Don’t use your phone as an alarm clock. Use a plain old alarm clock instead. Pick a time and put your phone in the other room. Ideally, with enough time to think for a while before you go to bed.

Why? Doesn’t this make you less productive during the time of the day when you could be catching up? Yes. But you need to catch up to what your body needs to be more productive during the rest of the day.

Blue light – the kind emitted by all those screens you use – is not good for you during the time you should be sleeping. To fight this do a few things: 

• Turn the devices off or get then out of your bedroom
• Don’t watch TV for at least an hour before you go to bed
• Read a book

We all need to decompress in this hyperactive, always-on world. While you can’t slow the world down, you can carve out space where you can respond differently to that world by pausing. By reflecting. And by thinking.

So tell yourself how much time you get after dinner to answer that email, tweet that tweet, and watch that show. And then turn the screens off. 

With the extra time. Make sure to read a book. Spend time with your spouse or partner or pet. Meditate. Stretch. Be in non-electronic space for a while. Then, in the morning when you reach for your non-electronic alarm clock, just see if you feel more awake.