Evening routine for sleep quality · Earth 2.0 Community

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Evening routine for sleep quality

Just thought I’d share what I’m currently doing in the hopes of giving others some ideas of what they can add to their own wind-down/evening routine. I’d also love to hear any general feedback or suggestions.

Based on years of tweaking my evening and morning routines, this is what I’m currently doing that has worked for me. I’ve also been using an Oura ring for the past few months so I was able to see some interesting correlations between my behavior and variables such as body temperature, resting HR and HRV.

Here is my evening routine which is elaborate but I believe it’s totally worth the trouble considering how invaluable sleep is to ALL aspects of your health and overall quality of life:

I have Philips Hue bulbs throughout my apartment that allow me to dim and turn all my lights to a warmer/more-orange tone. I usually do this by around sunset. By around 1900, I start wearing my blue light blocking glasses...I used $30 Amazon ones for a long time but recently upgraded to Felix Grays after being inspired by Peter Attia. I try to minimize any screen use after around 1900, and all my devices have some kind of blue light filtering software. I always take some kind of magnesium supplement in the evening- either some magnesium glycinate tablets with dinner, or magnesium citrate shortly before bed. I’m normally in bed by around 2100 and am only able to stay awake for 30min at the most while reading some kind of fiction novel. I have my AC in my room AND my Ooler cooling pad both set to 62 degrees... this is a good temperature for the first half of my sleep, but I’ll sometimes need to make it about 6 degrees warmer as it gets into the early morning hours.

Some other things outside of my evening routine which I feel are key to my ability to fall asleep quickly:

Regular exercise or else a long work shift. I have some kind of moderate or vigorous workout every day except when I’m doing a 12hour shift in the hospital. On my 12hr days, there’s not really time for me to get a workout in and I’m thoroughly exhausted by the end of it, so I’m actually able to sleep really well after these long work days.
Overall consistent wake and sleep times. This doesn’t vary by more than about 1.5hours between the days that I work and the days that I’m off. I’m out of bed at 5am on work days, and usually no later than 6:30 on my days off. The same consistency goes for bedtime. I don’t care to socialize at night, so it’s easy for me to be in bed by 2100 every night.
Some form of mindfulness type meditation for 15-20 every morning (I rarely meditate in the evening). This helps with overall anxiety and ruminating thoughts. I’ve also found that doing similar mind exercises while in bed trying to fall asleep also helps (mainly just trying to keep my attention on my breathing).
I journal every morning and I also try to journal in the evening. I’ve noticed that the quality of my sleep tends to be better when I do journal in the evening as well.

Some things I’ve found to be detrimental to my ability to fall asleep or impair sleep quality:

Excessive screen/device use too close to bedtime (I try to cut myself off from looking at screens at least 2hrs before bed).
Large meals too close to bedtime. Ideally, I’ll have finished eating around 2-3hrs before bed. Or 3-4 hours if it was an especially heavy dinner. I’ve also been having my carb-heaviest meal in the evening (immediately following early-evening workout) and I eat pretty low-carb for the rest of the day. I picked this up from Ben Greenfield. This method of “saving” your carbs till the end of the day allows you take advantage of the post-exercise period of insulin sensitivity (restocking your muscle glycogen for the next day’s workout) thus reducing hyperglycemia while also allowing the evening carbs to modulate hormones and neurochemicals which are conducive to sleep.
Exercise too late in the evening. If I finish working out by around 1900, and I can usually still fall asleep by 2200.
Caffeine too late in the afternoon. I’m a fast caffeine metabolizer, but I still need to cut myself off from caffeine by around 1500.

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Evening routine for sleep quality