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Tasks: The war on sleep by Matt Haig

Understanding the text:

Answer the questions as fully as you can.

What is the purpose of giving information about Thomas Edison at the start of the text?
What are circadian rhythms?
Do people today need less sleep than people did in the past?
How much sleep per night does the World Health Organisation recommend?
What are the reasons why people want to stay up late at night?
What physical and mental consequences can lack of sleep have?
How is sleep becoming commercialised?
What do you think the author means by the last sentence in the excerpt: "Something has to give"?

Analyse:

In the box below, there is a guide to how to write self-help literature. Study the guide.

Is Matt Haig's text written in accordance with the advice offered in this guide? What is included? What is left out? Explain using examples from the text.

How to write self-help literature

Define a problem that people can recognise as being a challenge for them.
Establish your credibility for offering advice about the problem. This can for example be that you have overcome the problem yourself, or that you have a medical degree and have successfully helped others overcome the problem.
Explain why it is important to tackle the problem, by exploring it more fully.
Establish a relationship with the reader and focus on motivating them for change. This can be done by giving the readers little tasks to solve or questions to think about as they read.
It is useful to offer anecdotes and stories to illustrate the problem. Tell stories about people who have failed and people who have succeeded in overcoming the problem. Be descriptive.
Explain how the reader can take simple steps to overcome the problem. Explain why your solution is better than those people may have tried in the past.
Write in a personal way. If you use difficult or medical terms, make sure you explain these in a way everyone can understand. It is OK to speak directly to the reader.
Have a fun and interesting title to get people excited about reading your advice.

Talk:

Work with a partner and talk about the following questions.

The self-help genre is the best-selling genre in the world. Why do you think that is?
Have you read any self-help texts in the past? For example, articles, blogs, books, or videos. If so, what were they?
Have self-help texts helped you to overcome a problem?
If you were going to write a self-help book to help others overcome a problem what would your topic be?

Govva: West Coast Surfer / CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Research:

Find information and statistics showing sleep patterns for teenagers.
Focus primarily on:

how many hours a night most teenagers sleep
the recommended hours of sleep
the habit of using phones during the night or in bed before you go to sleep
how lack of sleep affects teenagers in everyday life
how lack of sleep can affect the mental and physical health of teenagers
possible solutions to the problem of sleep deprivation

Discuss your findings in class. Are the numbers and information you have found descriptive of your own life?

Suggested sources:

Link to Better Health Channel: Teenagers and Sleep

Link to Sleep Foundation: Teens and Sleep

Link to NHS: Sleep tips for teenagers

Write:

Pick one of the tasks and write a longer text.

Write a self-help text in which you advise teenagers about how to get enough sleep.
Write a argumentative text in which you argue that the school day should begin later to ensure that teenagers get enough sleep.
Conduct an experiment where you cut yourself off from all electronic and digital distraction at bedtime and at night for a week. This means no TV, social media, streaming, radio, computer games. etc.

The text should include:

a description of your habits before the experiment
references to research about the advantages of avoiding electronic and digital distractions at bedtime and at night
a description of what it was like to be without digital entertainment and social media at bedtime and at night for a week
a discussion about whether or not your sleep quality improved as a result of the experiment

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Excerpt: The war on sleep by Matt Haig

Excerpt about sleep from the self-help book Notes on a Nervous Planet by Matt Haig.