I’m not a night owl, but give me a bowl of ice cream and a TV show, and I can easily stay up until midnight without really meaning to. It also takes me a while to wind down, which is tricky—either I’m not quite ready to do the bedtime dance, or I procrastinate and end up waiting much too long. The result? Lying in bed scrolling on my phone for an hour versus hurriedly brushing my teeth and trying to convince myself to wash my face. In my quest to have a more consistent bedtime, one that allowed me to get the amount of sleep I needed for the following day, I had to ease into it using fifteen-minute increments.
For example, I typically get ready for bed around 10 p.m. but don’t end up in bed or asleep until close to 11 p.m. So I started getting ready at 9:45, which doesn’t sound like much of a difference, but I ended up in bed by 10:15 or so, and fell asleep by 10:30, giving me a whole extra thirty minutes per night. Whatever your usual bedtime (and if you don’t have one, this will help you establish at least a baseline), move it back by fifteen minutes one day.