Sleep Hygiene

A practice card

Not rules for perfect sleep. The short list of things that actually move it — and the one that moves it most.

When

When you have started reading about sleeping badly, which usually means it has been going on a while.

What's actually happening

Sleep is not a switch you flip at bedtime. It is the end of a process that started when you woke up — light in the morning, movement in the day, a body that is cooling in the evening. Most sleep advice fails because it begins at ten at night, by which point the important decisions have already been made.

What to change

Get outside within an hour of waking, without sunglasses, for ten minutes. This sets the clock everything else hangs off.

Keep the wake time fixed, weekends included. The wake time sets the sleep time, not the other way round.

Stop caffeine eight hours before bed. It lasts far longer in the body than it feels like it does.

Let the room be cold and dark. The body falls asleep as it loses heat, and it cannot lose heat into a warm room.

If you are still awake after twenty minutes, get up and do something dull in low light. Lying there teaches the bed to mean waiting.

Where to start

roughly placed · the lesson says the wake time moves it most

Pick one

Five at once is how these lists fail. Tap a number — the ones up and to the left give the most for the least.

What to expect

None of this works on the first night, and the first night is where most people quit. You are not fixing tonight. You are moving an average, and two weeks of a fixed wake time will do more for it than any evening routine ever has.

choose one, and the fortnight starts

This is a teaching, not treatment. If you’re struggling, a doctor or therapist can help. If you’re in danger right now, call your local emergency number or a crisis line (in the US, call or text 988).