The Minimal But Powerful 3 Step Bedtime Routine To Begin Tomorrow With A Bang

Finish 40% of tomorrow before it even begins

Photo by Alexandra Gorn on Unsplash

Tomorrow begins tonight.

Most people don’t realize that. They wake up each morning without a plan and let their impulses control them. Flash news, more often than not, you have shitty impulses. Trusting your impulses means leaving your goals up to chance.

Instead, take control of your day by following this simple 3 step bedtime framework to map out your day, prepare for it, and execute it with minimal effort.

How to kick off your bedtime routine?

I learned this from the book “Deep Work” by Cal Newport.

Cal calls this the “Shutdown Ritual.” A shutdown ritual is a gesture you do that indicates you’re done with today.

This gesture could be closing your laptop screen, switching off the lights, or getting into bed and covering yourself with a blanket. Any gesture that will indicate to you that your day is complete.

When you’re working hard all day, you’ll spend a ton of brain power on your tasks. When you perform this gesture, you’ll feel like a weight has been lifted off your shoulders. You can also think of it as telling yourself nothing about today matters to me anymore.

Any problem can be handled tomorrow.

Getting ready for tomorrow.

Once your shutdown ritual is complete, it’s time to focus on tomorrow.

By preparing for tomorrow, I don’t mean the actual execution of your tasks and their nitty-gritty details. Don’t plan the how.

Instead;

• Plan the what and when.
• Set the stage

Planning the what and when:

If you have 5 things to complete tomorrow, think about the approximate time needed for their execution. Think about their priorities, and plan when you’ll do these tasks. Having a rough outline is more than sufficient.

Now, on to the preparation.

Setting the stage:

You now know what you have to do tomorrow.

Now, ask yourself, “How can I reduce the effort it takes to start my tasks?” For example, if you want to get to guitar class tomorrow morning, put your guitar in the bag and keep it ready to take with you.

Do this for all your tasks. Keep everything ready and to go. The purpose is to remove doing any preparation work before starting the task. This gets rid of starting trouble and makes you less likely to procrastinate.

After planning and prepping, you’re done with 40% of tomorrow before even going to sleep. You’ve set the stage for tomorrow.

Now it’s time to relax.

Actually falling asleep

Sleeping, am I right? Sounds so damn easy.

All this until you decide to be mindful of your sleep patterns. Then, it consistently becomes one of the hardest things in life. This is because of the abundance of things that take you away from sleep.

If you want to know if you’re controlling your sleep or if external factors control it, pick a reasonable time to sleep and stick to it for 2 weeks.

If you can do that, the last part of the bedtime routine is nailed. Good job!

If not, read ahead.

Truth be told, I don’t have a routine sleep cycle. I do the other two things mentioned above every single night without fail, but I struggle with sleep timings.

This doesn’t mean I haven’t had success sticking to a sleep cycle. I have. During those periods, I observed the factors that led to it being that way, and I’ll lay it out for you below.

Find things that delay the time you fall asleep:

As far as sleep is concerned, it is too damn easy to delay the time you get to bed.

The first thing you should do is find the things that make it harder to fall asleep. For me, it’s playing games late at night or watching YouTube Shorts.

Playing games late at night is pretty detrimental to sleep because it increases your heart rate and keeps you alert when you have to calm down, relax, and rest.

YouTube Shorts are not ideal to watch before sleeping because there is this small hit of dopamine before watching each short in anticipation of knowing its content.

In general, you should avoid anything that increases your heart rate or your dopamine levels before bed.

Find things that help you drift off to sleep:

Once you’ve avoided things that delay your sleep timing, turn your head towards things that will help you drift off.

YouTube can help in this regard as well. I sometimes watch long-form content about a dry topic I want to learn. Since the content is dry, you’ll sleep trying to pay attention (think classes in college). However, this might not work every day. It’s a handy tool nonetheless.

Second, reading a book. Here also, it depends on the book you’re reading. Read preferably nonfiction because fiction is written to be binge-worthy and engrossing, and you might end up reading through the night.

You could also use mindfulness techniques like meditation to help you drift off to sleep. In my experience, meditating for 10–15 minutes has a tremendous effect.

You could try any of these methods above or choose something else. It’s entirely up to you. You could count sheep or even watch the ceiling, etc. Whatever helps you.

It’s not 50/50

The above 2 steps are not equally important.

In fact, I would place most of my importance on getting the first step right. If you find your triggers and take them out of play, you’re already 80% there.

You can then use techniques to help you fall asleep. This is also why the 2-minute sleep method and stuff like that in the mainstream media is a bunch of bullsh*t without first making all other factors suitable for it to work.

If you weren’t able to read the entire article:

1. A good bedtime routine consists of 3 things — kickstarting it, preparing for tomorrow, and falling asleep.
2. Kickstart your bedtime routine by performing a shutdown ritual that is essentially a gesture like closing your laptop or switching off all the lights in your room. This is done to indicate the end of the today.
3. Next is setting up your tomorrow by planning a rough schedule and assigning priorities to your tasks. Then, prepare for these tasks by setting up everything you need to get started with minimal effort. This reduces procrastination and friction between you and the tasks you want to complete
4. Now, it’s time to fall asleep. To stick to a set sleep schedule, find the things that make you delay your sleep time and avoid it. Particularly, avoid those that increase your heart rate and your dopamine levels.
5. Once you do that, do things that make you fall asleep, like meditation, reading nonfiction books, or learning a dry subject.
6. Know that removing triggers is significantly more important than sleep techniques.

I write about self-improvement, productivity, habits, and books every week for young people with extraordinary ambitions. Follow me if you’re one of them.

Thanks for reading! I will catch you guys in the next one!