Day 1: Evening Routine That Puts You In Sleep Early

segunda-feira, maio 30, 2016

Day 1: Evening Routine That Puts You In Sleep Early

First Thing First, Ask Yourself Why You Want To Sleep Early

Let’s be honest here for a minute. You can’t convince yourself to sleep early in a long run just because you want to. The psychology behind it is important, too. Before you start to create an evening routine, ask yourself, “What would I get if I sleep early and wake up early?” Whatever you answer, write it down on the top of your plan. Make sure you really want it because that’s what you’ll use to convince yourself to leave the bed when your alarm goes off.

How Will We Help?

We will walk you through the process of creating a bedtime routine in the coming 5 days. We will offer tips on how to design the routine. So you can put yourself in sleep earlier, and eventually wake up early with full energy.

We will also tell you what are the possible barriers in the process and how to overcome them one by one.

Day 1: External factors that disrupt your sleep quality

We will go through a list of external factors that you have to eliminate if you want to put yourself in sleep quick.

Sleep in (almost) total darkness

Our exposure to light regulates our internal temperature and melatonin production, both of which can be easily disrupted by artificial lightness or darkness. One of the benefits of being in a totally dark room is that it signals to your brain to start producing melatonin and lowering your internal body temperature, but there’s a catch–keep the room too dark, such as with blackout shades, and you never get the signal to wake up in the morning.

Even when your eyes are closed they’re still detecting external light to try to determine when your brain should start waking you up, mostly by releasing cortisol and raising your body temperature. If there’s no light to wake up to, this process never begins, and that alarm clock going off makes you feel terrible.

So what’s the trick? Sleep in a room with no electronics that give off light, and draw the shades enough to cover as much night-time light as possible, but not so much that the sun can’t get in at all.

Remove Your Cell Phone

Put your cell phone on silent while you’re asleep. If you have a child, or friend in the hospital, or anything like that then set your phone to ring for only them, but you shouldn’t be getting audible messages at night since they’ll mess up your sleep. Lay it facedown as well so that the light from it doesn’t affect you either–even that small light from the screen can make your body start to think the sun is coming up.

99% of “emergencies” aren’t, and can wait until the morning.

Sleep in Silence or White Noise

We may not live in the wilderness surrounded by predators anymore, but we’re still listening for threats while we sleep. Errant noises, especially sudden and loud ones, can mess up our sleep.

The best prevention I’ve found is to use a white noise generator like this one which creates a sound similar to air going through a tunnel. It’s something you can focus on while you’re falling asleep and over time, you’ll train yourself to start getting tired as soon as you turn it on.