The Best Night Routine You Can Follow

A great night routine you can follow

A night routine is a sequence of habits you follow before going to bed. It usually happens an hour before going to bed. In our night routine, we usually want to include the following habits: Meditation, reducing light exposure, not eating, warm showers, hygiene, and reading (and praying for religious people).

Before continuing with this article, I want to be totally clear and honest with you: I do not have a particular night routine. I know what I should do at night but it can change daily. I'm not following a specific step-by-step routine but a step-by-step routine can be useful for some people who like to be ordered. In fact, some people prefer having an ordered night routine than the contrary.

Just to be clear: I STILL KNOW WHAT TO DO. I know that I have to take a warm shower, reduce light exposure, maybe practice meditation if I haven't practiced it before, maybe read if I haven't read before, etc. But, I simply don't have a specific step-by-step routine I follow. So, choose right away if you prefer to only get a few habits or a definitive routine. Either way, this article will be of help to you, as we will also speak about other things and it can pop out ideas on what to include in your life in order to better your sleep.

Finally, before beginning, let's choose a specific bedtime. Literally, your actionable step right now is to choose a bedtime.

ACTIONABLE STEP: Choose a bedtime that you could go to sleep at for the rest of your life. You will have exceptions where you will go to sleep later or earlier in your life, but find one that you can comfortably go to sleep at to wake up early in the morning for the rest of your life that fits with your lifestyle. For me, it's 10:30 pm. Find a sustainable time.

Identifying a bedtime to go to sleep at every day is important. In fact, having a consistent bedtime and wake-up time is important for overall health and your circadian rhythm (your internal clock). When your circadian rhythm knows you're going to sleep every day at 10:30 pm, it starts producing hormones and all that stuff as soon as you fall asleep near 10:30 pm. If you don't, you miss the train.

Also, a small bonus, you can set at a time to wake up in the morning. Preferably early (6:30 to 7:30-8:00 am) but not too early (4 am) as it might be unrealistic in the future. Now you can always go in periods and that is fine but the best is to find a consistent one.

A 1 hour night routine you can follow before going to bed.

So, our first habit is that one hour before going to bed, we should reduce exposure to any bright lights. We want red or low-brightness light. Try to avoid screens at all and if you are exposed to them, wear blue-light filtering glasses OR simply reduce your screen luminosity or put a blue-light filter on or an app that makes the luminosity better, or use the evening filter option on the iPhone. The goal here is to get away from bright lights or from blue lights which could affect our melatonin production.

Melatonin is the "sleep hormone", it makes you feel sleepy and all that stuff. When you're having blue light or bright light exposed to you, you're basically suppressing your melatonin production or reducing it, except if you're really, really tired. So, in general, try to avoid bright lights or blue lights an hour or more before going to bed.

Red lights are fine because it's good for the eye and for your health anyway so it's not going to affect massively your health. It's great for melatonin too.

So, after doing so, we want to spend the first 20 minutes of our night routine on hygiene. Brushing our teeth, taking a shower (preferably warm as it is great for relaxing), flossing our teeth, whatever you want to do to simply look better, nicer, and be more hygienic. It's just the basic hygiene stuff of brushing your teeth and showering. Nothing special.

Then, we want to wind down, and simply think. We want to spend the next 10 minutes simply thinking, maybe you can do some grateful journaling, maybe you can think about your life, maybe you can journal ideas of your business, whatever. Just 10 minutes of relaxing in a low-light environment where you're in your room, simply thinking, watching the walls, relaxing, nothing special. It's learning to be by yourself without any distractions. You might ask yourself deep questions and more. You can also spend this time doing whatever you want, such as stretching, Kegel exercises, etc.

The next 10 minutes are spent in meditation. Our goal is to become more present and more mindful whilst relaxing and easing into sleep. You can do guided meditation, it doesn't matter. Simply meditate for 10 minutes or more if you want to but it's not necessary. This will help you relax a ton and it will prepare you for sleep whilst helping you train your presence and becoming more mindful.

The next 20-15 minutes are spent just reading. Reading self-help books, religious books, whatever.

The next 5 minutes is a small 5-minute "wind down" phase where you're not overdoing habits. You can pray if you're religious, or simply prepare yourself to sleep. You can also take your supplements here.

