Dare To Dream.

The Hardest Thing You’ll Ever Do When Working From Home Full Time Is Sleep.

I’m one of the lucky ones. I’ve been fortunate enough to work remotely for most of my young, professional life. It started working for a web development company, then again for a news publisher, and now I spend the majority of my time at home on this current adventure at BuySellAds. In every single one of my experiences with working from home, I’ve experienced a common theme.

Getting to sleep at night is painfully difficult.

If you don’t take care of your REMs, you’re gonna look like this (^^^)poor guy in no time…

Anyone who has ever worked remotely will tell you that setting a clear division between work and play is a necessary but difficult thing to accomplish. It takes time, strategies, and a lot of failure to find yourself on the other end of that battle, celebrating a major productivity win.

What most don’t talk about, however, is how failing to set rigid timelines for your work day will directly impact your sleep patterns. It’s way too easy to let work take over your mind, and when that happens, getting to sleep can be really difficult. A brain in work mode is not a sleepy brain.

You may have built the ultimate productivity environment, complete with a fancy new espresso machine, amazing home office with all the perks, and even set yourself up with some fun distractions to give yourself a break, but have you set yourself up for a strategy to get to sleep every night?

No matter how sweet your productivity setup may be, it’s useless if you’re not getting the sleep you need every night. So I’m going to help you out here and share a few of the strategies that I’ve developed over my years of working from home.

Some Strategies I’ve Employed For Sleeping Better And Having More Productive Days.

1. Fight the urge to burn the late night oil seven days a week: I know everyone has their own natural rhythm, so I chose “late night” over “midnight” for a reason. No matter what time of day you’re most productive, there will always be an urge to stay up just a little bit later than normal. Maybe it’s work. Maybe it’s a new video game. In both of those cases, doing that on a regular basis is a horrible idea.
2. Downtime needs to be down time. Not down/email time: Your brain needs time to reset and decompress the insane amount of information you stuff it with every single day. I’m horrible. I usually call it a day, get into bed, and then check my email. It never ends well for me, considering I work on a team that spans multiple time zones (Germany, Spain, California, Indonesia, Ontario and everywhere in between). Give your brain a breather. Pick up something that makes you sleepy before bed. This one’s a bit strange, but I’ve found the perfect thing to put me to sleep. I accidentally stumbled across camping gear reviews one late night while preparing for an upcoming camping trip. Those things put me to sleep 100 times out of 100. I’ve also realized that, despite what many say, watching videos before bed puts me to sleep. Find your thing and make sure you do it regularly for an extended period of time before bed.
3. Plug Your Phone In To Charge ACROSS The Room: I enjoy checking my email right before I start my day. Getting a quick glimpse of what I may need to address without actually being entrenched in my daily work routine helps me form action plans while doing things like showering and eating breakfast. I don’t actively think about it much, but those subconscious brain CPUs are quite effective when they’re working on things behind the scene. The problem for me, however, is I originally plugged my phone in to charge right next to my bed. Great for first thing in the morning, but horrible for trying to get to sleep at night (See point 2.). Set up a phone charging station out of reach and just far enough away that it’s a pain in the backside to get up and grab in the moment.
4. Sleep Train Yourself: I have 2 kids (aged 2 and 4), and I’ve spent the better part of the last year trying to get them to sleep through the night (we’ve regressed). The struggle is real. It may be because of my daily battles with my kids, but I realized that getting great sleep is actually a very difficult thing to accomplish daily. We spend so much time teaching toddlers how to sleep, but we never actually take our own advice. Things like: setting up a bed time routine; picking a consistent sleep schedule, or even following a predictable daily routine. I hate routine. I actively fight them daily. But, when it comes to sleeping, I realized that my daily productivity struggles were a direct result of too much variability before I slept every day. Stick to a schedule and your sleep will naturally arrive on time every night.
5. Have Fun Every Day: I’m not saying go light the night on fire, but I am saying that you need to give yourself some distance between your work day and your life. In today’s “all hands on deck” work reality, it’s easy to find yourself being swept away in getting things done and forgetting to look after yourself. Failing to set a dividing line for yourself leads directly to one thing: letting your thoughts run away with you the moment your head hits the pillow. Give yourself an outlet for those anxious thoughts. Art, music, athletics, gaming - the actual activity isn’t important. The only thing important about it is that it lets you disconnect. For me, that’s playing my guitar or a game of baseball. Fun activities are daily exhales. They’re important. Prioritize them.

Ever hear of an Ad Tech company with an entirely distributed workforce? No? Check out BuySellAds. The entire team works remote. It’s awesome.