Sleep better tonight with the 10-3-2-1 method.

Caffeine promotes alertness by blocking the sleep chemical adenosine. Adenosine is a sleep-promoting chemical we should be naturally building up throughout the day.

The half life of caffeine is around 5 hours. But that just means that it’s reduced to half its amount in your system by that time.

So it can take up to 10 hours to be completely eliminated.

And if you’re drinking more caffeine than you’d like to counteract the sluggishness you feel from a little too much wine the night before, keep reading!

This is the hardest one to change for most of us. But it’s worth it!

Give your body time to process what you’ve been eating before you turn in for the night. Why? The digestive process and stomach acids can’t function as effectively when the body is horizontal. If you have digestive challenges, this isn’t helpful for you!

Limiting your drinking before bedtime means two different things: no alcohol, but also no fluids of any kind.

Alcohol is a sedative that may help you fall asleep, but once it’s metabolized in the middle of the night, it can wake you up!

Even water can disrupt your sleep if you wake up to pee!  So stay hydrated early in the day so you don’t need that big glass of water before bed.

2 hours before bedtime stop working

With the ease of working from home, it’s too easy to blur the lines between work life and home life.

Fight the temptation to check your email one last time before you put your head on the pillow.

One of the best ways to shut off your “work brain” is to just write out all of tomorrow’s TO DOs on a piece of paper (don’t get sucked back into your device!). I’ll talk about the 3-3-3 method for this in my next newsletter.

This can give your permission to relax and unplug.

Which is just what you need to signal to your mind that

it’s time for sleep.

This habit is probably going to be just as hard as avoiding drinking 3 hours before bedtime.

But it’s probably just as important.

The blue light coming from our screens can inhibit the natural release of melatonin, which is nature’s signal to the brain that it’s time for sleep.

And that addictive dopamine hit from finding some new email or social media status update isn’t what you need when you’re trying to fall asleep. Doom scrolling is real, and not helping you sleep!

Dim the lights and reach for a book instead. It’s amazing how quickly you can relax and get sleepy reading an old fashioned book on paper with a book light!