- 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.
Like we talked about in my previous video
about Leonardo da Vinci,
one thing that can really help you become
a better problem-solver and boost your job prospects
is working to become a T-shaped person.
Someone with a deep knowledge and an expert
in a few specific areas along with a much broader base
of shallower knowledge they can draw upon
to solve problems creatively.
And a great place to start building that base of knowledge
is Curiosity Stream, which has over 2,400 high-quality
documentaries that can broaden your knowledge in science,
nature, technology, history, and lots lots more.
Including ones from Stephen Hawking and Sigourney Weaver.
Though if you want a personal recommendation,
I'm gonna recommend you start with a documentary called
Order and Disorder which traces the development
of communications technology and how we transmit
information across the globe.
You can get access to all these documentaries for just $2.99
per month, which is really really affordable.
But since you watch my channel,
you can also get your first 31 days for free
by going over to curiositystream.com/Thomas
and using the promo code Thomas when you sign up.
Big thanks as always goes out to Curiosity Stream
for sponsoring this video being a supporter of my channel
and thank you as well for watching.
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