7 Things You Need to STOP Doing at Night

- Our culture seems to have a fixation with mornings.

Books like the Miracle Morning

and websites like My Morning Routine

love extolling the virtues of waking up super early

and building a strong morning routine

with lots of healthy habits in it like meditation.

And of course putting lots of butter in your coffee.

But what about the evenings?

Here's the thing, nothing exists in isolation and this is especially true of your mornings.

If you're lax about your evenings, if you're lax about the time when you go to bed or what you do at night,

then your mornings are probably

gonna be pretty lackluster as well.

So here are seven things you need to stop doing at night

because you can fix your nights

then your tomorrow morning's get better as well. Number one, stop going to bed at inconsistent times.

And note that I didn't say stop going to bed late because that actually works for some people.

Everyone has a different chronotype,

which is a biologically hardwired propensity

to go to sleep and wake up at different times.

Some people do really well going to bed super early,

waking up at 4:30 in the morning,

doing the whole Jocko Willink thing

and some people do well working late into the night

and then sleeping in to compensate.

But regardless of the exact time,

the reality for most of us is that we're trying to get up at a consistent time and when that's the case going to bed at an inconsistent time the night before

leads to inconsistent amounts of sleep.

So to fix this, first figure out how much sleep you need.

The guidelines put up at the National Sleep Foundation

are a great place to start and you can also use apps

like Sleep Cycle to figure out your own specific

sleeping habits if you want to be more accurate.

Once you've got that data then establish a bedtime that fits with it and stick with it.

Which of course is easier said than done

so the question then becomes

how do you go to bed on time consistently?

Well, that's the focus of my next suggestion. Stop doing your main activities,

working, hanging out with friends, watching TV shows,

playing video games well before your bedtime.

In my experience this is the main reason

that I tend to push my bedtime off.

I'll be playing a video game or watching a TV show and notice that it's getting near my bedtime but then tell myself that I can just go to bed

right after I'm done. I can just roll right into bed.

Which is of course a lie.

I've got to do stuff before I can go to bed. Brush my teeth, clean up, all that good stuff

and that keeps pushing my bedtime it later and later.

So the solution here is to set a wind down time.

At least 30 minutes before your bedtime.

This is the point we should stop doing

whatever it is you're doing, start getting ready bed and getting ready to go to bed.

Once you're ready for bed it's fine to go and do something else until your bed time actually rolls around.

Maybe you play an instrument for a while like I like to

or read a book, or maybe even watch some TV.

There's actually conflicting research out there about the harmfulness of TV at night so it might work fine

for you but whatever is you pick it should be something

that's relaxing and that's easy to put down when it's actually time to go to bed. Which brings me to my third item on the list.

Stop using the internet before bed.

Nothing has a greater ability to trick you

into staying up later and later than the Internet.

Sure, binge-worthy TV shows can be a temptation as well

but at least before you start an episode of one of those

you know beforehand that you're gonna dedicate 30 minutes or an hour to that and it's often possible to talk yourself down.

But with Reddit and Twitter

and Instagram and all these social media sites,

it's so easy to tell yourself that you're just gonna spend one or two minutes scrolling and then get to bed.

Which is almost never the case.

So when your wind down time rolls around

the first thing that you should do is fully

shut off your computer and put your phone somewhere

where it's not going to distract you. And if you're one of those people who uses your phone as your alarm clock then that deserves scrutiny as well.

And I say this is somebody

who does use their phone as alarm clock.

If you find yourself reaching for your phone

when you're in bed, if you find yourself not going to bed when you should

because it's on your nightstand, then maybe it'd be a good idea to get yourself an old-fashioned digital alarm clock

and keep your phone in a different room.

All right, next up, stop drinking caffeinated beverages

before bed, which should be obvious.

But also even in the late afternoon.

Now, you probably already know that having a coffee

or energy drink right before bed is going to harm

the quality of your sleep.

But research has found that caffeine consumption

even up to six hours before bedtime

can do the exact same thing.

Now this is the point of the video

where I'm going to say your mileage may vary because I know from personal experience

that I can have coffee at 7:00 p.m.

8 p.m. and go to sleep just fine with no problems.

But if you're having trouble getting to sleep or you're waking up in the middle of the night, if the quality of your sleep is suffering,

then cut off the caffeine consumption

in the early afternoon.

Now, that may leave you coffee and tea lovers wondering

what do I drink at night?

And my personal suggestion is herbal tea

which actually isn't tea at all because tea always has caffeine unless it's decaffeinated which makes it gross but there are herbal tea blends

out there that are delicious and non-caffeinated.

My personal favorites are fireside vanilla spice

and Bengal spice.

Though a lot of people also like to go for chamomile

and while there isn't a whole lot of scientific evidence out there that chamomile is actually a sleep aid,

it is indeed a relaxing drink and well,

that's pretty good for going to sleep too. That brings us to item number five which is admittedly

a bit of a departure from everything else

on this list but I did want to include it.

Stop going to bed angry.

This is a rule that I set for myself back

when I started dating my girlfriend

and it's been very helpful ever since. I guess the way that I look at it is that each day

is its own self-contained journey

and I don't want to end that journey on a sour note. I don't want to be angry at her, I don't want her to be angry at me, so if I can help it and I can,

I want to at least address the situation,

make my apologies because often I do need to make an apology

and make sure that the emotions have simmered down

and cooled off a little bit before we go to sleep

and maybe work on it some more the next day.

All right, item number six.

Maybe stop working out late at night.

So back when I was in college I would often do just that.

When I live in the dorms I would often wait until 9:00 p.m.

sometimes even 10:00 p.m. to go to the dorm gym

and get a workout in and then go to bed.

And that worked out pretty well for me.

However, and again this is a your mileage may vary thing,

if you do this you might find it difficult to go to sleep.

And the reason for that is that working out,

especially if you do a hard cardio workout,

or you go really, really hard,

raises your core body temperature

and that body temperature doesn't come back down to normal levels for quite some time.

And of course, as anyone who's ever slept in a hot room knows, going to sleep with an elevated

body temperature isn't really the easiest thing in the world to do.

So if you're used to exercising in the evenings but you're finding it difficult to fall asleep then maybe try moving your workouts to the mornings.

Now, one thing that I do want to note

is that things like yoga and light stretching,

these are probably not gonna raise that body temperature

very much so those are totally fine to do before bed

and I often like doing some light stretches

before I go to bed, personally.

That brings us to the final item on our list

which is to stop leaving messes

for yourself to clean up in the morning.

You probably know this just as well as I do.

It's so easy to go to bed and tell yourself that you're gonna clean up the mess in the kitchen or on the desk in the morning

because you're gonna have more energy then. You're gonna have more time. But here's the problem with doing that. When you wake up the next day

instead of being able to roll

right into your morning routine or get right to work,

you are immediately interrupting your momentum

by having to clean up your mess from the night before.

And I know from personal experience that this interruption

to momentum can often have knock-on effects.

It can make my entire day less productive as a result.

So instead use part of wind down time to reset your space.

Do the dishes, clean off your desk,

close any programs on the computer,

do whatever it is that you need to do to make your space

immediately usable the next morning.

That way you can wake up and immediately get into the habits

in your morning routine.

One of which could be spending some time at the start

of your day working to broaden your base of knowledge.

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Big thanks as always goes out to Curiosity Stream

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