Optimize Your Sleep - Optimize Your Life!

Your Evening Ritual for healthy sleep

After a busy day, it’s quite difficult to wind down and get ready for a good night’s sleep.  You might have worked late or stayed up watching TV.

Then, when you want to go to sleep, you can’t. Your mind is racing with thoughts you don’t want or need at that time of day.

Lots of people have difficulties with sleeping. According to the National Sleep Foundation, 45% of Americans say that poor or insufficient sleep affected their daily activities at least once in the past seven days. The idea of being optimally productive requires some planning of your sleep. If you want to be productive tomorrow, you will need to ensure that tonight you will get enough sleep.

Once you know how much sleep you need, that is when you can start planning your sleeping schedule. This is really important to know in order to set yourself up well for the following day. I’m sure you have had days when you have awakened and just wanted to go back to sleep. Or when the alarm clock jerks you out of a sound sleep and you feel as cranky as Dr. Jekyll. These things can all be prevented, by knowing how much sleep you need, and by catering to your personal sleeping schedule.

How many hours of sleep on a consistent basis do you need to be on your game during the day? I need 7 hours of sleep but you might need more or slightly less. Theoretically, you should wake up without an alarm if you’ve gotten enough shut-eye.

Starting the Evening Ritual

If you need to get up at, say, 6 am. the next morning and you need 7 hours of sleep to feel great, when do you need to begin your evening ritual?

My lights need to go out by 11 pm. but I tend toward the earlier side. So I want my light out by 10:30, which means my evening ritual starts at about 9:30.

Check out the suggestions below, add up the time you’ll spend on all the activities you decide to do and go back from your “fall asleep” time. You’ll probably need about an hour.

While having a morning ritual is important to starting off the day and really getting the most out of it, an evening ritual is equally important. It allows you to digest everything that happened during the day and celebrate it.  You can be constantly achieving your goals and making progress in your life, but unless you take the time to really celebrate that progress, then you're missing out on a lot of meaning and fulfillment you can be experiencing right now.

It is important to have an evening ritual to put yourself in relax mode.  You need to let go of the day, let go of tomorrow and just relax while paving the way to a refreshing sleep.

Getting ready for bed – the powering down phase

First and foremost, turn off all digital devices! No more TV (you shouldn’t have one in your bedroom anyway!). No video games. No web browsing. Place all phones, tablets and computers outside of the bedroom. You are not going to die of boredom between brushing your teeth and slipping into LaLaLand.

You’ll brush your teeth, drink some water and perhaps even shower or take a soothing bath.

There is nothing you can do about your day’s problem(-s) late in the evening, so just go to bed. Leave the problem solving for tomorrow when your brain is fresh.

What you might do to aid your brain in letting go of the worrisome stuff:

- Say to yourself: I’m going to work on problem XL from 9 AM until 10 AM tomorrow. Right now, I can relax.

From Cal Newport’s Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World:

…support your commitment to shutting down with a strict shutdown ritual that you use at the end of the workday to maximize the probability that you succeed. In more detail, this ritual should ensure that every incomplete task, goal, or project has been reviewed and that for each you have confirmed that either (1) you have a plan you trust for its completion, or (2) it’s captured in a place where it will be revisited when the time is right.

- Prepare tomorrow’s clothes. Nothing like trying to get dressed and realizing you’re missing clean socks or underwear, or there is a spot on your only shirt. If, for some crazy reason, you wake up late, it’s that much easier to get dressed and out the door quickly. Put the clothes out, ready to jump into them the next day. No wasting brainpower in the morning. This also helps you get better at ‘planning ahead’.

Some people make lunch, pack work and sport bags, set wallet or purse/keys/sunglasses/phone next to the door, all the night before. When they wake up, they don’t have to think about making a lunch or forgetting things. They can just workout (or their Miracle Morning Ritual!), eat breakfast, and go.

- Visualize the next day in detail. Charles Duhigg talks about this exercise in his book „Smarter Faster Better“.  Duhigg writes about how the most productive people visualize their days in very specific ways. Your brain processes these goals as you sleep and you can jump out of bed and straight off into them in the morning.

- Practice yoga or just stretch. Set aside at least five minutes for yoga or stretching each night. Find a quiet space in your home and get comfortable. Fill your lungs and breathe out slowly. Envision that you're releasing the day's stress and negative energy with each exhalation.

- Keep a bullet journal to stay on top of your personal life outside of work – the perfect place for a daily recap of all things ‘you’. You might write about your ‘Magic Moments’ or accomplishments you are proud of. Or simply your pleasant experiences of the day.

Getting ready for sleep – The Shutdown Phase

When you are in bed, you might take time for the following:

- Meditate for about one to five minutes. Just be still and observe your breathing, coming in – going out. Envision that you're releasing the day's stress and negative energy with each exhalation. Listening to a guided meditation audio is a great way to eliminate distractions if you find your mind wandering.

- While keeping a smile on your face, ask yourself a few of the following questions. If you want, say these things out loud, as it is even more effective.

What  happened today that you could feel happy about?

What are three things (minimum) that you are grateful for?

What was great about today?  What did you love?

What have you given today? How have you shown kindness and compassion?

 
What did you learn today?

How have you grown today?  In what ways has your life improved?

What have you done for others?

These questions teach you to live life more consciously which, in turn, helps you to feel more fulfilled.

- Read some fiction

Nothing disconnects you better than going off to your favorite fictional world and leaving all the thoughts, ideas, worries and responsibilities of the real world behind. 15-20 minutes should do.  It took me a year to read all eight Outlander novels and they were wonderful for whisking me off into another world.

By now, sleep should come pretty naturally. Turn off all lights and let yourself float into blissful slumber.

Sweet dreams…