Sleep influences my quality of life more than any other factor. When I sleep well, I’m happy, energetic, enthusiastic, and competent. When I sleep poorly, I’m irritable, apathetic, pessimistic, and incapable. In short, good sleep enhances my life–a fact that has motivated me to optimize my sleep.

Over time, I’ve composed a sleep formula that guarantees I sleep well, which I’m sharing so you can benefit from my hours of research and months of experimentation.

I’ve organized this post into three sections.

The Formula: First, I list the components of my routine with techniques to address each component.

Sleep Terms: Next, I discuss some sleep terms I use frequently throughout the post to ensure we have a shared understanding of what I mean when I use them.

The Formula, Explained: Finally, I discuss each component of my sleep formula including how important it is and why it is important. For each component, I discuss the techniques I use to regulate it with information on how effective and difficult they are, how they work, and how I incorporate them.

My hope is that you can use this information to build your own sleep formula by picking the techniques that will benefit you the most.

My Formula

• Maintain a Consistent Sleep Schedule
  • Go to bed at the same time every night (1-hour window)
  • Get enough sleep
• Regulate Light Exposure (especially blue light)
  • Eliminate screens before bed (1+ hours)
  • Get blue light in the morning (30+ minutes within 2 hours of waking up)
  • Blackout bedroom
  • Wear blue light filtering glasses before bed (1+ hours)
• Reduce Nighttime Noise
  • Wear earplugs to bed
  • Soundproof bedroom or move
• Assist Regulation of Body Temperature
  • Maintain a cool bedroom at night (60-67*F)
  • Take a hot shower before bed (1.5 hours)
• Build Fatigue
  • Avoid caffeine in the afternoon (after 12 PM)
  • Exercise Daily
• Reduce stimuli before bed
  • Avoid exercise before bed (2+ hours)
  • Avoid eating before bed (3+ hours)
  • Destress before bed
• Measure and Experiment

Sleep Terms

Before I go into detail on each component and technique in my formula, I want to ensure we have a shared understanding of two important concepts I use frequently throughout the post.

Circadian Rhythm

The circadian rhythm is our daily cycle of sleeping and waking. It’s a phenomenally complex process that regulates everything in our body from temperature, blood pressure,  and cortisol to energy levels, hunger, and reaction time. This cycle is why we get sleepy at night and have energy during the day.

All of the techniques in my sleep formula assist our circadian rhythms in some way, helping our bodies perform this natural process efficiently despite the influence of our unnatural environment.

We can take action to assist our circadian rhythm because it is not fixed or static, it changes in response to feedback from our environment which can disrupt or shift it. Sometimes, that’s a good thing–if our circadian rhythm was static, there would be no way to shift our sleep schedule when we travel to another time zone. It can be a problem, however, when we do something that disrupts it–looking at screens before bed, for example, triggers the “day” portion of our circadian rhythm and makes it hard to fall asleep.

Sleep Quality

Sleep quality is a measure of how good our sleep is. While sleep duration is important, the quality of that sleep is just as important for our health and energy levels.

High quality sleep is characterized by the correct proportions of REM/deep/light sleep, a reduced heart rate, few wake-ups throughout the night, elevated heart rate variability, and more.  When I use “sleep quality” below, I am referring to all of these elements.

My Formula, Explained

Each component of my sleep formula varies in how important it is for high-quality sleep. For each component, I indicate its importance (essential, important, or helpful) and why it is important.

Likewise, each technique varies in its effectiveness (excellent, good, fair) and difficulty (hard, moderate, easy, passive) as well as how it works and how I incorporate it.

For each component and technique, I discuss each of these elements so you can weigh the tradeoffs and decide if you want to use that technique in your sleep routine.

Maintain a Consistent Sleep Schedule

Importance: Essential

A consistent sleep schedule is easily the most important component of excellent sleep. It doesn’t matter how well we manage everything else, if we vary our bedtime or sleep duration by more than one hour each night, our sleep quality will suffer.

By default, our circadian rhythm follows the same 24-hour cycle each day. Shifting it by any amount requires an adjustment period (on the order of 1 day per hour that we are shifting it). During that adjustment period, our sleep-quality degrades due to our body “running its sleep program at the wrong time”.

We experience the consequences of shifting our schedule most noticeably when we have jet lag–our circadian rhythm is stuck back home while we’re in a new location with a new day and night time.

Similarly, we sleep best when our sleep duration is the same each night. Shortened sleep limits our bodies’ ability to complete the important functions of sleep while lengthened sleep can throw off our day as well as the following night of sleep.

