It’s incredibly important to understand your chronotype and how it impacts your personal sleep needs. You may have not heard the term chronotype before but you are actually familiar with the concept. Think Early-Bird and Night Owl here. In my third book I helped identify a fourth type and helped educate people that this is a genetic distinction, not something you can change easily. My chronotype is a wolf, which means I’m a late-night person. I don’t go to bed until midnight, and I wake up at 6:13am. Understanding your chronotype will help you maximize your sleep and develop a bedtime and wakeup routine that works for you. Here’s a quick quiz I developed to help you find out what your chronotype is. As far as winding down, I have a pretty specific routine which I call the power-down hour. I take the hour before I go to bed and chop it up into three segments. The first twenty minutes is administrative tasks you need to get done (getting backpacks together, tidying up, etc.), the next twenty minutes are used for hygiene, (taking a shower, brushing teeth) and the final twenty minutes are for relaxation (meditation, prayer, etc.). Similar to how you need runway to land a plane, you need time to wind down before falling asleep. For my morning routine, I follow the rule of 15’s – I take 15 deep breaths to wake up my respiratory system, I drink 15 oz of water immediately and I get 15 minutes of sunlight which turns off the melatonin faucet in my brain. When possible, I like to get my sunshine outside, with my bare feet on the earth (I know it sounds weird, try it-weather permitting).