Following getting your morning routine down, the next step is to get your evening routine cemented into your daily routine. The evening or bedtime routine is just as important, if not more important, than establishing a morning routine.
This article will explore the evening routine and why it is essential for your health and overall well-being. The article will conclude with actionable steps to include in your evening routine and what information I will apply to my life moving forward. In future articles on the perfect evening routine, I will include updates on what benefits I have gained from implementing an evening routine. These updates will consist of my Fitbit stats and how these have changed from my current baseline stats that I will include in this article.
What is an evening/bedtime routine?
According to Sleep Foundation, the evening routine is a set of activities performed in the same order every night. These activities are completed within 30 to 60 minutes before your defined bedtime. I would extend this definition to include the evening routine as a time to unwind and switch off from daily distractions. This consists of the activities that lead up to this crucial hour window before you head off to the land of nod.
What are the benefits of an evening routine?
There is a significant body of research on the importance of bedtime routines for children, but there is a need for more academic research. Several papers have outlined that implementing consistent bedtime routine benefits sleep onset latency, duration, and quality. These improvements in overall sleep quality have a direct positive impact on overall child development, including:
- Improved well-being, including health and emotional-behavioural development.
- Improved literacy.
- More meaningful and positive parent-child interactions.
- Boost overall family functioning and communication.
There is also research on evening routines and how these benefit the elderly. The academic research in this area is limited, but studies have found similar benefits to those seen in children. The academic study “Contribution of Routine to Sleep Quality in Community Elderly” found shorter sleep latency, higher sleep efficiency, and improved sleep quality from implementing a daily routine. These improvements in sleep quality reduced the rate of insomnia among those living in the retirement community.
In adults, academic research is limited, but following my research, most advice from professional institutions includes the need for a relaxing bedtime routine. The Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health states that developing a relaxing-pre bedtime routine is essential to wind down at the end of a long day. Furthermore, academic papers that study children and the elderly believe that the implementation of nightly routines for adults can present similar benefits for adults.
This is taken further by a paper by Nauts et al. that studied adult bedtime routines and how certain activities can lead to sleep procrastination. They found that including “aversive activities” in an individual’s bedtime routine led to wake-up aversion and tomorrow aversion. Both result in negative feelings that flow into the following day, causing you to feel less motivated and impacting your overall well-being. These aversive activities are dependent on the individual. While some people find their skin routine and showering non-aversive and relaxing, others find these activities a chore and tend to put them off till the last minute.
So, the question remains, how do we develop a healthy evening bedtime routine that allows us to destress and wind down? Not just to decompress after a long day but also to relieve anxiety for tomorrow.
Evening Routines Checklist
1. Plan for the Next Day
Many articles online suggest the need to plan for your following day. By setting aside time to do this, you can look forward to the next day and be prepared for the best start possible. I believe this needs to be done at the end of the “workday.”
We referenced the avoidance of adverse activities during our evening routine. This is one of them. This will come down to personal preference, but I prefer to plan my week out every Friday and then adjust my daily schedules at the end of each working day (the last 15 to 30 minutes).
During this last 15 to 30 minutes, you should address any amendments to your weekly schedule, including:
- Review tomorrow’s agenda – based on your weekly schedule and adjust based on any tasks that you could not complete during your day or have emerged during the day.
- Finish off any last-minute preparation – if you are organized, this should not be a problem, but we have all been there when you have not had time to finish that presentation for the next day. If you do not have time, schedule a slot for the following day.
- Define your minimum for the following day – if you are anything like me, we are always over-optimistic for work we can complete the next day. Set your minimum. Ask yourself what work needs to be done and what would be a bonus.
2. Prepare for the Next Day
This is another suggestion that can be found in many self-help articles online. This I can get behind. Not only will it reduce stress in the morning, but it also reduces the number of decisions we must make in the morning. As our ability to make good decisions is halved upon waking up, it is best to get everything laid out before bed.
This feeds directly into my previous article exploring the perfect morning routine. We must ensure that we take as much off our plate during our evening to focus on those areas that can jump-start our day. This includes:
- Getting our outfits ready for the day (gym, office clothing, going out clothes).
- Packing our bags the night before and placing them near the door.
