Read · 8 minutes
Getting your
sleep back
Good sleep hygiene is a multifactorial process. Don't put too much pressure on yourself to do everything at once — start with one action, and once it becomes natural, move on to the next.
Sleep is a heavily underrated activity. As well as affecting cognition/memory and leaving you lethargic, it drives the day-to-day things too: the temper, the low mood, the drinking, and the sense that you're not coping. Fix the sleep and you often get a chunk of other benefits thrown in.
1. Get up and go to bed at the same time, wherever possible
This is the big one, and is often overlooked. Try to go to bed and get up at the same time every day, weekends included.
Don't put too much pressure on yourself to manage it every day — sometimes there's a late night with friends, or a late shift at work; that's alright. Give yourself permission to make exceptions, but follow it as often as you can.
2. Get outside within an hour of waking
Ten minutes of daylight, even under cloudy British weather, is many times brighter than your kitchen. It's what tells your body the day has started, which is what sets the timer for feeling sleepy roughly sixteen hours later. Walk to get the paper or have your coffee at the door.
3. Stop lying there fighting it
If you've been awake twenty minutes or so, get up. Go to another room, keep the lights low and read something dull. Go back to bed when you're actually sleepy.
This feels utterly counterproductive and yet it's one of the most effective things you can do. Time spent awake and frustrated in bed teaches your brain that bed is where you lie awake and get frustrated. Break that association and sleep gets easier on its own.
4. Give your head somewhere to put things
A lot of men can't sleep because their brain is holding a list it doesn't trust them to remember, or some form of struggle that's brewing in their mind. So it rehearses and replays it…all night.
Ten minutes before bed, write the list down — the jobs, worries and the thing you have to ring about. If there's something on your mind, get that written down too. You are not solving any of it, but telling your head it's safe to let go, because it's written somewhere.
5. Look honestly at the caffeine and the drink
Caffeine has a half-life of about five to six hours, which means the 4pm coffee is still half-present at ten. If you're a "coffee doesn't affect me" man, that's worth testing for a fortnight rather than assuming.
Alcohol helps you drop off and then wrecks the back half of the night — the 3am wake-up with the racing heart is very often last night's drink wearing off.
6. Cool, dark, and a bit boring
A cooler room helps because your core temperature has to drop for sleep to start. A dark room also helps (try blackout curtains or a sleep mask if curtains aren't an option). Make sure the bedroom is ringfenced for sleeping, not for working, scrolling or watching things on the telly when your brain is trying to calm down
What not to bother with
Sleep-tracking rings and watches make a lot of men worse, not better — chasing a score creates a whole new anxiety about sleep, which is the last thing an anxious sleeper needs. If yours is stressing you out, take it off for a month and see how you feel.
If it's been going on for months
Go to your GP and see how they can help you. It's also worth mentioning to them any other symptoms, such as: loud snoring, gasping or stopping breathing in the night, or falling asleep during the day.
Sometimes the sleep isn't the problem.
It's what's keeping you awake. Coaching is a decent place to work out which of the two you're dealing with.