Depriving yourself of sleep is never ever a good idea, even though in our go-go-go society people take pride in going strong on 4 hours of sleep and tons of coffee. While everybody needs his personal amount of sleep to wake up rested and refreshed, the average human being still needs about 8 hours of sleep per night. You might trick your body into needing fewer hours of sleep by flooding it with caffeine, or by having high stress levels that keep you bouncing around, but you're wreaking havoc on your long-term and short-term performance. In fact, sleep deprivation muddles your ability to judge a situation, and as a result you might judge your mental clarity as OK, while you'd be performing poorly in tests.

Allowing yourself adequate sleep should be a no-brainer; it should feel natural to all people and we should reclaim it as our right. Sleep is one of the most important non-negotiable elements in your self-care, but it takes courage to go against the flow of 24/7 alertness and allow your body its necessary rest so that it can rejuvenate.

Ideally, your sleep cycle should follow the natural patterns of sunset and sunrise as much as possible. You know that you have had enough sleep when you can consistently wake up at the same time in the morning without an alarm clock, feeling rested and refreshed. Besides the length of your sleep, the quality of your sleep is very important as well. Your sleep cycle consists of different levels,with deep sleep as the phase in which most restoration occurs. If your sleep isdisrupted, you might find it very difficult to reach the state of deep sleep.

What can we do to improve our quality of sleep? Here are 8 techniques that you can implement: