My journey towards a sleep routine

When I learned to play Chess when I was 8, Rooks and Knights and Pawns occupied my dreams. When I played computer games when I was 12, Captain Claw and Le Rauxe and Wolvington trespassed my dreams.

Since my 10th grade, I don’t remember having sound sleep. Like everyone else, I was also told life is all ours to enjoy once we finish 12th grade with good marks. Chemical Structure of Benzene and Lactic Acid were uninvited guests in my dreams those days. My only summer holiday plan after finishing school was to sleep 17 hours straight some day. That never happened.

When I went to college, there was no guarantee for my sleep every night for the first 2 years as I was in a 6-sharing hostel room where a minimum of 15 folks were always present, enjoying their youth and freedom. During 3rd year of college, I had a hostel room for myself and had the best dozes of sleep ever in my life time. Final year was again time to face the world — placements, symposiums, etc.

The first job I landed into was an on-call support job. There had been no definite timelines on when the duty would call me. Everyday had been Diwali for me for 5 years as we always expected fireworks to happen anytime of the day and week and month and year in production environment. Those were the times when I fetishized sleep. I wasn’t able to afford placing my phone on DND for most of the days. So the first thing I did when I moved out of the on-call support job was to place my phone on ‘forever silent’ mode. Even then I weren’t able to stop seeing job flows and code and logic and algorithm and mainframe green screens in my dreams.

Until 2020, most of my nights have been White Nights and I used to feel proud about it. I never used to find proper night sleep to be important until a point when I started becoming absent minded during the day time. My body started recovering all the sleep that I deprived it off earlier, from me. But it kind of became too late, though we know it’s never too late.

Here are few things that I tried since 2021 to catch better sleep. These are techniques that I came up with after a lot of trial and error. Some of these might help you and most of these might not. I’m sharing them only because I think it’ll help you figure out and try the list of techniques that you think might suit the nature of your body and mind.

Golden Hour principle

I made it a conscious habit to put aside my smartphone the first and last hours of my day. I chose walking in the morning and reading in the night instead. That helped me stop bothering about the rest of the world falling apart as well as reducing blue light absorption into my eyes when there is dim light.

Setting logical breakpoints at work

I am an IT professional so I am suggesting this based on my workday experience. If you have a different profession, you may make the comparison accordingly and figure out how to set logical breakpoints at work.

Let’s say during the times when my workday is highly packed as I’m coming up with a design to solve a problem, or I’m analyzing the root cause of a failed code. I might not have been able to come to a solution end of the day. It indeed takes days or even weeks together to come up with a solution. Because of this I used to develop obsession over that piece of work and it entirely occupies my mind. In the middle of night, unfinished work would haunt me though it cannot be finished in a day or overnight.

So I started spending last 15 minutes of my workday to retrospect the status of the piece of work — what didn’t work, what are the options that I could try out to make it work — and write them down as ‘to-do’s for the next day. This helps in making sure I don’t have to worry about forgetting where I left the previous day and starting all over again. I would be able to pick from where I left off yesterday. This is what I mean as logical breakpoint. Would you be able to adapt this practice into your type of work too?

Preventing mind from getting cluttered

Does your mind ever get cluttered with plans for tomorrow morning even if they’re happy plans? You’re going for a sunrise date. Early ride. Catching a train for a trip. Even such plans clutter my mind the previous night snatching my sleep. Decluttering is different. But this is a situation where you need to prevent it from getting cluttered.

One thing I tried to prevent mind from getting cluttered is, spend 1 hour before my sleep to sit and imagine about tomorrow. The things I want to do, the things that I wouldn’t want to forget before leaving home, the stuff that I would discuss with people during the trip or date. Imagine everything and note down the most important ones, so that I wouldn’t have the anxiety of forgetting them the next morning. Then tame my mind saying that night’s sleep is very important in order to enjoy the trip to the max.

Trusting your alarm

There are crazy disorders we tend to have with every stage of technological advancement. There used to be times when I wouldn’t sleep or wake up in the middle of sleep fearing I would or might have missed the alarm. They call it ‘alarm anxiety’. Not losing your sleep is as much important as not sleeping over the alarm next morning. So I found ways to trust my phone’s alarm.

