Read · 4 minutes
The 3am checklist
For when you've woken up, your brain has decided now is the time, and the ceiling has stopped being interesting.
Three in the morning is a liar. Not about the facts — the facts are usually real enough — but about the size of them, the speed of them, and your ability to do anything about them before breakfast.
Work through these in order. It takes about four minutes and you don't have to get out of bed.
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Is anything on fire right now?
Don't worry if there "will there be a problem next Thursday". Focus on the here and now, in this room, in this hour. Almost always the honest answer is no.
Say it to yourself properly: nothing is on fire at this moment. You're not solving tonight; you're getting through tonight.
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What's the actual thought?
At 3am it arrives as a fog with a heartbeat. Put it into one plain sentence, as if you were texting a mate. "I think I'm going to lose the contract." "I don't know how to tell her." Naming it shrinks it, because a sentence has edges and a fog doesn't.
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Is it mine to carry?
Some of what's keeping you awake belongs to someone else — their decision, their mood or their mess. You can care about it without owning it. If it isn't yours, set it down; it'll still be there in the morning for its rightful owner.
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Forget about the whole solution. What's the very next step?
Your brain wants the entire plan tonight, but it can't have it. It can have one thing: send an email, ask a question, look up a number, say a sentence. Write it in on your phone (or ideally a notepad so you're off the screens) so you can stop holding it.
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When can I do it?
Give the thoughts a slot: "before I start work", "on my dinner break". Most of the churn at 3am is your head refusing to let go of something it doesn't trust you to remember. Give it a time and it will usually release its grip.
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Now, the body.
Breathe out for longer than you breathe in. In for four, out for six or seven. Do it eight times and it will help to relax you, even if it feels silly to do.
If you're still awake twenty minutes later
Get up. Go to another room, keep the lights low, and do something dull but AWAY from your phone. Lying there fighting it teaches your brain that bed is a place where you fight. Go back when you're sleepy, not when you think you ought to be.
Why it works
The aim here isn't to fix the underlying problem. The job at 3am is to stop the spiral long enough to get some sleep, so that tomorrow you're dealing with the problem on six hours instead of two. Problems look markedly different in daylight, after a half-decent sleep.
If it's happening most nights, though, that's worth taking more seriously. Speak to your GP to get a better understanding of what might be happening and how you can manage your symptoms and situation better
Want to work out what's causing the 3am?
That's most of what coaching is. A free twenty-minute call is a decent place to find out whether it would help.