A No-Nonsense Guide to Going to Sleep on Time
By: Eric Sangerma
Tags: Sleep, Self, Lifestyle, Mental Health, Health

1. Set a Bedtime. Be Lenient But Be Persistent.

The first thing you have to do is decide when your bedtime is. It doesn’t have to be very early, as long as you keep the following points in mind:

You need at least seven hours of sleep (or more, depending on your genetics).

There’s no point going to bed at 9 PM on the weekdays and then staying up till dawn on the weekends. Pick a time that works for you every day, all year round.

It’s OK to experiment with different bedtimes until you find one that works. If you decide to do this, make sure to maintain a sleep journal and track your findings. You could use the Sleep Foundation’s template or come up with your own.

Your bedtime shouldn’t be too eccentric. You could damage your health if you routinely sleep during the day and stay awake at night. If you have to do so (because of shift work, frequent jetlag, etc.), take these extra precautions.

Now comes the tricky part: you must develop a healthy relationship with your bedtime. Treat it as a guideline to help you live well, not as a cast-iron rule.

Your bedtime needs to be useful to you. It isn’t a punishment or a test of character.

In my experience, being too rigid about going to bed at a specific time is counterproductive, and it can lead to those unhappy thought spirals that keep you awake.

Let’s say that something unexpected happened, or you got lost in a good conversation or a good book. You’re already an hour past your bedtime. The best thing to do is shrug and try to go to bed as soon as possible. The worst thing to do is to feel guilty. Guilt will keep you awake.

A Note to Parents: As a dad, this is a conflict I’ve had to deal with often.

Kids need plenty of sleep to grow. If they don’t go to bed in time, they’ll wake up grumpy and it will become everyone’s problem. But also, kids hate going to bed on time because there’s so much to do!

All of the above advice applies to them too (except they need to sleep a few hours more). Being too rigid about enforcing a bedtime turns the whole thing into an ordeal. Have patience, be persistent, and try to show them through your own behavior how healthy sleeping habits work.

“There is a time for many words, and there is also a time for sleep.” ― Homer, The Odyssey

2. Find Your Ritual.

Everyone has a wind-down ritual before bed, even if they don’t realize it. Brushing your teeth, changing into comfortable clothes, taking out your contacts — all of that is a part of the ritual.

But I recommend building a more elaborate and deliberate ritual. Plan it out, write it down, add and remove items when necessary. This is helpful because it tells your brain it’s time to switch to sleep mode. We’re all creatures of habit, and repeating the same steps every night is comforting.

The steps I use, if you’re curious:

At the end of my working day, I define two primary goals for the next day and write them down. If I miss out on this, I’m guaranteed to stay up thinking about work.

I dim the light and change into comfortable clothes. It’s fine to do this early. If you leave it to the last minute, you might feel too tired and then you’ll keep putting it off (and miss out on sleep).

I write in my journal.

After dinner, I put my phone aside. I usually watch TV for a while with my family, and then I go to bed and read a good book.

Once my eyelids are heavy, I put on my sleeping mask and drift off within minutes.

I recommend doing things you like before bed. Enjoy some fiction, take a nice bath, let go of the daily grind. Life isn’t just about self-discipline, it’s about pleasure too.

3. Set the Scene.

Sometimes, there is no great mystery behind why you can’t fall asleep. The fault may lie in your bedroom.

You can’t fall asleep easily in a noisy environment.

Falling asleep became a thousand times easier for me after I invested in insulated double-pane windows. I wasn’t even aware of how much the city noises got on my nerves. Now that there’s true, blissful silence in the bedroom, sleep comes much more easily.

If sound-proofing isn’t possible for you right now, try earplugs. You could also get a white noise machine. I’m not a fan personally, but I know that this is highly individual, so it could be worth a shot.

Light pollution could be a problem too. Even tiny light sources could cause you to stay up for no good reason. A silk sleeping mask can do wonders — total darkness tells your brain it’s time to calm down.

Your bedroom might be too warm. Scientists have found that “heat exposure increases wakefulness and decreases slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.” In other words, being too warm will keep you up and disrupt your REM cycle.

The best room temperature to fall asleep is between 60 and 67 degrees Fahrenheit (or 15.5 to 19.5 Celsius) according to Sleep.org. I checked my sleep journal and it turns out I sleep best when the temperature is between 18 and 21 degrees Celsius.

You have too many distractions at hand. Keeping the phone away from the bedroom really does work. I also recommend sleeping in a room with no television.

4. Ask Yourself Whether There’s a Bigger Problem Behind It.

I recently learned an amazing term: 報復性熬夜報復性熬夜, or revenge bedtime procrastination.

The phrase spread among Chinese social media users first, and then it was popularized in the English-speaking world by journalist Daphne K. Lee.

She explains that “the literal translation for revenge bedtime procrastination is “suffering through the night vengefully.” It describes a trend in which modern-day workers resist sleeping early to seize the freedom of the night hours — even if it brings no apparent benefits.”

This phrase refers to a self-destructive behavior people engage in because they feel helpless. If you can’t get to sleep on time, you might be rebelling against something without realizing it.

Maybe you work too much or hate your job, your marriage isn’t working well, you are unhappy with the state of your health — in short, something might be making you feel trapped.

Of course, you don’t want to live a life filled with nothing but sleep and fretting. You want privacy, some time for yourself, and a little bit of mindless relaxation.

But revenge bedtime procrastination doesn’t make you feel happier. It just causes you to scroll through your feed or watch whatever’s on Netflix. You’ll do anything to avoid facing unpleasant thoughts or feeling like a caged tiger.

Sadly, this situation doesn’t have an easy answer. But you do need to understand yourself and what you’re going through.

Don’t get stuck in a cycle of insufficient sleep and unhappiness.

It could help to fix your sleeping habits before you tackle the big problems — but remember, you don’t have to be perfect. Sleep half an hour more than usual, and things will already seem less grim and unsolvable.

5. Don’t Try to Fix Anything Once You’re in Bed.

Another issue that keeps people up is endless, unproductive planning. If you aren’t happy with the way your day went, you might spend hours in bed thinking about how you’ll do better the next day.

This is a harmful, self-defeating habit. 3 AM resolutions are worse than New Year resolutions, there’s no chance you’ll actually keep them. To stop turning it around in your mind, I recommend journaling just to let go of your worries for the day.

Similarly, you may be tempted to get into an argument with your partner just before bed. Something went wrong between you, and now you want to repair it.

According to psychologist Bobby Wegner, couples get in arguments late at night because everyone is “tired and burnt out from the day and feels safest expressing emotion to their partner. It is the same philosophy as a kid holding it together all day in school and having a meltdown at home.”

But, remember, you’re not thinking and acting rationally when you’re exhausted. Instead of making things better, you might say something you’ll regret.