Momentum Issue 2: Avoid looking at your phone 1 hour before going to sleep.
Good quality sleep starts before we even get into bed at night, and protecting the few hours before shutting off the light is incredibly important. This week, try to avoid looking at your phone for at least 1 hour prior to going to sleep.
Importance
Looking at your phone before bed is not ideal for many reasons.
The blue light emitted from your screen impacts the release of melatonin (the hormone that helps you sleep).
Looking at social media, the news, or messages/emails is stimulating and potentially stressful, and cortisol (the stress hormone) will be released, making good quality sleep unlikely.
You’ll be responding to other people’s agendas - emails and texts asking for things from you, social media showing you how much greater other people’s lives are, etc. Instead, the evening is perfect for spending time on your own agenda - having some time just for yourself and/or your family, doing what you want to do.
You’ll be more likely to stay up late, as you scroll away the night without realising what time it is, meaning that you’ll get inadequate and reduced quality sleep.
Implementation
This habit might need some prior planning. For example, you might use your phone for your morning alarm. Or you might use it to listen to a guided meditation before you go to sleep. So it’s important that you set everything up prior to the 1 hour before bedtime.
Set up your phone early on in the evening. Set your alarm, open up your guided meditation and connect your headphones, reply to anything that needs replying to and let people know that you won’t be replying for the rest of the evening. This will reduce the likelihood of you feeling the need to look at your phone.
Put your phone on Do Not Disturb or turn it off completely. This will ensure notifications don’t disrupt your sleep, as well as making it less likely that you’ll look at your phone before bed.
We need to protect the hours before we go to sleep if we want good quality and adequate sleep. Not looking at your phone 1 hour prior to bedtime is a great start to optimizing your sleep.