Go to bed at the same time every night (1-hour window)

Effectiveness: Excellent
Difficulty: Moderate

Going to bed at the same time each night is easily the most effective way to keep our circadian rhythm synchronized with our sleep and our sleep quality high. By going to bed at the same time, we build momentum–our circadian rhythm shifts to match our bedtime and we initiate a self re-enforcing loop where we become tired at the same time each night so we go to bed at the same time… and so on.

Of course, adjusting our lives to accommodate a consistent sleep schedule can be challenging. The most important step is simply making sleep a priority and taking steps to enable consistency. For me, the boost to my energy is absolutely worth constraining the rest of my life.

One way I’ve improved my consistency is by creating a bedtime routine that I start at the same time every night. Between 9 and 9:30 PM, I drop whatever I’m doing, have a shower, journal, brush my teeth, foam roll, and then read until bed. This routine guarantees that I’m relaxed and ready to sleep by 10:30 PM. If you’re having trouble remembering to start your routine, try using an alarm as a reminder.

Get enough sleep

Effectiveness: Excellent
Difficulty: Moderate

We’ve all heard the advice that we need 7-9 hours of sleep each night and it’s true, sleep duration is as important for sleep quality as bedtime. Simply put, the process of sleep takes time–if our sleep is cut short then some of those processes won’t have the chance to complete.

While enough sleep is important, it can be a challenge to know much is enough. The best way to find out is to wake up without an alarm. First, arrange a consistent bedtime and set your alarm as you normally would. If your alarm wakes you up each morning, shift your bedtime 15 minutes earlier until you don’t need an alarm. Once you’re waking up without an alarm, you can easily calculate how much time you need in bed.

In my case, I require around 8 hours and 20 minutes of sleep to feel my best. I go to bed at 10:30 PM and wake up between 7 AM and 8 AM, with a backup alarm set for 8:30 AM. I most frequently wake up at 7:30 AM, for a total of 9 hours in bed and closer to 8 hours and 20 minutes actually asleep (as measured by my sleep tracker).

Regulate Light Exposure (especially blue light)

Importance: Essential

Light exposure, along with a consistent sleep schedule, is the most important component of excellent sleep. Our body uses light, especially blue light, to align our circadian rhythm with the sun. Exposure to blue light tells our body that it’s day time while its absence tells it that it’s night. As a result, it’s essential to absorb lots of blue light during the day and as little as possible at night.

Unfortunately, indoor jobs (limiting our exposure to blue light in the morning) and screens (exposing us to blue light at night) wreak havoc on our sleep by reversing the natural cycle of blue light. Fortunately, correcting that cycle is pretty easy.

Eliminate screens before bed (1+ hours)

Effectiveness: Excellent
Difficulty: Easy

Screens emit a large amount of blue light directly into our eyes which triggers our brains “day sensor” and delays our onset of sleep[1]–it’s the reason we don’t get as tired browsing the internet as we do reading a book. Screens are easily the biggest source of blue light in the evening so avoiding them has an outsized impact on keeping our circadian rhythm in sync.

Fortunately, it’s easy to cut screens out of the final hours of our evening, all we have to do is not use them. If you’re not sure what to do with your newfound time, consider reading, listening to music/podcasts, light stretching, or visiting with a housemate.

If you reject limiting screens at night, Windows, Android, and iOS all have settings that can filter out blue light, providing at least some of the benefits of eliminating screens. Alternatively, blue light blocking glasses, discussed later in this post, can be used to allow late screentime.

Get blue light in the morning (30+ minutes within 2 hours of waking)

Effectiveness: Excellent
Difficulty: Easy

In contrast to avoiding blue light at night, it’s vital to expose ourselves to bright light in the morning–preferably actual sunlight. After we wake up, light is the most important signal telling our body it is day time. It triggers a hormonal shift that boosts our energy and synchronizes our circadian rhythm, ensuring we become tired when night arrives.

My wife and I walk for 30 minutes as early in the morning as possible and it always increases my energy levels. If it is overcast or I can’t make it outside, I’ll sit in front of a 10000 Lux white light therapy lamp for half an hour ($30 online).

Blackout bedroom

Effectiveness: Good
Difficulty: Moderate/Hard

At this point, it shouldn’t be a surprise that light exposure during sleep negatively affects sleep quality. The sun only has to wake you up once for the importance of a dark bedroom to become self-evident.

Ideally, our bedrooms are pitch black while we sleep but the importance of making them darker depends on how dark they already are. If we can read without the lights turned on, it’s too bright for sleep. In contrast, if we can barely see our hands, our sleep probably won’t benefit much from a darker room.

