I had enjoyed a light work day and been having some non-work fun for a portion of the day.
I eventually figured it out. Since I was sleeping in my workspace, I couldn’t switch my brain from work to relaxation. I spent my off hours surrounded by my yarn and needles, and my laptop was always looking at me, reminding me of all the things I had to do the next day—the activities I could be doing now rather than sitting reading a book or trying to sleep. My brain was running through my plans for the next day, the projects I had coming up that needed to be designed, knit or crocheted, etc.
Essentially, I was sleeping in my office. It was not a good situation, and I had to do something about it.
Thankfully, I was able to get another bed in my bedroom, toss out the broken one, and get my bedroom back. So now, I have two spaces—one to work and one to sleep. And my sleep patterns are back to normal again. I’m not going to lie and say I never think about work when I’m trying to sleep or when I’m sitting up in bed reading a book, but it is definitely in the minority of nights.
I keep a few other things out of my bedroom to ensure a good night's sleep. One is that I don’t have a television in my bedroom. If I can’t sleep, I have a Kindle I can use to fall asleep to something on Disney or Amazon Prime, but I try to stick to silence.
I also don’t have my phone in my bedroom. It stays upstairs in my office/craft room. Occasionally I do bring it downstairs, and always regret it. I tell myself I will scroll through Instagram or TikTok for ten minutes, then turn the light off and sleep. An hour later, I’m still doom-scrolling. It’s almost like a compulsion - once I start scrolling, I wind up down the rabbit hole and find a hundred other things I need to watch. So now, it stays upstairs. Same thing with my laptop. It is now never in my bedroom.
I didn’t think it was so easy to help myself get a good night's rest, and I definitely never understood the importance of separate spaces. By implementing these simple rules, I have been able to sleep peacefully and am ready to go the next day with much more determination and a clearer mind.
Do you have separate spaces for working and sleeping? Is there something else you find helpful for getting a good night's rest? Let me know in the comments.
Until next time....