As important as the start into your day is, as important is the transition to sleep. Thinking proactively about a morning, as well as an evening routine can help you make each day a bit better – by default.
Many just slither into each day and pass out at night. I also lived that way for a long time, before first thinking about how I start and end each day. It is amazing how refreshing a well-planned start into each day actually is. Likewise, is a calming me-centered time in the evening. I bet many folks are like that and leave potential at the table. Thing is you not only leave potential on the table – it can also be harming:
- Clicking through the mobile funnels and landing in a raging Twitter discussion at 6 in the morning might annoy you and tilt your day towards the negative.
- Reading about the latest BLM news, a pseudo-muslim bombing himself at the edge of nowhere, or Trump’s tons of funny tweets, right before bed might not the best aid to transfer you into the land of dreams.
Without diverging into further potentially rage-invoking topics, let’s talk about what this post shall be about – an evening routine. What the benefits are, what you should think about, what you can do and I share mine with you exemplarily. Let’s go guys!
Three Reasons why developing an Evening Routine is crucial!
Slow down the Pace
The evening phase is there to wind you down and prep your body for sleep. Besides that, it is a calm time to be more introverted and focus on you specifically. What you wanna avoid is everything that turns your body and mind uwp – that could be a hearty discussion with your better half, raging at the news or watching TV for hours emitting blue-light.
Have a healthy Amount of Solitude
To carry on the thought of introversion, you can use the evenings to be with yourself – be with your thoughts, read a bit, mediate and try to go inward. Most of our days happen extroverted and many jobs are focussed on external things – the world in us often lags behind.
Help your Body to sleep
Besides your activities you can help your body in a variety of ways to transition over into a deep slumber – this might be looking at what you’re eating for dinner, when you’re doing so, supplementing cleverly or simply turning down as a whole. As you see all of these things are simple, logical and go hand in hand.
The Musts for your Evening Routine
All of these points have one as a goal – wind you down and support your sleep – as this is what the last hours of your day are for. Even as a night owl you should at least dedicate one hour to wind down and not directly drop from the gym into bed.
Let’s look at how you can support your sleep definitely.
Wind Down and avoid unnecessary Input
Some might say that distracting oneself out of their life with tons of external input might be the way – but is it really? Of course is NetFlixing an evening nice and can be enjoyed by anyone – but what we’re talking here about is 90% of your evening. The boring everyday stuff. The stuff you do immediately before bed. It’s likewise sleep if you sleep well 90% of the time you’ll be fine by definition.
So try to stay with yourself, turn inwards and wind consciously down. Avoid input that turns you up like:
- the news which are useless anyways
- a heaty discussion with your beloved one’s which might turn into a full-fledged battle
Prepare for the next Day
Better be prepared than not. Preparing helps you in a variety of ways, but most of all it smoothens out your next morning and lets you enjoy other activities within your morning routine without worrying about clothing or breakfast.
By preparing your breakfast you get at least 15 minutes. By laying out your clothes you get 5 minutes and can jump immediately out of bed without any excuses. Without leaving anything to chance the chance of fucking up and laying in bed until the last minute won’t help.
Good things to prepare are:
- Your coffee mug and the utensils you need (important!)
- Your clothes fit to the weather the next day
- Your breakfast and food for work
- Your bag to go the gym, put in a few snacks (aka loads of snacks)
Helpful Supplements for sleep
There are few supplements for sleep that promise help. Most are useless and some serious drugs. The only aids I found useful are Melatonin and Passionflower extract.1
- Melatonin* is directly a sleep hormone, which is responsible for one of your two major sleeping mechanisms. As an alternative, you could drink tart cherry juice, if you don’t mind all that sugar.
- Passionflower extract* generally winds your brain down by manipulating an inhibiting neurotransmitter, called GABA within your brain.
Besides these two supplements, commonly used ones are alcohol, THC, CBD, 5-HTP, benzodiazepines, and barbiturates. I would strongly advise staying away from all of these for good – unless you got very good medicinal reasons to do so.
Light Stretching before Bed can help out
There is much evidence static stretching helps you to wind down through many complex mechanisms, especially when combined with focussed deep breathing.2 The main point is here to choose feel-good stretches and err on the side of doing too little. You don’t wanna rep out 3 sets of side split Isos before sleeping, but rather 60s of relaxed pike stretch with a few twisting motions afterwards.
Best Foods to eat before Bed
Eating can make or brake your sleep – not only is important what you eat, but also the time and amount you eat. Let’s look into these points.
First to the what: Research suggests that carbs at night are superior to fasting or fats. 3This fact strongly depends on your other nutritional preferences, but I found it also helpful to eat at night my carbohydrate-rich meal. Try to stick to the basics like getting some veggies, protein, and co. Plus, some kind of quark makes for high-quality slow-digestible protein overnight.
Next is the when: Try to fit at least 2 hours between your last meal and sleeping time. Going to bed with your stomach working hard will not work out well. Therefore, don’t eat too late and don’t overeat yourself to the extreme.
A few Evening Routine Ideas to build your own one!
Although the world is your oyster, I wanted to give you a few useful evening routine ideas to orientate yourself at. There are many things you could find calming, or would love to do before bed – the most important is that they generally stick to the above points. Avoid all the stressful, turn-up stuff.
That said let me ask you a few questions:
- What calms you down? A cup of tea or a book? A nice breakfast?
- What is it you like to do when alone? Reading? Meditating? Painting? Thinking?
- What do your dinners usually look like? Is there room for optimization?
What do I do each Night before Sleeping?
My Routine strongly depends on if I am at home or traveling. There is no chance one can be super rigid about every structure in one’s life while in a frequently-changing environment – so I love to try to work with it instead of beating myself up and working against it. Nonetheless, while at home it is more controlled, on autopilot, and lengthy, the parts it is made of stay the same:
- Dinner (~19:00)
- Work (~19:00-20:30)
- Movement (~20:30-21:00)
- Tea + Supplements
- Reading (~21:00-22:00)
For me, the part of internalizing is the most important. Movement makes me turn inward, while reading is a solid squeeze-in into every free minute I find. While writing this it’s Dave Rubin’s Don’t Burn this Book*, followed by Marx’s Manifesto*. On the movement part, I like to combine mildly active stretches like the downward dog to cobra for example, with more passive stretches.
For dinner, I generally prefer a huge, high-carb meal, high protein, medium-fat meal, followed by my ritual bowl of curd. I said it is huge. And this totally goes against my rule of not stuffing oneself. I found it not an issue and need to get my calories in, plus I like to eat in the evening.
As supplements, I take Melatonin* combined with Passionflower* extract when needed – for example, when jetlagged or having a hard time sleeping in – and 200mg of Magnesiumcitrate* each night.
Pretty simple as you see, but that’s basically my time I block each night solely for myself, no matter what the day was like. And with that little wrap up I’m ending today’s post.
For more on routines check out my posts about them or shoot me a comment if there is any specific question coming to your mind.