In my case, we sleep in the basement so it is easy to keep it dark. I simply stuffed the window with some pillows, and voila, the room is pitch black once the door is closed. In a previous apartment, I filled the window with DJ booth foam and sealed the edges with duct tape to block out both light and sound. On top of blocking external light sources, I keep my phone upside down and put tape over the LED on my phone charger to keep them from lighting up the room.

If you can’t blackout your bedroom, a face mask can help a lot. While traveling, we couldn’t light seal each room we stayed in which made wearing a face mask a total lifesaver. While the mask doesn’t prevent daylight from waking me up, it does mitigate the impact of moon and street light.

Wear blue light filtering glasses before bed (1+ hours)

Effectiveness: Fair
Difficulty: Easy

While screens are the most significant source of blue light at night, regular light bulbs put out plenty of blue light as well. These sources are not beamed directly into our eyes and, therefore, have a correspondingly smaller effect on our circadian rhythm–but that effect is still non-zero.

One solution is to wear blue light filtering glasses to block blue light from any source, including both regular lights and screens. These glasses block light effectively[2] but the net effect on sleep, if you’re already avoiding screens, is relatively small so they might not be worth it for you.

I like to wear the glasses 1-hour prior to bed each night and find that they provide a small improvement in my sleep. Furthermore, they ensure I don’t ruin my sleep by glancing at my phone before bed or using a computer later than 9 PM. At $80+, they’re not cheap but for 2% better sleep, they’re worth it to me.

Reduce Nighttime Noise

Importance: Important

In the worst case, noise can wake us up but, even if it doesn’t wake us, noise significantly reduces sleep quality[3]. Furthermore, these negative impacts start with sounds as quiet as 50 dB–around the level of a quiet conversation on the couch. As a result, it’s important to limit noise as much as possible during sleep, especially if our room is really loud.

Wear earplugs to bed

Effectiveness: Excellent
Difficulty: Easy

Earplugs are the simplest and most effective way to limit the impact of noise while sleeping. They are great because they both make loud noises quieter (such as a honking horn) as well as eliminate background noise (such as air conditioning).

I started wearing earplugs every night while traveling and have continued the habit at home, even though our bedroom is nearly silent (we sleep in the basement on a quiet street). I find I sleep deeper and they keep me from waking up when my wife leaves the bedroom or a garbage truck drives by.

The main challenge with nightly earplug use is finding a set that is comfortable. My wife found soft blue ones at CVS that don’t hurt my ears and now I can wear them every night without issue!

Soundproof bedroom or move

Effectiveness: Excellent
Difficulty: Hard

Earplugs are great but they can’t block all noise. If earplugs aren’t sufficient, the next best options might be soundproofing or moving–rather onerous tasks.

I have done both. In a previous apartment, I filled the bedroom window with DJ booth foam to block street noise. More recently, we selected our current apartment partly because it’s on a quiet street with a bedroom in the basement–it’s one of my favorite features in our current home!

Assist Regulation of Body Temperature

Importance: Important

Our body temperature elevates during the day and drops at night. If that drop in temperature is impaired (by a hot room, late-night exercise, etc) then so is our ability to fall asleep, stay asleep, and sleep deeply. Fortunately, our body naturally does most of the work but we can assist it pretty easily.

Maintain a cool bedroom at night (60-67*F)

Effectiveness: Excellent
Difficulty: Easy (if you have AC)

We’ve all had the miserable experience of trying to sleep through a hot, humid night without AC. It only takes one night like that to internalize how important a cool bedroom is for reducing our core body temperature and promoting high-quality sleep.

We keep our bedroom around 68*F–just above the documented optima of 60-67*F[4]. If your sleep partner prefers a warmer room, consider purchasing a product such as the Ooler Sleep System so you can independently control the temperature on your half of the bed.

Take a hot shower before bed (1.5 hours)

Effectiveness: Fair
Difficulty: Easy

Counter-intuitively, a hot shower 1.5 hours before bed is a helpful way to stimulate a reduction in core body temperature. When we take a hot shower, our skin warms without significantly increasing our core body temperature, tricking our body into thinking it is hot. In response, blood vessels near the surface of our skin dilate, transporting heat from our core into the air, resulting in a quick reduction in body temperature!

I take a hot shower ~1.5 hours before bed every night and I love it. I’ve found that’s enough time to cool down from the shower but not so long that I’m tired before I’m ready to sleep.