So, to make a resume:

First, low lights or red lights.

20 minutes: hygiene.

10 minutes: think and wind down, journal or stretch, or whatever you need to do.

10 minutes: meditation.

15-20 minutes: read

5 minutes: Get ready for sleep, pray if you want.

Also, try to avoid phone screens before bed. It could help your health to reduce phone exposure before bed. If you just want to speak with a loved one or say goodnight maybe you can use it but make sure to have a blue light filter and keep the conversation short. Do not overstimulate yourself as it could disrupt your sleep. Preferably do not use your phone at all.

This is especially true if you have the nasty habit of going on TikTok or dopamine-releasing apps before bed. Dopamine is the hormone of pleasure, and if you release it too much before bed it might be hurting your sleep quality and duration.

I personally don't think following a night routine is great, a too-structured approach to evening routines makes you a robot and isn't really interesting in terms of sustainability. I think the best approach is to have key habits: meditation, low-lights, and prayer, and incorporate these every day in the evening before going to sleep but you don't necessarily need to have a structured, planned, scheduled routine for sleep. Not overthinking is key.

Non-sleep deep rest for sleep

There is a wonderful habit named Non-Sleep Deep Rest (NSDR) which is a great form of relaxation. It works a bit like body scan meditation but it's not exactly meditation. It's a way to relax your nervous system and to really kickstart it back. You can do it anywhen in the day.

During the day, NSDR might enable you to gain back some energy to tackle on the day, if you are tired. At night, it might help you relax and ease into sleeping (tho the danger is falling asleep with it, thus not turning your device off and it can affect your sleep and if there is WiFi it's bad for your health and sleep and all that stuff and you don't have an alarm set up bla and bla).

NSDR is a great way to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression, it improves sleep, well-being, it increases immune function and it reduces inflammation, and it relaxes the body and lowers tensions and pains.

Here is a 10-minute NSDR protocol from Ph.D Andrew Huberman, a neuroscientist at the University of Stanford.

The importance of a good night of sleep

People underestimate sleep. Sleep is one of the crucial activities of our lives that we should all be careful about. Having good sleep can truly change your life in incredible ways.

Most of the world's population doesn't have enough sleep or good quality sleep, which is truly a shame considering it's our body's way of simply reproducing hormones, using the calories we eat, the minerals, the macronutrients, the micronutrients, and it's when our bodies repair itself and all that stuff.

We should be more aware of our sleep quality because it could truly have a meaningful impact on our short-term and long-term physical and mental health.

It boosts memory, increases cognitive function and attention span, improves the immune system, and chases bad bacteria which can prevent illness, it makes your muscles and nerves and body stronger, "cools down" your nervous system, improves your mood, relaxes you, it's just one of the fundamental keys to a great life.

Apparently, one of the most important things people care about in life is health, but they still continue to sleep 5-6 hours a night, barely exercise, ingest seed oils and estrogenic microplastics all day long, etc. How is that being healthy? Do people truly care about health or is that a pre-conceived idea? Maybe they want to avoid illnesses but they're not really preoccupied with real health.

Getting a good night's sleep is also key to productivity, you don't work the same when you slept 5 hours of poor sleep and when you slept 8 full hours of high-quality sleep. It's really not the same, and it's logical since sleeping enhances cognitive function, and memory, and is generally great for brain health and performance. Not sleeping enough in duration or quality leads to brain fogs, memory issues, lowered cognitive performance, etc.

On the exercising side, it's also great for athletic performance. It repairs muscles and makes your nerves and your muscles stronger so you can lift heavier or run faster, sleep is truly the magic pill to health, and if you ask most doctors one of their best hacks to better and regulate your hormones, to boost performance in your work, studies, and athletic endeavors, they will say it's literally to sleep better and more if possible.

Sleep is key. And skipping sleep should ALWAYS stay an exception.

Conclusion

Sleep is extremely important, and having a good night routine can help you ease into sleep, it can also help you relax, and achieve your self-improvement goals for the day, and all of this whilst bettering your sleep quality and duration.

Remember that the most important is the habits you do, not precisely the order or following a strict schedule. Remember, not overthinking is key.

As always, thank you for reading, and I'll see you next time.

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