This is why you can’t sleep. Habits before the bed.
All of us have had a period in our lives where we could barely sleep. This article is not about defining insomnia or any technical aspects related to that. After having tried a lot of techniques to achieve a healthy sleeping routine, here are the ones that worked for me the most, straight to the point.
Create an habit before you go to sleep.
In most cases, people can’t sleep because they are worried about something. Too much work, too much pressure, problems with the partner, problems with the family, money issues etc.
In my case, working as a freelancer, I started to feel a common problem among my fellows: unstable and lower income and a huge amount of work. Being a freelance web developer means that you have to code for clients, you have to acquire clients, you have to prepare the meetings, you have to do a follow-up, you have to send the bills, you have to control your expenses, your budget, you have to learn new technologies etc. etc.etc.
At some days, I had so much to do, that I thought, ok, if I work 1 week 18 hours per day, I would still need 3 weeks to finish all I need to do!
After some Tedtalks, Youtube videos and articles in Psychology I came up with what worked best for me.
Write down what is in your mind in a notebook. By hand.
Say that you have 20 things to do and just 3 days ahead of you. When you go to sleep, your brain knows what it needs to be done and enters in a state of anxiety.
But there is a way to shut down all the 20 tasks in 5 mins. Write down them all and… write how you will execute them, one by one. Write a plan for each of the tasks. For example, In order to finish Task “prepare Powerpoint for Client A”, I remember that I had a good presentation similar to this client, therefore, I will use the same changing the theme, and the web technologies.
We didn’t finish the task, but we have a plan that will execute the task for sure. This task is immediately out of our concerns, our brain does not think about it anymore, we have a plan, we close the task. And this strategy for every single task.
If you do this for all your Todos, you will end up getting rid of a lot of uncertainty in your mind, which is one of the biggest concerns of human beings.
Plan the next day.
Same works for the next day, of course. If you have a lot of tasks for the next day, chances are that your brain will bomb you in your bed with all the things that you have not done yet.
Plan your day, hour by hour. A trick, write down even when you plan to have fun, like, playing football, meeting this friend. This way, not only you calm your brain, but also you give him a small present for the next day. He knows, ok, I have to do a lot, I have a tight schedule, but for sure, I will have fun and be happy at 19:00.
The act of writing
With the act of writing down your concerns, not only you close open tasks, but also you help yourself to organise and prioritise. You can draw arrows, to mark that a task is connected to another one, you can highlight the most important ones, you can draw cartoons to make the process more fun. This way, you really go deep into what is important and what you really want to do. Just have fun planing your future.
You could think of using apps like Trello to do that. Don’t do it. These apps are awesome to organise projects, but the last thing that you want to do before going to bed, is spending more time in front of a digital screen. Paper, pen and disconnect from the digital world.
20 min social media yes, but not in bed.
The mobile. There are a lot of studies that show how the blue light, emitted by the digital devices, affects the quality of our sleep. The solution is not to close the mobile in a trunk. This is impossible.
But how about this: right after having dinner, spend 20–30 min with social media or whatever you want to check. Knowing that this time is limited. This way, before you open your mobile, you know what you want to check. Those pictures in Instagram that you really want to post, or maybe to check this friend in Facebook that is on this crazy tour.
Setting yourself a limited time in social media at night allows you to spend quality time in social media and you avoid spending hours jumping from one thing to the other, thinking that the next one will be better.
Build a sleeping schedule.
This is the most difficult one, but the one that improved my daily energy dramatically. I am from Spain, but I spent 8 year in Germany. In Spain, prime time in TV is at 22:30… and a film lasts 2 or 3 hours. People still wake up at 7am or even earlier.
In Germany, some people are at their workplace at 7am, even earlier. Prime time on TV is at 20:20.
After some years not paying attention to my sleeping schedule, somehow I got used to wake up between 6:30 and 7:00 am. What happened was, that I could finish my work around 15:00 and 16:00. It was like being on vacation almost every day, since I got the whole afternoon for me. Sport, meeting friends, studying for a master. My productivity increased a lot.
But how to get to this point? It’s not easy, we are dealing with sleep. People struggle with this topic. What it worked to me was the following: you don’t create an habit in 2 weeks. In order to create an habit, first it has to be an obligation. Otherwise, we would all be super humans, since we all would achieve everything.
Once you resolve to do something, it takes more than one month to become an habit. But once it is an habit… it’s not an obligation anymore. The hard period is gone, you don’t use any willpower more for this task, challenge, obligation. You just do it because you are used to it. You even need it. It’s not easy, but you have to experience this feeling once in your life: from obligation to habit. I applied this to my sleep and to sports.
Wake up early to become an early bird.
Trying the challenge of waking up early every day has an advantage implicitly. You are very tired at nights.
