Plan Your Night Before It Begins
Welcome to Week Three.
For the last two weeks, you’ve been building habits that support better sleep from the moment you wake up and throughout the day - and, to be honest, I’d be surprised if you weren’t already sleeping better.
This final week, we are turning our attention to the evening: not just the final few minutes before bed, but the choices that make getting to bed on time easier.
Most of us know what time we need to get up. Far fewer of us give the same thought to what time we need to go to bed. We stay up until we feel tired enough - or until whatever we are watching ends - and let Morning You deal with the consequences.
If your wake time is fixed, your bedtime cannot be an afterthought.
Begin with the time you need to wake up and work backwards. Most adults need somewhere around seven to nine hours of sleep, so choose a realistic sleep target within that range and allow a little extra time to settle.
Wake time: 6:30am
Sleep target: 8 hours
Aim to be in bed: around 10:15pm
Bedtime alarm: 9:45pm
Sleep unfolds in cycles, which we’ll explore tomorrow. For now, focus on giving yourself enough time in bed and working backwards from when you want to be asleep.
Today - and This Week's - Challenge
Keep the morning and lunchtime habits you have already built. For the final seven days, add these five evening anchors.
- Have a balanced evening meal. Include a serving of protein, something rich in fibre, some fruit and/or veg and some fat. A satisfying meal makes it easier to avoid drifting into an evening of picking and grazing.
- Draw a line under eating for the day. Where possible, aim to finish eating two to three hours before bed. This is not a hard-and-fast rule: if you are genuinely hungry, eat something. It is simply a useful boundary that can prevent evening grazing.
- Complete your practical routine earlier. Brush your teeth, do any skincare and get everything ready for bed one to two hours before you intend to sleep.
- Set a bedtime alarm. Set it for 30 minutes before you intend to go to sleep. When it sounds, begin closing down the day rather than starting one more episode, job or scroll.
- Stop using your phone 30 minutes before bed. When your bedtime alarm sounds, put your phone down and leave it alone for the rest of the evening. This helps prevent a quick check from turning into another half-hour of scrolling and gives your mind time to settle before sleep.
Do not wait until you are exhausted to think about bed.
Prepare for sleep before sleep arrives.
A Few Things to Keep in Mind
Keep Weeks 1 and 2 going. Your evening routine is being added to the morning and lunchtime habits you have already built. The clearer and more consistent the signals across your whole day, the easier it is for your body to understand when it is time to be alert and when it is time to wind down.
The food cut-off is a boundary, not a ban. We are trying to reduce automatic grazing, not encourage you to ignore genuine hunger. If you need something, have a small, satisfying snack rather than treating the whole evening as an open buffet.
Do the bathroom jobs before you are sleepy. You may already have noticed yourself beginning to nod off on the couch, only to wake yourself back up by standing, moving around and switching on a bright bathroom light. Completing those jobs earlier removes that obstacle when sleepiness arrives.
Sleepiness can come and go. It often feels as though it arrives in waves. If you push through one because you still need to brush your teeth or get ready, you may feel more alert again and find yourself waiting for the next opportunity to sleep. Your early routine and bedtime alarm help you act when that sleepy window opens.
Your bedtime is an estimate. You cannot command yourself to fall asleep at an exact minute. The aim is to give yourself a sensible opportunity to get the sleep you need - not to turn bedtime into another test you have to pass.