- Booking any transportation for the next day if this has not already been done.
- Meal Preparation.
3. Set the Same Bedtime and Ensure a Good Night’s Sleep.
This aligns with my previous article for the perfect morning routine. It is essential to build a consistent bedtime and wake-up time. You want to work with your chronotype and adjust your sleeping pattern to match your body clock. After taking the online questionnaire created by Dr. Micheal Breus online, I discovered that I am a Bear type.
Once you know your chronotype, you can adjust your sleeping pattern to work with your internal hormones and your Suprachiasmatic Nucleus (SCN). Don’t fight your internal chemistry; work with it. For bears like me, this means sleeping at 11:05 pm and waking up at 7:00 am.
4. Avoid Caffeine
Dr. Deirdre Conroy suggests we stop drinking caffeine eight hours before bed. This can vary from person to person, dependent on the individual’s caffeine sensitivity. This applies to all caffeinated products, including but not limited to coffee, soda, tea, and even chocolate.
She states that although many people know that drinking caffeine increases alertness and reduces the urge to sleep – people are not mindful of the longevity of the effects. The properties of caffeine linger for many hours following the initial jolt of energy we experience.
4. Avoid Caffeine
Dr. Conroy also recommends that if you drink alcohol, you avoid drinking three hours before bed. Although the initial effect of alcohol is sedating at first, alcohol directly impacts sleep longevity and quality. This means that you are more likely to have interrupted sleep wreaking havoc on your overall energy levels the next day and your sleeping pattern over the following days.
6. Limit Water Before Bed
Dr. Conroy suggests we drink at most 12oz of water within two hours of bedtime. We should aim to get our recommended water intake throughout the morning and afternoon to ensure that our crucial sleep is not interrupted by the need to urinate during the early morning hours.
7. Practice Mindfulness
A study conducted in 2015 explored the practice of meditation and the improvements that it had on sleep quality and daytime impairment in older adults. The participants in the group practicing mindfulness were found to have less insomnia, fatigue, and depression at the end of just six sessions.
This study shows the power of meditation and its positive impacts on sleep. By incorporating such practices into your evening routine, you can gain the benefits outlined in the study. There are great free meditation resources online, including YouTube, or you can use paid services such as Calm, and even Fitbit provides a mindfulness course.
8. Read
In the journal of Healthcare Communications, a review was published on the benefits of reading. As part of this review, the following benefits were identified:
- Stress Reduction: A study by Sussex University found that even six minutes of reading a day was enough to reject two-thirds of the daily stresses a person faces.
- Combat Insomnia: Developing the habit of reading books before sleeping has been shown to regulate our internal body clocks and send signals to the brain that it is time to sleep.
- Helps Concentration: Reading allows us to improve our focus by paying full attention to the reading material. It is an effective method for enhancing our decision-making and problem-solving ability.
Several other benefits come from reading, but I have extracted those that apply to establishing a perfect evening routine. You can read the mini-review through the following link to learn more. You can also find further reading in the reference list of this article.
9. Write a Journal
Journalling as part of an evening routine is a great way to reflect on your day. Studies have shown that the act of journaling as part of an evening routine provides many benefits, including:
- Reduce Stress: The act of journalling releases pressure on the feeling of overwhelm, taking your internal thought into the external. A study at a children’s hospital reported a reduction in stress levels.
- Increased Health and Well-being: A research review outlined the benefits of expressive writing and found that it contributed to lower blood pressure, improved mood, and reduced anxiety and depressive symptoms.
- Ability to process thoughts: By writing your thoughts and feelings, you can observe them and stop them from controlling you. This allows you to move past thoughts that do not serve you daily.
- Ability to process emotions: By writing your emotions in a journal, you can identify how you feel in the moment and accept the emotion. By accepting the emotion, you can reduce the feeling associated with that emotion.
Interestingly the study conducted at the children’s hospital goes into further depth surrounding the best methods of daily journaling. As part of their successful study, they asked participants to include the following:
- Write three things that you are grateful for.
- Include three wishes that you have for the future.
- Write the story of your life in six words.
- Reflect upon your day and your emotional state.
- Include a small section for why you are excited about tomorrow.
