Why Is Sleep So Complicated?

What I’m Learning About Circadian Rhythm and Better Sleep

I am so tired of thinking about sleep.

And yes, I realise the irony in that sentence.

Some nights I sleep beautifully. Other nights I wake in the middle of the night and that's it. My brain is awake, my body is awake, and suddenly I'm lying there wondering what I did differently.

Was it what I ate? Stress? Too much screen time? Did I exercise too late? Was the room too warm? Did I eat chocolate at the wrong time?

Or was it absolutely none of those things?

That's the frustrating thing about sleep. You can seemingly do the same thing two days in a row and have two completely different nights.

So lately, I've been trying to understand it a little better.

Not because I'm a sleep expert. I'm definitely not.

I'm simply someone who would quite like to sleep.

Maybe I've Been Thinking About Sleep Backwards

I've always thought about sleep as something that begins at night.

Get into bed. Make the room dark. Put the phone away. Try to relax. Go to sleep.

But I've been reading about circadian rhythm, our internal roughly 24-hour timing system, and it has made me wonder whether I've been concentrating too much on bedtime and not enough on the rest of my day.

Light is one of the strongest environmental signals for our circadian system. Research suggests the timing matters too. Brighter morning light tends to shift sleep timing earlier, while brighter evening light can push it later.

In other words, perhaps a good night’s sleep isn’t something we suddenly manufacture at 10pm. Perhaps we start setting the scene for it when we wake up.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about more generally lately. Maybe wellness works better when we stop trying to perfect it and start creating routines that actually fit our lives. I wrote about that idea in Starting the Year Gently: A Softer Approach to Wellness Without Deadlines.

Apparently, I Should Be Going for a Morning Walk

This is where wellness advice meets real life.

One of the things I keep reading is to get outside in the morning and expose yourself to natural light.

It sounds lovely.

Wake up. Put on your shoes. Go for a beautiful morning walk.

Except I haven't done it.

Not once.

Mornings aren't particularly good for me. I often wake up feeling sore, and I have a routine I actually like.

I get up. I have a glass of water with lemon. I have breakfast and a coffee. Then I start working.

So where exactly does this lovely morning walk go?

I haven't worked that out yet.

And perhaps that's worth saying, because wellness advice can sound incredibly simple until you try to fit it into an actual life.

I'm going to keep trying to find a way to get more natural light into my mornings. But I'm not going to make failing to become a sunrise-walking person another thing to feel bad about.

What I Have Changed

Instead, I've started with the things that feel manageable.

I'm trying to finish dinner around 7 or 7.30pm, giving myself roughly three hours without food before bed.

Even my chocolate has been reorganised.

If I want some, I have it with or immediately after dinner rather than wandering back into the kitchen a couple of hours later.

It’s really the same idea I keep coming back to with everyday wellness. I’m finding that small routines I can actually live with are far more useful than creating a perfect routine I’ll never maintain.

I'm not claiming that this is some magic formula for sleep. In fact, the research on exactly how meal timing affects sleep is still mixed. But studies do suggest that when we eat may interact with our circadian rhythms, and late eating has been associated with poorer sleep quality in some research. There isn't yet enough evidence to declare one perfect dinner-to-bed window for everyone.

For me, it's simply become another way of signalling: the eating part of my day is finished.

I've Started Making Day Feel Like Day, and Night Feel Like Night

I've also become much more conscious of light.

During the day, I want my surroundings to feel bright. I try to work in well-lit spaces or somewhere with plenty of natural light.

Then, after dinner, I do almost the opposite.

The lights come down.

My phone largely disappears.

And this might be one of the biggest changes I've made.

I spend a ridiculous amount of my life looking at screens. I work on a computer. I run businesses from a computer. I check emails, messages and sales on my phone.

Until recently, some of that followed me right into bed.

One last look at sales.

One last email.

One last scroll.

Which was rarely one last anything.

Now I try to check everything around dinner and leave it alone.

There is reasonable evidence behind reducing bright light and screens at night, although it's more nuanced than simply saying “blue light is bad.” Evening light can affect circadian timing, while screens can also keep us mentally stimulated through whatever we're reading, watching or worrying about.

And that second part resonates with me enormously.

I've Stopped Taking My Day to Bed With Me

I might watch a television show for an hour after dinner, but once I get into bed, I don't want another screen.

I take a physical book.

Usually a novel.

Nothing educational. Nothing about business. Nothing that's going to give me seventeen new ideas I suddenly need to write down.

Actually, the more about nothing it is, the better.

I've started protecting my mind in the evening too.

I don't particularly want to discuss work. I don't want to solve a problem. I don't want to dissect what went wrong that day or start worrying about something that needs to happen tomorrow.

Those conversations may be important.

I just don't need to have them at 9.30 at night.

So I'm trying to make the end of my day quieter.

Lower lights.

Less information.

Less stimulation.

A book.

Bed.

And most nights I can barely keep my eyes open while I'm reading.

Is It Working?

I'm almost frightened to say yes.

Because we all know what will happen tonight now that I've written that.

But over the last week and a half, I've had more good nights than bad ones.

I'm quite often sleeping through until five or six in the morning.

For me, that's progress.

Is it because I'm eating earlier?

The darker evenings?

The lack of phone?

The physical book?

Not checking sales before I close my eyes?

Not filling my head with problems at night?

Or is it all of those small things together?

I genuinely don't know.

Maybe Better Sleep Isn't About One Thing

We love finding the thing.

The hack. The routine. The perfect bedtime.

I'm beginning to wonder whether sleep is more complicated, and perhaps more ordinary, than that.

Maybe our bodies are simply looking for a collection of signals.

It's daytime now.

Light. Food. Movement. Activity. Work.

And later:

It's nighttime now.

Dinner is finished. The lights are lower. Work is finished. The phone is away. Nothing needs solving tonight.

The research into circadian rhythm certainly gives me another piece of the puzzle. But I'm also learning that knowing what might help and fitting it into your life are two different things.

I still haven't conquered the morning walk.

Maybe I will.

For now, I'm going to keep doing the things that are manageable and see what happens.

Because after a week and a half of more sleep than I've been getting, I'm beginning to think there might be something in this quieter rhythm.

And right now, that's enough.

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