A few weeks ago, I broke a habit. I stopped checking the time whenever I get out of bed in the middle of the night. And, interestingly, restraining from this habit has resulted in a better night’s sleep.
I typically get up once a night between 3:30AM and 5:30AM, and I know this because I used to always check the time on my phone. If I get up around 3:30AM, it’s no big deal because I have a few more hours of sleep left, and I can usually fall right back asleep and not worry about how much time there is left until my alarm goes off. But if I get up closer to 5:30AM — closer to when I’m supposed to get out of bed — I worry about the hours, minutes, seconds I have left of sleep. I question whether it’s even worth staying in bed, and it’s so annoying.
Now I know the trick is not knowing. If I don’t know what time it is, I can’t stress. It took me a couple weeks to break the habit, but so far so good.
Thoughts? Do you use this trick already? Would you try it?
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