Disclaimer: during the first days, it does not work and it’s even worse. You wake up at 6:30 or a bit later, but nights, you are still up until 12:00, 1:00, 2:00. Why? The bad habits. Your body, your brain, your system is used to that unhealthy schedule. That’s why the obligation at the beginning. If you don’t have this obligation, it will be very hard to reverse the bad habit into the good one.
A quick word to motivation.
It is nice to have motivation to change your bad habits, but motivation comes and goes. Discipline however, if you stick to the plan, remains. Period.
Change your sleeping timetable gradually.
Don’t go crazy. If you are used to go to bed at 1:00 o’clock, do not try to be in bed at 22:00. The problem will be even worse. Be flexible on when you go to bed but pretty strict on when you wake up.
You don’t need to wake up at 5:00 am, just set a goal that it’s doable for you and try to stay strong. If you wake up at 8:30 am every day and you run late for work, try to wake up at 7:50 am, but every day. Consistently.
Once you get used to your new habits, you will be pretty tired at nights. You are not a machine, you can not be full of energy the full day, so around 22:00 you should begin to be tired, slowly, you are getting there. Slowly, you won’t have problems to fall asleep. It will just happen because you will be exhausted. Don’t forget about the mobile, don’t forget about the unresolved tasks.
Practice sports.
Connecting with the last point, you can also be exhausted in a positive way, not only because you wake up early, but because you practice sports. Try to practice sports for a short period of time but with a high intensity. Lots of studies have shown that this is more effective than practicing sports for 3 hours at a low pace. If you are exhausted after sport and you woke up early, you should be physically ready to fall asleep at night. If you combine it with the paper strategy and you free your brain, nights are gonna be a sleeping temple.
Please don’t use the excuse I don’t have time. There is time for everything, even if you have long working hours, a family or you are studying. It’s about prioritisation and planing. It’s not easy, but the benefits are huge. Remember the paper and the pen? If you plan the on the day before, when you will do sports next day, it’s gonna be way easier.
Most of the times that we cancel the gym, the reason is because we didn’t plan it, therefore we have to decide in the same day, think about excuses, decide again, more excuses, decide again, the mental effort of packing the clothes etc.
This process is called decision fatigue. If you, on the other hand, plan the day before, that you are gonna do 30 min sports, next day you will not need to decide again.
You will just do it because the you of the past already decided for you. You have an appointment with yourself. And it’s written in a paper, right in-between the other tasks. You came up with a plan, your plan, and you will make the plan work perfectly.
Be careful with Youtube or TV
In the past we used to watch a lot of TV. TV is fine (I don’t watch TV though), as long as you stick to the plan. Of course you can watch every now and then a film. Just try not to destroy our good sleeping habits that we achieved, that’s all. It’s also good sometimes to get a small present, so don’t punish yourself if one day you stay longer.
Youtube is a content machine. We can find there all the TV series, talk shows, tutorials, funny videos etc. We could spend 1000 years connected to Youtube without a pause, and we would still think that the next video is going to be better.
Cut it.
Youtube is awesome but it can be addictive (I was addicted, I was always learning new stuff related to Web Development). If this is your case, that you use Youtube as a learning platform, count these hours as working hours.
You don’t want to be working at night. Realise that your brain needs to take a brake. Do not think that just because you watch a Youtube video you will learn what you see. We learn things when we learn actively, not passively.
If you are in Youtube for fun, it’s ok. But please set a timer. At the beginning it can be hard to stop a video that you are watching. But if not, Youtube is going to win always, because billions of videos are ready to come next. So be careful with youtube.
Deactivate your mobile phone at night.
You can not go to bed with hundreds of people. There is no space. Do not bring your phone to your bed. If you are on a diet, you don’t put a Nutella bowl in front of your computer while you are working, right? Why?
Because if we see it, it’s even more difficult to not eat all the Nutella. Same principle with our phone and social media.
If we go to bed with our phone in our hands, no chance that we won’t use social media and our brain will not relax.
Remember, I didn’t say that you shouldn’t use social media. But you are reading this article to have a better sleep. Do social media but 2 hours before going to bed and with a limited time. It’s enough. Next day you will find the same pictures so that you can like them again.
If you use your cell phone as alarm, is ok. Set flight modus in your phone at 22:00. This way, the next minutes or hours you will be completely free of news, notifications, temptations, good or bad. Just do social media early enough. You will be slowly lowering down the level of stress, getting ready to sleep.
I could write more tricks that I have learnt in my journey of becoming a free freelance web developer, but these are the main ones. It’s not about just doing sacrifices, but learning how to limit bad habits. The journey was hard, I had to learn a lot of psychology and a lot about myself. But the journey paid off. Now I have a more balanced and productive life.
These were the hacks that worked for me. I leave you with some links from professionals so that you can keep learning in this area. Sleeping is not a joke, is the most important part of day to get the energy, so do not underestimate it.
Leave in the comments which strategies do you use to have a nice and peaceful sleep, maybe you help other people with your ideas. Thanks a lot for reading!
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