The Night Reset

Before bed, empty tomorrow onto one page

Five minutes, one page, every unfinished thing about tomorrow written in plain words. Then close the page and put it away.

A brain lets go of a thing it can name, which is why "email Sam about the invoice" works better than "work stuff".

Lower the light in the last hour

Lamps instead of the big light, and the phone charging somewhere other than the bedroom.

Bright light tells your body clock it is still daytime and pushes sleep later, and the phone keeps your attention switched on.

You are not trying to bore yourself to sleep. You are stopping the fuel.

If you are still awake after about twenty minutes, get out of bed

Not a clock to watch, just a rough sense of it.

Decide now, while you are calm, that you will get up, keep the light low, and do something dull until your eyelids get heavy.

Lying there frustrated teaches your body that bed is the place you lie awake and argue. You are awake, and that is not the same as broken.

Give your head a boring anchor, not your breath

Counting breaths turns into a test you can fail, and the effort of doing it right is what keeps you awake.

Try something with no right answer, like the weight of the blanket on your legs, or naming the ordinary objects you can see.

Give your head one dull thing to sit on and let the rest be noisy.

Get up at the same time anyway

Whatever kind of night you had.

No early night to catch up, no lie-in at the weekend, and if you nap, keep it short and before the middle of the afternoon.

This is the one that stops a bad night turning into a bad week.