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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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Do you sleep well? Having a good although not very long sleep I can only imagine what terrible experience is to get up early in the morning after a sleepless night. Considering that we spend at least a quarter of our lifespan sleeping or trying to sleep in our beds and the remaining three quarters waking up and/or thinking about the next night's rest, it's difficult to overestimate the good sleep as an essential part of our well being. But as anything else that is considered in short supply in our world, the good sleep isn't distributed equally among the people, although we equally need this quarter time for rest.

A recent study made in America points out at the cities where the sleep is blessing and also at those where it's literally a nightmare.

The main culprits of our sleepless nights are the unemployment and the long traffics, the study says. There are also other culprits like eating spicy food late in the evening, but these are things we can change at will. So the cities with low unemployment and shorter commuter traffics are rated at the top and vice versa. But what we see in the States can hardly be limited to this country only. This problem is ubiquitous and thus deserving our special attention. Unfortunately besides the American study we don't have clear understanding about where in the world people sleep well or not so well.

To make such study will be useful because basically it's all about our quality of life. It's a truism that sleeping well makes us more productive and less nervous. According to the study sleeping well is the single most important factor that makes people feel happier. Thus making people sleeping better should be among the public authorities' priorities, such as providing us with access to adequate education or health care. It's in their interest to do so, because our productive work makes us better taxpayers.

While we still don't have enough data about the situation in the world, let's make a small experiment for ourselves. Let's calculate what we are able to do during one ordinary working day. At the evening let's go sleeping 1 hour earlier than usual, in 10 instead of 11, or in 11 instead of 12. Do we find any difference the next day? Do we feel better and what's the difference just one extra hour can make in our working day? Seeing the difference we'll appreciate the idea that doing something for our good sleep is worth some sacrifices, e.g. getting to bed earlier or changing our evening diet.