Sleep is vital for the body’s recovery. Possibly the most important factor. So being able to sleep – and to sleep soundly – is a massive factor in managing ones energy. Here’s what I have learned.



I was first given this standard questionnaire to fill in. It’s dead easy. Just answer all the questions and see if you’re in the “good” column. If you aren’t, then it’s something that you can change. Many of the items are self-explanatory, but here are some tips I got to help me with the less obvious ones.

Q6 – setting aside time to deal with stress

It’s time for bed, your head hits the pillow… and what pops into your head?

Dammit, I forgot to get that thing from the shops. Big meeting tomorrow – did I prepare everything? What time did I say I was going to meet Gertrude again?

Yeah. Goodbye, sleep. You can deal with this by setting aside a time every evening where you just sit down and think about the next day. Write a list if it helps, but the key thing is to ask all those questions, and work out the answers before you start to wind down for the night. Then your mind won’t shove them into your mental intray when your head hits the pillow.

Q13 – Regular routines before bedtime

I was advised on this in some detail. If you follow a pattern, your brain learns it. So for an hour before bed, you should aim to do the same pattern every night. Things which will wind you down, reduce excitement, and lead you down the path to Dozeville. What you choose to do is entirely up to you, and the questionnaire gives some good examples of what to avoid. In general, you should do stuff which isn’t energetic, or exciting. And make sure you stick to it, night after night.

My routine has become:

Turn off the computer (or whatever else I am doing which requires concentration, see Q22)

Stop watching any exciting movies (Q22 again).

Switch instead to something laid back, which doesn’t take much energy and doesn’t generate much excitement. A repeat of an old gentle and slow show on TV, for example.

I may have a light snack if I am hungry (or even if I am not, as it helps on its own). Spreadable cheese on toast is my usual poison; nice and heavy for the body to start chucking energy at to digest, but just snack-sized.

Run a hot bath (see Q14 on the list). I stay in that bath as long as I can. The heat drains my energy, and an added bonus is that one of the natural signals for your body to sleep is it heating up then cooling down. So when I get out, I will be cooling down and preparing for sleep.

I go to bed. Personally, I read a little before sleeping. This is a bad idea, as it is likely to stimulate my mind again. However, I have been reading before sleeping all my life and my brain has kind of adopted it as a trigger for sleeping. I do make sure that I read only light stuff, though.

Bed is only for sleeping

Use your bed only for sleeping. Or for bouncy fun time, as and when that’s in order (unless you’re the adventurous type and the kitchen counter needs a clean anyway). Don’t watch TV in your bed, or use a laptop. Don’t chill out in bed on days at home. Get up, and go and chill out on the sofa (take the duvet with you by all means), but make sure that you are anywhere except the bed. Your brain relates certain places to the things you do there. If you do stuff on your bed other than sleeping, then when you go to bed, your mind prepares for the other stuff. Even as you get into bed, your mind is waking itself up, preparing for a good TV show or another exciting chapter of that book you were reading this morning.

Don’t train your brain to wake up in bed – train it only to sleep there.

What to do if you can’t sleep

If you’ve done all the right things, and you still can’t sleep, then don’t stay in bed. As before, that will get your mind associating bed with thinking or stuff other than sleeping. So admit defeat. Get up. Don’t do anything which will “reward” your brain such as watching another episode of that great new show on Netflix – or your brain will start to wake you up on purpose, to get the nice reward. Do boring stuff. Dull stuff. Nothing energetic (so housework is out) or exciting that will wake you up. Really boring TV shows are great for this, I find, but everyone is different. Find something which you can use to get rid of the random thoughts in your head, but which doesn’t excite you. When you feel drowsy again, go to bed and try again.

Eventually, your brain will associate going to bed with drowsiness and sleep and none of the other things. But it does take a while to learn the lesson. That was a really tough one for me, personally, and I would saunter downstairs at 11pm and then again at midnight, and so on into the early hours. At some point – I forget when, but it must have been 2-3 months into the process – I just stopped having difficulty getting to sleep when I lay my head down on the pillow.

General comments

One thing I was told when I started the process was that it would take a while to train my brain. And it did – several weeks. But two years ago I was up half the night, tossing and turning – and now I usually sleep very well indeed. It’s perfectly possible to change your sleeping habits for the better, and the difference is staggering.

The other tips which were most useful to me were to make sure the bedroom is dark (I bought a blackout blind which has worked miracles) and to make sure that the bedroom is cool.

Good luck!