Second Cup: Give yourself a bedtime

More sleep is life-changing. If you can’t sleep in, here’s your next best option.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Good morning. This is Laura. Welcome to the Before Breakfast podcast.
Today's tip is to give yourself a bedtime. I know
a lot of people listen to this podcast in the morning.
I hope that today your morning started at the time
you wanted it to start. Hopefully you didn't spend the
thirty minutes after your first alarm battling with the snooze button.

(00:25):
Hopefully no one in your house was racing around and
yelling this morning because the morning started thirty minutes after
it was supposed to. But in case your morning didn't
go so well, here's one of the most important secrets
I've learned from studying people's time logs. Good mornings start
the night before. I don't mean that you need to
pack everyone's lunches and lay out clothes and all that

(00:47):
you can if you want, but you don't have to.
What I really mean is that the key to a
good morning is getting enough sleep, and the key to
that is going to bed on time. One of the
best things you can do to get control of your
time is to give yourself a bedtime. That way, you
can turn unproductive evening hours into productive morning hours. Setting

(01:11):
a bedtime as a grown up is pretty simple. You
just need to ask yourself a few questions. First, what
time would I like to wake up in the morning.
Let's be honest here. While it's fun to read stories
of people who wake up at four am to do triathlons,
this isn't realistic for most of us. But maybe you
could aim to wake up at six point thirty in

(01:33):
order to get thirty minutes of writing and a shower
in before your middle schooler wakes up at seven fifteen.
Second question, how much sleep do I need? Let's be
honest here too. The vast majority of adults need somewhere
between seven to eight hours per day. The odds that
you need less than six and a half hours are

(01:53):
very low. I've seen thousands of time loogs over the years,
including from some very successful people, and I've seen only
a handful of short sleepers, and even those people tend
to average out around six hours per day when you
look at the whole week, not four. So let's say
your number is seven point four hours. I'm choosing that

(02:15):
number because it's my number. If I get eight hours
of sleep on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, I'm cool with
seven hours Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday Thursday. Since this averages out
to seven point four hours. Final question, what time do
I need to be in bed in order to get
this amount of sleep? This is a simple math question.

(02:36):
I count back seven hours from six thirty am and
I get eleven thirty pm. This is my bedtime. Ideally
I set an alarm for at least twenty minutes before
that in order to give me time to brush my teeth, slowly,
ease into bed, and so forth. But in any case,
bedtime is bedtime, So figure out what your bedtime should be.

(02:57):
I know that some people hearing this are probably bristling
at the idea of a bedtime. It brings up all
kinds of battles from childhood. I'm not going to probe
the psychological issues, but hear me out on this. The
upside of giving yourself a bedtime is that it forces
you to make a decision. If you know that you're
supposed to be in bed at eleven thirty, when eleven

(03:19):
thirty rolls around, you have a choice. You can stay up.
You are an adult, but having a bedtime nudges you
to ask if the reason you're staying up is a
good one. Maybe you and your spouse are having a
wonderful time together. Awesome, you have my blessing. But maybe
you're just hitting next in the Netflix queue. Maybe it's

(03:42):
time to turn it off and thank yourself in the morning.
Because here's the thing, most of us responsible people just
can't sleep in in the morning. We need to get
our kids to school, we need to get ourselves to
our jobs. So I like to think of it like this.
Going to bed early is how grown ups sleep in.

(04:06):
When you put it that way, going to bed on
time sounds like a treat. In the meantime, this is Laura.
Thanks for listening, and here's to making the most of
our time. Hey, everybody, I'd love to hear from you.
You can send me your tips, your questions, or anything else.

(04:28):
Just connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at
Before Breakfast Pod that's b E the number four then
Breakfast Pod. You can also shoot me an email at
Before Breakfast Podcast at iHeartMedia dot com that Before Breakfast
is spelled out with all the letters. Thanks so much.

(04:48):
I look forward to staying in touch.