Sleep is Vital – Rescue your sleep from Digital Clutter

Today, before you are crawling into bed, exhausted, what is that one thing that will help you sleep better tonight? Self-care is vital to staying healthy, with sleep being as important as healthy eating

Insomnia effects approx 35% of people in the US, but distracted sleep reaches us all at some point. Most recently it is our digital life demanding our attention, interrupting our sleep.

Each day we go to bed and have trouble sleeping, we spend too much time swiping through soc med, or are awakened by mobile notifications. Simply needing to check one’s smartphone to see the time can lead to distracted sleep.

1) To fall asleep faster, set your smartphone’s screen to night mode, reducing the blue light emitted. I am a voracious reader and have always fallen asleep reading a book from the time I learned to read.

2) Discover which of your smartphone’s “Do Not Disturb” options will help lock in your sleep time. Schedule “Do Not Disturb” settings for your preferred sleep or nap time with the “Allow phone calls from…” option to help you rest easy that you will still be available for an emergency. Bedtime functions with a dimmer lock screen, also, so you can see the time but not be jolted awake by the bright light.

3) Should you obtain a separate clock for when you need to check the time in the middle of the night? Just picking up ones smartphone can prompt us to take a peek at our social media or the latest news, or check on the markets in Tokyo. Do you need to go that one step further and keep your phone out of the bedroom?

4) Set the sleep timer on your television. Do you like to fall asleep with the television on simply to be awakened by it later in the night? Set a timer on your television, either within it’s own functions or an attached timer to its plug-in.

5) How would you like to fall asleep? To the soothing sounds of warm tropical ocean waves? To the busy streets of NYC like “My Cousin Vinny”? There’s a plethora of apps that are there to help you fall asleep.

6) Too many Sleep Help Apps? Do any of them help you? Keep the one that does help and delete the rest. Only keep the one that does work for you.

7) Or do you like to have someone read a book to you? Try Audible or free Open Source classics. From Jane Austen to Edgar Allen Poe, there are a lot of great classics available. Well, maybe a horror writer such as Poe isn’t the best choice right before sleep 😳

This may seem like an odd way to digitally declutter one’s life, but good sleep makes the days challenges a little easier to handle, a little easier to find that 5 minutes to delete a few extra emails…zzzzz.