Healthline extends this list further, suggesting that to get the most out of the journalling experience, you should:
- Baby Steps: When you start your journal, spend only a short time in the process, set a timer, and write what comes to your mind.
- Use a writing method that feels right: Your computer, an app on your phone, or traditional pen and paper.
- Link your journaling to a routine: This is an excellent suggestion as it links perfectly with incorporating it into your evening bedtime routine.
- Connect the dots: Simply put, write this happened today à this is how it made me feel à these are the thoughts I am having.
- Use a prompt: If you are struggling with an entry, use an anchor to start your writing, describing something you love or fear and why.
- Put yourself in someone else shoes: If you are reflecting on a heated conversation during your day, you can always attempt to see it through the eyes of the other person.
10. Practice a Hobby
During the bedtime routine, it is advised to choose a relaxing hobby that allows you to enter a state of flow. What is meant by a state of flow? A flow state is when we get lost in active leisure instead of passive leisure. Passive leisure includes activities such as watching TV or scrolling your social feed. Active leisure is when we find ourselves lost in a challenging and all-absorbing hobby. This includes activities such as sports, art projects, and hobbies where time seems to disappear when you are fully immersed.
The activity you choose will depend on your preferences for an evening. Why not try something new if you don’t have a hobby? Relaxing hobbies that we can do within the comfort of our own home before sleep include:
- Handmade crafts.
- Learning or playing an instrument.
- Collecting – this could include playing cards, stamps, or coins.
- Drawing
- Growing indoor plants.
- Colouring.
- Creative Writing.
- Knitting and crocheting.
- Logic puzzles.
11. Put Down the Electronics Down
A study published in the Indian Journal of Public Health explored the impact of electronic gadgets on our sleep overall sleep quality. Mobile addiction is rapidly increasing in modern society, impacting physical, psychological, and social health. The study had several key findings:
- Reduced Sleep Duration: 52% of participants slept less than the required minimum of 6 hours per day.
- Electronic Gadgets are becoming part of our nightly routine: 58% of participants have a habit of using electronic devices right before bed.
- Electronic Gadgets were used in the dark: 67% of participants used these electronic devices in the dark increasing strain on the eyes.
They concluded that we should avoid using electronic devices before sleeping to attain healthy routines. They stated that those that choose to use electronic devices before bed should use blue light filters as this has been proven to improve sleep quality. The blue light emitted from digital screens induces the formation of melatonin that stimulates the brain to stay awake, directly impacting sleep quality.
This goes further and impacts our performance the following day. A study published by the International Mind, Brain, and Education Society found that the use of media before bedtime caused:
- Slower reaction times.
- Reduced stability of performance.
- Reduction in attention.
So, we need to switch off the electronics before bed, but how long before bed? The National Sleep Foundation recommends turning electronics off between thirty minutes and two hours before sleep, and they suggest aiming for at least an hour before your head hits the pillow.
12. Take a Warm Bath or Shower
As referenced in my previous article, there are benefits to cold showers in the morning. I have already started implementing these into my regime – some days, they are worse than others! The opposite applies when it comes to showering in the evening.
According to Healthline, taking a hot shower or bath in the evening allows us to wind down and relax after a long day. Although we previously mentioned the benefits of cold showers in morning routines, hot showers provide many benefits before bedtime, including:
- May boost the immune system.
- Sooth muscles after exercise.
- Improve sleep quality.
- Lowers blood pressure at bedtime.
- Reduces sleep latency.
13. Clean Your Teeth
Just like the morning, an evening routine would only be complete with brushing your teeth. The Science of Living recommends that you opt for the following:
- A fluoride toothpaste.
- Brush twice a day.
- Avoid mouthwash for 30 minutes after you have brushed your teeth.
- Listen to music (apparently, the standard length of a pop song is how long you should brush your teeth – handy if you ask me).
- Use a small brush head.
- Use a plaque-disclosing tablet.
14. Listen to Calming Music
A journal titled “Effects of Relaxing Music on Healthy Sleep” carried out research that found several benefits that came from listening to relaxing music before bedtime. They found that the participants consistently improved subjective sleep quality. The participants displayed a reduced amount of N1 sleep (the sleep stage between wakefulness and fully asleep termed “active sleep”).