Build Fatigue

Importance: Helpful

Accumulating fatigue throughout the day is a helpful way to ensure we’re tired when we go to bed. Naturally, if we’re tired, we find it easier to fall asleep and sleep more deeply.

Avoid caffeine in the afternoon (after 12 PM)

Effectiveness: Good
Difficulty: Passive

Caffeine blocks adenosine, a chemical that stimulates drowsiness. Any caffeine remaining in our system at bedtime negatively impacts our sleep. Unfortunately, caffeine has a half-life of around 5 hours. That means that, if you consume 4 cups of coffee by noon then your body still has the equivalent of 1 cup of coffee left at 10 PM! Eliminating caffeine entirely is the most effective way to solve this problem but, if you’re not willing to do so, stopping caffeine consumption at noon is a reasonable compromise.

I currently drink caffeinated coffee until 10 AM then switch to decaf for the remainder of the day–I love the taste of coffee and I’m not willing to give it up! I intend to eliminate caffeinated coffee entirely in favor of drinking decaf exclusively but we still have some caffeinated beans to finish.

If you find you need coffee to stay awake in the afternoon, try implementing more of this sleep formula so you don’t need it!

Exercise Daily

Effectiveness: Good
Difficulty: Hard

Daily exercise is essential for a healthy lifestyle and, by building fatigue, it helps us sleep better at night. My deepest nights of sleep always happen when I’ve had a good, hard workout earlier in the day.

With that said, daily exercise is time-consuming and, if sleep is your only objective, there are simpler techniques elsewhere in this formula.

Reduce stimuli before bed

Importance: Helpful

Mental and physical stimuli elevate our heart rate, stimulate stress hormones, increase our body temperature, and more–all of which negatively impact sleep. As a result, it’s helpful to avoid stimuli before bed and perform calming activities instead.

Avoid exercise before bed (2+ hours)

Effectiveness: Good
Difficulty: Passive

Exercise before bed increases our body temperature and stimulates the release of stress hormones. That’s great in the middle of the day when we want energy but, at night, it’s counterproductive. As a result, it’s preferable to avoid exercise close to bedtime, especially if it’s high in intensity. Fortunately, not exercising is generally pretty easy.

I try to exercise in the early afternoon and avoid any nighttime activity that is more strenuous than foam rolling.

Avoid eating before bed (3+ hours)

Effectiveness: Good
Difficulty: Easy

Eating increases our metabolism to process the food we’ve consumed–a process that takes hours. Normally, our body slows our metabolism at night but late meals and snacks prevent that change. By avoiding food for at least three hours before bed, we give our body time to finish the initial digestion and ramp down our metabolism for sleep.

I take this to an extreme and generally eat my last meal at least 6 hours before bed, often more. The later I eat, the worse I sleep so I only eat late in social situations.

Destress before bed

Effectiveness: Fair
Difficulty: Moderate

Anyone who has lain awake at night, stressing about the past or worrying about the future, knows how significantly stress can impact sleep. Of course, even if it doesn’t keep us awake, stress can elevate hormones like cortisol and reduce the quality of our sleep. As a result, anything we do to reduce nighttime stress can improve our sleep.

I use a variety of mental health management[5] techniques but my favorite bedtime exercise is journaling. If that’s not your thing, try other activities, such as meditation, until you discover what works for you.

Measure and Experiment

Importance: Helpful
Effectiveness: Excellent
Difficulty: Moderate

While every component and technique in this formula is a good sleep “best practice”, experimentation and measurement are the only way to discover what works for you. There may be techniques, such as avoiding alcohol before bed, that would improve your sleep but aren’t on my list (I don’t drink) and the only way to know is to experiment and measure.

Rudimentary sleep tracking in a diary is possible but I’ve found that using a sleep tracker has been essential to understanding how these techniques impact my sleep. I have an Oura Ring, which is an excellent sleep tracker in a compact package, and I enthusiastically recommend it. If a ring isn’t your style, there are other trackers, such as the Whoop strap and Dreem headband, that achieve similar results.[6]

Sleep Well

Prioritizing high-quality sleep pays dividends in every aspect of our lives, I hope you’ll join me in doing so–you’ll be glad you did. Good night!

Citations

[1] Blue light delays circadian rhythm is delayed
[2] Blue light glasses boost melatonin
[3] Noise at night has a large, negative impact on sleep
[4] The optimal bedroom temperature is 60-67*F
[5] My mental health management techniques
[6] An excellent article on sleep tracking devices

[a] Importance of circadian rhythm for cardiovascular health
[b] Importance of circadian rhythm for academic performance
[c] Buy blue light filtering glasses