Find Balance in Your Day
Dear Fabulous Traveler,
Kira runs her own company, she works long hours and when she gets home, she starts a second shift caring for her three children. By the time she has made dinner for the family, helped with homework, and put the kids to bed, she’s exhausted.
What she really needs is quality rest to power her through another busy day tomorrow. But she's a rebel! She doesn't want to give in and sacrifice her rare free time in exchange for sleep. She’s a victim of “revenge bedtime procrastination.”
This is when people make a conscious choice to prioritize other activities over sleep, even though they know they need to rest. For people who have very little time to themselves, sleep can be seen as expendable, especially if it means they get to do something they find more enjoyable. For Kira, bedtime has become a punishment. Every night she rails against it even though solid, consistent sleep would help her find more balance in her stressful days.
Find Balance in Your Day
When Kira stays up too late trying to snatch back some hours of enjoyment from those she lost in the daytime, she isn’t getting back at some nameless villain. She’s only hurting herself.
She knows why sleep is important but is suffering from an intention-behavior gap. Her current actions don’t support the healthy behaviors that she wants to implement. She needs a sleep intervention.
Many of us are juggling demanding schedules. Whether you work full time, are studying, or have family responsibilities, sleep may have become the sacrifice you needed to make just to fit everything in. This week you’re going to learn how to better balance your days and give your essential rest the priority status it deserves.
This Week’s Plan
Your Goal
Fight the temptation of revenge bedtime procrastination and exercise more control over your schedule by filling your day with “me” time. If you have a very busy schedule, this might only translate into micro time slots, but those little snippets of freedom add up and give you a greater sense of agency over your day.
On at least three days this week, try:
- Using your commute to listen to your favorite podcasts or an audio book
- Taking a walk in your lunch break
- Calling a friend while you make dinner
- Scheduling self-care just like a meeting
- Sharing the load of parenting or household chores
Stop your nighttime self from stealing time from your daytime self by better regulating your leisure time and by recognizing that you can only accomplish so much in a day. It’s OK to say, “I’ll finish this tomorrow.”
Your free time is just as important to your health and happiness as your work time. Finding balance between the two frees you from resentment and gives you back control.
Your one-time action
Set a work curfew.
After a certain time, say 6pm, make it your personal promise not to read, or reply to work messages until the next day.
For many people their work commitments snake right under the time they leave the office and follow them home with updates, notifications and out of hours emails. Drawing a clear boundary between your work and home life helps you to feel in control and prevents you from staying up late just to enjoy some free time. You can also set your phone to silence notifications after a certain time so that you won't be bothered with pings from the office.
Prolific TV writer and producer, Shonda Rhimes, has an out of office message that lets people know she doesn't respond to emails after 7pm or on weekends. She says, “Work will happen 24 hours a day, 365 days a year if you let it.”
What We Are Doing
You are creating the optimum set of circumstances to encourage good sleeping habits. You have developed a bedtime routine with a set of calming activities that help to prepare you for sleep in a bedroom that promotes healthy sleep hygiene.
You have learned to disconnect and unplug from devices 30 minutes before bed and made a commitment to build a balanced schedule that allows you time to unwind before bed.
But we still have a few more sleep prompting tricks to share. Until then, Fabulous Traveler, good night.