I have embedded several of my sleep playlists below that I am currently using to improve my sleep. I will provide updates in the future on how this has reduced my sleep latency and boosted my energy for the next day.
15. Commit to Making Tomorrow Slightly Better Than Today
Whenever you feel it is best in your evening routine, take a minute to reflect on the day. If you choose, this could be part of your mindfulness practice (this is when I will carry out this exercise). During this time of reflection, observe the day without labelling any part of the day as bad or good. Just review the events of the day.
Once you have reviewed the day’s events, allow them to fall away, removing them from your mind. This is a great time to commit to an even better day tomorrow. Saying a commitment in your head can help. A clear mission statement is, “I will make every effort to make tomorrow even better than today.” Reaffirming this before you move into the next day will motivate you to make the most of each day you have.
Finding Your Sleep Baseline – How to track your sleep?
So, we know that science backs evening and bedtime routines, but how can we track our progress and whether we are reaping the benefits?
Mayo Clinic states that there are three methods to track your sleep patterns:
Wearables: These are devices that you wear on your wrist or finger. These devices collect your movement, heart rate, and breathing patterns. From this data, the device collects information on your activity over time and can track when you are awake and asleep.
Bedside Devices: These devices are often placed on your bedside table and collect data on your movement and breathing. They also collect data on your bedroom environment, including humidity, temperature, ambient noise, and light.
Bed Sensors: These sensors are placed on your mattress or sheets. Once again, they collect data on your heart rate and movement. More expensive devices also collect data on your room environment, like bedside devices.
What are the limitations of sleep trackers?
Mayo Clinic extends this information further, stating that we can only partially rely on these devices to track overall sleep quality. I am sure that we all know when we have had a good night’s sleep with how we feel the following day and the subsequent morning. They state that these devices can provide the following:
- Track Sleeping Patterns: A method to track our sleeping patterns.
- Inform Sleep Time: They allow us to track our sleep time.
- Data for Medical Professionals: We can you the data to inform medical professionals to support problems associated with sleep.
- Help to form healthy habits: I would add to this by saying we can use these devices to create healthy habits by monitoring the improvement in our sleeping patterns relating to beneficial changes in our routines.
Further to this, they state that you should not use these devices:
- Avoid taking notice of sleep quality: To track sleep quality, as these devices cannot monitor brain activity which is the only method to determine sleep stages accurately.
- Avoid these devices if they cause anxiety: Avoid using these devices if they are causing greater anxiety and harming your sleep further.
My Sleeping Baseline
I will track my sleep with the Versa 2 Fitbit to understand my sleep time and patterns. I will pair this with a sleep diary to track how I feel in the morning. Tracking how I feel in the morning will reduce the limitations that come from wearable devices’ sleep quality scores.
The baseline data is tracked over a week, and as you can see, there are many problems. We can see the following:
1. Matching sleep pattern to chronotype: As discussed in the previous article, my chronotype is a Bear meaning my sleep time should be from 11:05 pm to 7:00 am. The data shows that, on average, I am not going to sleep until the early hours of the morning, with the worst day being Thursday, when I didn’t fall asleep until 3:00 am.
2. Napping after 3:00 pm: According to the Rochester Medical Center, we should avoid napping after 3:00 pm as this will impact our ability to fall asleep. This needs to stop.
3. Variance in bedtime and wake times: From looking at the data, my current sleep pattern has very little stability. This needs to change as the evening routine starts at 10:00 pm, so I am in bed by 11:00 pm.
4. Stopping the snooze: The data shows that I regularly hit the snooze button and avoid the early morning in exchange for longer in bed. Not only is this impacting my productivity, but it is having a knock-on effect on my mental well-being.
We can make actionable steps from these insights – maybe you can draw similarities to this and create actionable steps for a better life.
Final Thoughts & Actionable Steps
So, moving forward, this is what my evening routine will look like. This will include all the research conducted in the early part of this article while correcting the unhealthy habits that have presented themselves from the Fitbit wearable.
I will provide an update on implementing these changes in thirty days. We will see what changes and hopefully benefits I have gained from these changes.
Let us live a happier, healthier life while bringing a net positive into this world — one step at a time. Share in the comments what your evening routine looks like!
References
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