A guide to going to sleep🌙✨

We all have to do stuff. We need to go to work, we need to go to school, or we have other important stuff to do. And everyday starts off with us don’t wanting to get out of bed. For almost my whole life, I have struggled with getting out of bed, especially early in the morning. And I bet you struggle with the same problem. I want to show you some tricks and some simple purchases that I have done to help myself get off of bed more easily. Footnote: This is a post mostly for people that don’t work night shifts, and are home at regular times. I will make a post about sleep and nights shifts in the future, you can read the blog post anyway because there are still some great tips, some might just not be appliable for you. One more thing before we get started. Be hard and honest with yourself here. When it comes to self-improvement in any way, you don’t have to prove something to anyone, only to yourself. And you are also only lying to yourself. Accept that you are bad in the beginning. And with that out of the way, let’s begin.

Get a sleep schedule 🛌

This is probably the most simple yet hardest thing on this list. Find a time when you go to bed, and a time when you get up, each day, and then stick to this routine. How do you get a sleep schedule? Well, it’s pretty simple. You set a time when you want to go to sleep and a time when you have to wake up. With this, you should keep something in mind. The average human needs 8 hours of sleep. But you don’t go to bed and 1, 2, 3… sleep. We lay in bed for sometime before we can sleep. So add 1 hour on top of that 8 hours. So you have 9 hours in bed, and hopefully 8 hours of sleep.

Look OUT FOR SLEEP KILLERS ☕

I would advise everyone who reads this to think about what your day looks like. When does your work start? When do you eat? How much caffeine or other substances do you consume that could be impacting the quality of your sleep? Let’s take coffee for example. I love me a good black coffee as much as some of you do, but not at 5pm in the evening. Caffeine stops the production of melatonin in your brain, which is the chemical that gets you sleepy. Caffeine stays in your system for about +/- 8 hours. So let’s say that you want to go to bed 9pm, then you should drink your last coffee at 1pm. Your phone is also a big sleep killer and with that we go to the next tip which is…

Don’t use your phone 1 hour before you go to sleep 📴

We all know it, we are ready to go to bed, everything is perfect, so we decide to scroll on social media for another 15 minutes. It’s okay, we have control, we can put our phone away any second. So we keep scrolling. 15 minutes turn to 30. 30 minutes turn to an hour, and all of a sudden it’s 11pm. OH! DAMN! I should go to bed, you think. So you set your alarm, and put your phone next to your bed. But you can’t sleep, your thoughts are still on social media. And who is to blame your brain that you can’t sleep. 1 minute ago you were binging dopamine and seeing so many things in such a short time, now you need to be sleepy? Our brain simply does not function like that. It’s not a machine.

As I told you in the last chapter, our brain produces melatonin to make us sleepy. Normally this would happen automatically when then sun started setting and around us everything started to get dark. But now we have a small sun next to your bed, which keeps us from getting tired. Bonus tip: I know it is hard not to use your phone in the evening, so put your phone either on the opposite site of your room or even better in a place where you have to go in the morning, like your bath for example. In the evening, when you get ready to go to sleep, charge your phone in your bath. And to get to your phone in the morning, you have to go to the bath.

Go to bed 1 hour before your sleeping time 🕘

For example, I go to bed at 9pm and get up at 6am. I have 9 hours in bed. But time in bed does not mean time sleeping. Because 1, 2, 3… sleep does not work. You need to give your body time to rest and get in the sleepy mood. When you can’t sleep instantly or your brain is just racing with thoughts, I can give you 2 extremely helpful tips that have helped me in the past.

• 1. Podcasts

Podcasts are so helpful to distract your mind from your racing thoughts. I would advise picking something like a story and not something like the Joe Rogan experience. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great podcast, but not really when you want to sleep. Pick a nice story where you can put your mind into and drift off to sleep land.

• 2. Books

Books are another one that are great to get the mind somewhere else. Here I would give the exact opposite advise that I gave with podcasts. Pick some interesting non-fiction book. For example, “Why we sleep” from Matthew Walker, PhD. Maybe you can learn something about sleep when you can’t sleep. I would not pick a fiction book because if the story is fascinating, it’s like a movie, and you can’t stop reading, and BOOM it’s 1am. I do have to note that what no mater if you pick fiction or non-fiction, is up to you. These are just my personal preferences. A good friend of mine always listens to serial killer stories when going to sleep, and they sleep like a baby. So it really depends on what you like and how you tick as a human being.

Get an alarm clock ⏰

I use an alarm clock for about 1 year now, and it REALLY helps me get out of bed in the morning. Because some of you may have protested and said:” Well if I have to put my phone away, how am I supposed to get up in the morning??” Don’t be afraid, the solution is here.

• 1. The standard alarm clock

This is the classic. Just get a simple alarm clock from Amazon for about $20. The brand really does not matter. If you like the looks, and it has the function to turn the time display off, get it.

• 2. The sunrise alarm clock

This is like the standard alarm clock, but fancy. It does not wake you with sound, but instead with light. This type of clock will cost you around $30. There are some really expensive one for like $80-$200, but you don’t really need them. They do the same thing as the $30 one, just cheaper. This is the type I use, and I am really happy with what I do for me.

• 3. The Alexa/google home

If you have an Alexa or google home in your bedroom, you can use that as your alarm too. A bonus is that it is voice controlled, so you can tell it to shut the fries up in the morning. Another good thing about this type of clock is that you can listen to podcasts and still don’t have your phone in your bedroom. The downside with this one is that they do get quite expensive. So if you have one, USE IT. If you don’t, I would advise against buying one. You should rather go with one of the other 2 options.

Conclusion 📕

Our body is not a machine. It is more like a garden. Sometimes it needs more water, sometimes it needs a little less sun. When you deploy, something new in your life, give your body time to adjust to it. When you are trying a new sleep schedule for the first time, stick to it for around 3–4 weeks before trying something new.

If you enjoyed what you just read, please read some of my other posts as well. And if you want advice like this but in a shorter, more compact form, you can subscribe to my weekly email newsletter. Every Thursday, I will send you some advice to help you with your everyday trouble. Click here to sign up.

See you next time:)