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This year, I have been working on being more consistent with sleeping by 10:30pm so that I can be awake by 6:45am, at the latest. I enjoy being up just before the sun is, and I find that I get more done in the early hours.”><script type=application/ld+json>{“@context”:”https://schema.org”,”@type”:”BreadcrumbList”,”itemListElement”:[{“@type”:”ListItem”,”position”:1,”name”:”Posts”,”item”:”https://jalyn.co/posts/”},{“@type”:”ListItem”,”position”:2,”name”:”Trying a new wind-down routine”,”item”:”https://jalyn.co/winddown.md”}]}</script><script type=application/ld+json>{“@context”:”https://schema.org”,”@type”:”BlogPosting”,”headline”:”Trying a new wind-down routine | Jalyn Cai”,”name”:”Trying a new wind-down routine”,”description”:”The last time I talked about my sleep was in 2020, where I laid out how terrible my night routine was, amidst other things.\nThis year, I have been working on being more consistent with sleeping by 10:30pm so that I can be awake by 6:45am, at the latest. I enjoy being up just before the sun is, and I find that I get more done in the early hours.”,”keywords”:[“sleep”],”wordCount”:”511”,”inLanguage”:”en”,”datePublished”:”2024-09-02T07:34:51+08:00”,”dateModified”:”2024-09-02T07:34:51+08:00”,”author”:{“@type”:”Person”,”name”:”Me”},”mainEntityOfPage”:{“@type”:”WebPage”,”@id”:”https://jalyn.co/winddown.md”},”publisher”:{“@type”:”Organization”,”name”:”Jalyn Cai”,”logo”:{“@type”:”ImageObject”,”url”:”https://jalyn.co/favicon.ico”}}}</script></head><body class="type-posts kind-page layout-" id=top><header class=header><nav class=nav><div class=logo><a href=https://jalyn.co/ accesskey=h title=”Jalyn Cai (Alt + H)”>Jalyn Cai</a>
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</span><span class=meta-item>3 minutes read
</span><span class=meta-item><span class=post-tags><a href=https://jalyn.co/tags/sleep/>sleep</a></span></span></div></header><div class=post-content><p>The last time I talked about <a href=/sleep>my sleep was in 2020</a>, where I laid out how terrible my night routine was, amidst other things.</p><p>This year, I have been working on being more consistent with sleeping by 10:30pm so that I can be awake by 6:45am, at the latest. I enjoy being up just before the sun is, and I find that I get more done in the early hours.</p><p>It’d worked, judging from my <a href=/waking>daily log in Notion</a>; a time range between 6:20am, and 7am when I snooze, which isn’t that often as the months progressed.</p><h2 id=the-wind-down-routine>The wind-down routine<a hidden class=anchor aria-hidden=true href=#the-wind-down-routine>¶</a></h2><p>Around or before 9:30pm, I brush my teeth, wash my face and put my moisturizer on, and start reading on my Kindle; usually fiction.</p><p>Then, at 10pm, the Day One notification kicks in for my <a href=/non-negotiables>journaling practice</a>, where I write in two entries: one to recap the day and my free-flowing thoughts, and the other as a response to the daily prompt.</p><p>Once I’m done, I put the phone on the charging dock at my desk, away from the bed.</p><p>Then I’ll put the eye mask and night guard on, and off to sleep I go.</p><h2 id=and-then-tragedy-strikes>And then… tragedy strikes<a hidden class=anchor aria-hidden=true href=#and-then-tragedy-strikes>¶</a></h2><p>Okay, well, it isn’t that serious:</p><p>Mid-July, I started on a shifted work schedule. This new schedule has me ending work at 10pm, and with calls that extend beyond for some nights.</p><p>With the timeline laid out above, it’s clear that I can’t start winding down before 10 at the earliest.</p><p>While I get additional hours in the morning to myself, my energy management at night is, understandably, impacted.</p><p>My brain is going at 100 mph, as a result of being an active participant in calls, trying to wrap up work-related tasks, and staring at the bright screen.</p><p>I also have to fit in showering, an activity that happened much earlier in the evening before.</p><p>Two patterns have emerged at the point when I get to my bed:</p><ol><li>I skip reading altogether, and find myself doom-scrolling on social media and Reddit, despite knowing these are not important activities</li><li>Or, I try to read, and feeling revenge bedtime procrastination, I stay up until past midnight to finish reading instead</li></ol><p>So, that’s not great.</p><p>I’m not sure when this time shift would end, as the client engagement is slated to go on for a while longer.</p><p>But I’m also not sure how long I can sustain this lack of a structure and routine.</p><h2 id=fixes-to-try>Fixes to try<a hidden class=anchor aria-hidden=true href=#fixes-to-try>¶</a></h2><p>For the next week, here is my plan:</p><ul><li>Add a 5-minute meditation after I unplug my work devices, to try and nudge the brain to a more shut-down state</li><li>Shift reading to the morning, and truncate my wind-down to general cleanliness, meditating, and journaling</li><li>Explore buying a pair of clip-on blue light blocking glasses. <a href=https://nocry.com/products/overspecs-orange target=_blank rel=noopener>These ones from NoCry</a> look okay, but they don’t ship to Singapore</li></ul><p>The root of the problem is the schedule itself though, I know. Let’s see how successful I am in trying to shift things back to normalcy, an hour at a time.</p></div><footer class=post-footer><nav class=paginav><a class=next href=https://jalyn.co/ipad/>Next
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