Dare You To...

I had a lovely day off today, but now it's back to work... back to bed!

Maybe you already set a bedtime alarmor take the time to shut down before bed, but maybe you slipped back into old ways.  Maybe you have so much work to do that by the time you're done on your computer, you're ready to crash and don't have time to "unwind" before you drift off to sleep!  Does that mean you're doomed to reap the consequences of evening blue light exposure?  Not at all!  There are a few ways you can block out blue light to help you achieve a good night's sleep.


First of all, why do we care about blue light?

Our bodies know well that daylight is "awake" time, and that darkness means time to sleep and recover for the next day.

According to the Harvard Health Letter (May 2013),blue wavelengths help boost attention and reaction times (great for during the day), but also serves to powerfully suppress melatonin--the sleep hormone.  It makes sense that our melat…

How often do you become so engrossed in a task--whether work or play--that you suddenly realize it's way later than you intended to go to bed?  Where did the evening go?  Now you've only got six, five... four(?!?) hours to sleep, and no time to unwind properly?

I've spoken before about the importance of shutting down electronics before bed, but if you want to have time to shut down and begin to wind down for sleep, you've got to recognize that it's bedtime 30 to 60 minutes before you actually intend to sleep!

For this reason, I often keep a "bedtime alarm" set, so that on weeknights, my phone will remind me, "Hey, it's almost ten o'clock; you might want to finish what you're doing and start getting washed up and ready for bed." In case you were wondering, my bedtime alarm sound is crickets. Thank you, iPhone.


This is my little trick to make sure I get my eight hours in. It may seem silly, but why?  It's just a friendly (self-imp…