You know exactly what you need to do. Phone out of the bedroom, last coffee around noon, to bed on time, and outside in the morning.
You’ve done all of it at least once too. It went well for four days, then a busy week came along and after that your phone was back on your bedside table.
That says nothing about your discipline. Sleep habits are just badly wired for your brain.
How your brain builds a habit
A habit has three parts. A cue, the behavior itself, and a reward.
That last part does the work. Your brain looks at what an action produces and if it feels good, it builds a faster connection so you do it with less effort next time. That’s how behavior becomes automatic.
The system only works in the short term, though. A cookie, a cigarette, or a quick scroll on your phone gives you something within a few seconds, and that’s why those habits stick so well that you can hardly shake them.
Why sleep falls outside that
The reward of a sleep habit comes the next morning and sometimes only after two weeks. For your brain, that’s too far away to connect to what you did the night before.
It’s even worse than that. In the first few days, it feels worse than what you were used to. You leave your phone in the hallway and then you lie there bored. You go to bed an hour earlier and then you lie awake staring at the ceiling. You have your last coffee at noon and then you’re blinking at 3 p.m.
So first you get something unpleasant and only much later something good. Exactly the reverse of what your brain needs to take something on.
The two mistakes almost everyone makes
The first is too much at once. On a Sunday evening, you come up with a completely new nighttime routine with five parts, and each of those five still needs your attention at that moment. Then you lean on willpower five times, and that’s the weakest building block there is.
The second is the cue. Almost everyone hangs their new habit on a time, like going to bed at ten. A time is a poor cue, because nothing happens on the clock to remind you.Existing habits are always tied to an event, like coming home, brushing your teeth, or turning on the dishwasher.
What you can do about it
Do one habit per week. More won’t work, and one habit that sticks is twelve habits in three months.
Attach it to something you already do. After brushing your teeth, after the dishwasher, after your first cup of coffee. That existing behavior is your alarm clock, so you don’t have to remember it.
Make it so small that it’s almost nothing. Ten minutes with your feet in warm water instead of a whole evening routine. Small and every day beats big and sometimes.
Bring the reward forward. Write down one thing every morning, for example how quickly you fell asleep or how your first hour felt. Then within a week you’ll see something change instead of having to rely on your feelings, and that fills the gap a sleep habit has on its own. That’s what the Sleep Habit Tracker is for, with a fixed spot for each day so tracking itself doesn’t become a project.
Expect it to take a few weeks before it feels automatic. Miss an evening, and it’s no big deal. Miss two evenings in a row, and you’ve lost your cue and need to set it again.
The habit for this week
Pick one. It doesn’t matter which, as long as it’s the smallest one on your list.
Say in one sentence what it’s attached to. For example, that you leave your phone in the hallway as soon as you’ve brushed your teeth, or that you set your last coffee when you get up from lunch.
Write down one word about your night the next morning. Seven days, and only then choose the next one :)
1% Better Every Night.
Guy Veeke
PS: Are your habits in place and you still waking up tired?
Then there’s something in your night that no habit will change. Breathing through your mouth makes your sleep lighter without waking you up, and the combination of nasal strips and mouth tape keeps your nose open and your mouth closed.
