Getting a good’s night sleep isn’t something that’s told to children to get them into bed on time. While kids need lots of sleep, it really is an important goal that everyone should be focused on achieving nightly. With mobile devices and social networks, it’s become even harder to adhere to a regular sleep schedule today.

We’re all guilty of scrolling through our feeds before turning down for the night and reaching for our phones as the first thing we do as soon as we open our eyes. But this is having a long term effect on our daily performance abilities and our health.

What’s a Healthy Amount of Hours to Sleep?

The standard number of hours that it’s recommended someone sleep nightly is eight hours. For most busy, on the go professionals and parents that might seem near impossible to achieve but aiming to get as close to that number as possible is the goal. For most adults, 5 hours as a bare minimum baseline and falling into the 7-9 hour sleep range is typical.

What Happens If You Don’t Sleep Enough

In addition to being tired and irritable during the day, lack of sleep has also proven to affect health and can make individuals more prone to developing medical conditions. Diabetes, high blood pressure, and heart disease are just some of the conditions linked to lack of sleep.

We struggle as a rushed nation to get more done in a day, but really taking the time to set rituals and balanced schedules and working on sticking to them makes us far more productive than staying up late and waking early just to find out you’re too tired to do the things you wanted to do.

Benefits of a Good Night’s Sleep

On the plus side, getting in the right amount of hours and taking the time to unwind and ease into sleep and waking each day can have numerous benefits. Performance in the workplace is one of the top benefits to a good night’s sleep. Not only will you be more alert and productive when your body and mind are well rested, but you’ll be less prone to errors leading to economic losses for the company or even being fired.

Start today. Pick a bedtime that allows you enough hours of shut-eye and make it a point to turn off devices and close your eyes for the day at that time.