Tried out and tested multiple alarm ringtones to choose the one that would promptly wake up in a non-irritating manner. Tested different volume levels to find the optimal level. These experiments worked out for me just using my mobile phone. If you do not trust your mobile phone’s alarm, get rid of it and find an appropriate alarm piece from store.

Overcoming worries

No matter how great our habits and lifestyle are, there is no guarantee every day is gonna be a great day. That’s just not practical. There tend to be bad days and that might not always be in our control. But what’s in our control is to tame our mind saying ‘So and so are your outstanding problems. You definitely gotta figure a way out. But it can definitely wait until morning.’ I know it sounds like Rancho taming his mind with ‘Aal Ees Well’ but it certainly works. I used to try ‘All Ees Well’ blindly, but it did not work for me. So, I can’t guarantee ‘these problems can definitely wait until morning’ would work out for you. You gotta figure out the catch phrase that your mind accepts.

Resolving conflicts

There are people we don’t want to lose. Yet, we can’t help ending up having conflicts with them sometimes. If you need a person in your life who thinks just like you and accepts everything you do, it means you’re looking for yourself in someone else’s body. That’s impractical again! Plus it’s no fun as you might expect it to be. You know you don’t accept everything about yourself in first place and you find it difficult to forgive your own mistakes from the past.

Be it internal conflicts or conflicts with your other loved ones, try to make peace with them end of the day when the conflict arises. Not everyone, even you, might not be able to forgive or forget something without sleeping over it for a night or two. Yet, there’s no harm in trying. Your sleep would be a bonus if you’re able to make peace with them end of the same day. If you couldn’t, it’s up to you to defer those backlogs until next morning using ‘all ees well’ or to go through it at the cost of your night’s sleep. It takes time and efforts to let go, but it certainly seems to be possible.

Having a light dinner

Many a times I discovered what’s snatching my night sleep is my body rather than my mind. I might have had a heavy dinner outside or unknowingly ate couple of extra dosas or chapatis. That doesn’t give time for my stomach to digest. I end up losing sleep without really having any reason to worry about during that time, only to realize later that bad stomach costed my night sleep. It is very important to be strict about your dinner diet. If you weren’t able to skip that dinner party, make sure you do go for a long walk to let the heavy meal digest before you go to bed.

Setting the sound and light in your room

This point is more subjective than other ones. There are people who can sleep under any circumstances — bright light over their head, loud chatter around them… nothing bothers them. Well, they are gifted. But I’m a person who is highly sensitive to sound and light, I have no clue why. I would be able to sleep only in complete darkness and in absolute silence.

I can’t sleep when there are people chattering around me. And when everyone in the house stops talking during the night, my mind voice would enthusiastically start engaging me. But I’ve found the techniques mentioned above to not let mind voice disturb me. I also insist the people in the house to try not make any noise while I’m asleep. Even listening to music while sleeping doesn’t let me sleep well — the lyrics become another mind voice. I am music illiterate but the musical notes from a non-lyrical audio also talks to me. So I avoid listening to music while I’m sleeping.

Making sure your sleep is not interrupted

Most often, I find that I am able to fall asleep instantly even if there are backlog of thoughts in a given night... but, it is difficult to get back to sleep whenever I had to suddenly wake up in the night. So, the key here is to make sure you prevent the things that might interrupt your sleep. Here are few things I follow:

• Don’t fall asleep until I’m able to pee just before the sleep
• Drink water before falling asleep so that I don’t wake up thirsty
• Drink just enough water so that I don’t have to wake up to pee in the middle of the sleep
• Setting optimal speed/temperature in the fan/AC so that I don’t suddenly wake up feeling sultry or cold

Concluding Remarks

Being vigilant about these many factors were sometimes exhausting for me. In 2021 I had a target of not having more than 1 sleepless night per week. During some weeks when my night sleep streak was solid, I took that 1 night as a cheat day to catch up with a friend over a WhatsApp chat or watch a movie. But I found it doesn’t end with just 1 night but it ruins the rest of the week’s night sleep entirely until I would be able to catch some extra sleep during the weekend. That made me feel bad as all the efforts I put in to catch night sleep went in vain just because of taking 1 night for granted. Explains what a kind of commitment you get into when you start following a sleep routine.

Hope you find what works for you and start following it. Happy sleep! ☺