When someone isn't sleeping well, the first instinct is often to focus on bedtime.
What time are you going to bed? Is the room dark enough? Are you looking at your phone?
Those things can certainly matter. But sleep doesn't begin the moment your head hits the pillow.
Your body has been experiencing your entire day before you ask it to settle down for the night.
Look at the day as well as the night
If you're struggling with sleep, I think it's useful to look at what happens during the hours leading up to it.
How much natural light are you getting?
Are you moving your body during the day?
How late are you having caffeine?
Are you eating dinner at 6:00 or answering emails over dinner at 9:30?
Does your day ever actually slow down?
You can have the loveliest bedtime routine in the world, but if you've spent sixteen hours running at full speed, your body may need a little help making that transition.
Give yourself a runway
I like to think of the time before sleep as a runway.
You don't have to create an elaborate evening ritual. You simply want to give your body some indication that the demands of the day are winding down.
Dim the lights a little earlier. Put work away. Take a warm shower. Read something enjoyable. Sit with a cup of tea. Have a conversation that doesn't involve a screen.
Even fifteen or twenty minutes of doing something quieter can begin to change the feel of your evening.
The important thing is finding something you will actually do.
A perfect two-hour nighttime routine isn't particularly helpful if it lasts three days before real life takes over.
“Give yourself a runway.”
Pay attention to your patterns
If you're regularly waking during the night, struggling to fall asleep or waking exhausted despite spending enough time in bed, it's worth paying attention.
Keep track for a week or two.
Notice when you go to bed, when you wake, how you feel in the morning and anything that seems to make your sleep noticeably better or worse.
That information can be useful for you and for your healthcare provider if the problem continues.
Sleep is something your body does
We sometimes approach sleep as another task we should be able to accomplish if we just try hard enough.
Unfortunately, lying in bed thinking “I need to fall asleep right now” has rarely been anyone's most successful relaxation technique.
Your job isn't to force yourself to sleep. It's to create conditions that make it easier for your body to do what it already knows how to do.
And sometimes that starts long before bedtime.
