The last time I talked about my sleep was in 2020, where I laid out how terrible my night routine was, amidst other things.

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.

It’d worked, judging from my daily log in Notion; a time range between 6:20am, and 7am when I snooze, which isn’t that often as the months progressed.

The wind-down routine

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.

Then, at 10pm, the Day One notification kicks in for my journaling practice, 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.

Once I’m done, I put the phone on the charging dock at my desk, away from the bed.

Then I’ll put the eye mask and night guard on, and off to sleep I go.

And then… tragedy strikes

Okay, well, it isn’t that serious:

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.

With the timeline laid out above, it’s clear that I can’t start winding down before 10 at the earliest.

While I get additional hours in the morning to myself, my energy management at night is, understandably, impacted.

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.

I also have to fit in showering, an activity that happened much earlier in the evening before.

Two patterns have emerged at the point when I get to my bed:

  1. I skip reading altogether, and find myself doom-scrolling on social media and Reddit, despite knowing these are not important activities
  2. Or, I try to read, and feeling revenge bedtime procrastination, I stay up until past midnight to finish reading instead

So, that’s not great.

I’m not sure when this time shift would end, as the client engagement is slated to go on for a while longer.

But I’m also not sure how long I can sustain this lack of a structure and routine.

Fixes to try

For the next week, here is my plan:

  • Add a 5-minute meditation after I unplug my work devices, to try and nudge the brain to a more shut-down state
  • Shift reading to the morning, and truncate my wind-down to general cleanliness, meditating, and journaling
  • Explore buying a pair of clip-on blue light blocking glasses. These ones from NoCry look okay, but they don’t ship to Singapore

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.