Time to sleep?

So you can only fall asleep an hour after your body starts kicking out melatonin (which is negatively regulated by blue light). TV can often down regulate your melatonin if you watch that before bed.

Also eating will kick your body's metabolism up as well, so avoid doing that before bed.

If you're really curious, get a fitband or something to check your heartrate overnight and test out different habits

I work night-shift, and have for the past 14 years. I tell my new guys on nights that the best way to make sure you're getting enough sleep is to figure out how many hours your body needs to sleep. Everyone is different. While I need about 7 hours, my mother only needs 4, while a co-worker is a bear if he gets anything less than 9.

You can do that with a fitbit (if you have one) or just a regular journal. Logging what time you lay down, how long it took to fall asleep, what time you woke up, how you felt after you got up. After about a week or so, you'll notice a time trend.

Once you figure out that number(ish), set up a bed time and stick to it. I make sure, no matter what, I'm in bed by 0600 every morning, even if I'm not tired yet. No phone, no TV, no distractions. I just lay there and relax until I fall asleep. I sometimes use this time to meditate or reflect on my day.

The second thing you need to do is set up a wake up time and stick to it. Don't sleep in. Don't hit snooze. Get up. Eventually, your body will regulate itself to being sleepy around the time you set.

Now I know that's for adjusting your schedule to sleep at a certain time, but it works for you non-vampires as well. It's about making sure your body gets the required rest it needs. Some people are blessed with being able to sleep and wake and be good. Other's need to set reminders to go to bed and alarm clocks to wake up (like me).

When I get sick of my current career and become a serial killer, I'm only going to murder people under 30 who wear fitbits (or equivalent data collection devices), in order to create a statistical blip that suggests people who wear fit bits die sooner....

ANYWAY, aside from tracking your own moods and energy like a bloody adult, I find the biggest detractor from my quality of sleep is, uhh, my wife, so I sleep in a separate bed as often as possible.

Although I do agree with lorelei that hitting snooze shows a remarkable absence of character.

You should connect your smart watch directly to the state revenue office, and every time you hit snooze you get an hour's wage taken from your account. Either get up, or just set the alarm to the time you actually want to get up, not some magical made up time you think you should get up but obviously have no intention of doing so.

If the very first thing you consciously do in a day is overturn one of your own decisions, how do you think the rest of your day, or life, is going to go?