Fall Asleep Early, Getting Ready for Bed, Until You Feel Tired
Sometimes the best advice is the simplest. If you want to go to bed early every night, you’d better remove as many obstacles as possible before you are completely exhausted.
It may sound strange, but your own laziness may be what actually keeps you from going to bed at a decent hour. The process of getting ready for bed is different for everyone, but it usually consists of several tasks, such as brushing your teeth, removing contact lenses, or washing your face. The problem is that you don’t feel like doing all of this because you are tired and your motivation is at its lowest. Instead, you stay awake until exhaustion forces you to finally do it all, but by then it will probably be much later than you would prefer. Gretchen Rubin, author of Happiness and Better Than Before , explains her simple solution to Ron Friedman, Ph.D., at the Peak Work Performance Summit:
I used to find myself so tired that I didn’t want to go to bed because it seemed too difficult for me to prepare, remove my contact lenses, wash my face and brush my teeth. Now I try to get ready early so I don’t have much to do when it’s actually time to go to bed.
Rubin suggests brushing your teeth right after dinner so you have one less job. Set an alarm for early tomorrow morning, take off your contact lenses and put on your glasses as soon as you get home from work, and wash yourself right after lunch when brushing your teeth. The more you can prepare for sleep early on, the easier it will be to fly out when sleep starts to wake up. You will no longer have to hesitate, because slipping into the land of dreams will be the only thing that will remain on your list.