How to Actually Go to Bed on Time

– This video is sponsoredby CuriosityStream.

Get access to my streaming service Nebula for free when you signup for CuriosityStream by going tohttp://www.

curiositystream.

com/thomas It is 10:30 p.

m.

right now, but this actually isn't where I am.

I'm actually right here, sitting at my desk.

What am I doing? I don't know, I'm lookingat YouTube statistics, I'm scrolling through Twitter, maybe I'm playing a video game.

Whatever I'm doing, I'mnot actually doing what I really want to be doing right now, which is sleeping.

See, I am the kind of person who likes to get up early in the morning, I like to get an early start in the day, but to do that, and to geta good amount of sleep, which is crucial, I have to go to bed at adecent time the night before.

And, to be completely honest with you, over the past few months I have sort of fallen out of that habit, and I found it reallydifficult to get my butt into bed at a good timeevery single night.

So, I am making this video as a sort of wake up call to myself.

I'm going to break down the problems that I see in my life, the things that are preventing me from going to bed when I really want to go to bed, that are affecting my self-discipline, or I guess that my self-discipline has not yet been able to overcome, and I'm going to lay out a plan for solving those problems and actually gettingback to a decent bedtime.

But, given that you clicked this video knowing what the title was, I'm guessing you might have an issue going to bed at a good time as well.

So hopefully this is as helpful to you as it is for me.

That being said, I havenarrowed it down to three specific problems.

And also while I'm thinking about it, I actually have to get on a plane tomorrow and go to Atlanta to speak so, hey Martin, do you think you could help with the B-roll for this video? (haunting music) I, I don't like that, but I don't have time to deal with it.

Anyway, so like I said, three specific problems.

There's kind of four because I do find myself staying up playing guitar late some nights, but really what I findmyself doing instead of going to bed most nights is either sitting on my computer doing stupid stuff like scrolling through YouTube analytics, or watching a two hour retrospective on Bioshock Infinite andits game design choices, cool video, but probably not something I should be clicking on at 11 p.

m.

Or, scrolling throughmy phone while in bed, or watching a movie way too late.

Like starting a movie way too late and then committing to finishing it even if it finishes at 12:30 p.

m.

These are all bad habits that I have found myself doing, but two of them have to do with respecting the 20 second rule.

The 20 second rule is a concept from Shawn Achor's book TheHappiness Advantage, and in that book he talks about, you know, one of the most important driving factors in theformation of good habits and in your ability to break bad ones, is how you set up your environment.

Specifically, making sure that your environment is set up in such a way that doing the good habits is very easy, and on the opposite side on that coin, that you set things up so your bad habits are actually very inconvenient to do.

So for one really goodexample, if you, like me, want to eat less ice cream, maybe you would keep your icecream out of your freezer.

Like, there is an ice cream shop 15 minutes away on foot, I could walk to it if I wanted ice cream, but I'm never impulsively going to the ice cream shop 15 minutes away to get ice cream.

It's only when there'sice cream in my freezer that I will take a break from working to eat ice cream insteadof eating a healthy lunch.

Again, the way you set up your environment is crucial in the formation of the habits that you really want to build.

And in the case of going to bed on time, I have not been respectingthat 20 second rule because I often leave mycomputer on all day long, even once I'm done with work, and what that really results in is scenarios where I will come downstairs, it's 10 p.

m.

at night, and I'll convince myself that I'm just going to check YouTubeanalytics for one second, but then, because the internet is built in such a way to provideconstant little dopamine hits, I'll find myself going to another website, checking another set of stats, and eventually, you know, going down whatever rabbit hole it is that leads me to that two hour Bioshock, or System Shock retrospective that I found myself watching.

So, to respect the 20 second rule, I need to change my environment.

And the way that I'm going to do that is, number one, having a specific time at which I will shut mycomputer off for the day.

If it is shut off, I'm not going to go get on that computer, convincing myself I'm justgonna check something.

It would be too inconvenient.

And for the phone, I'm going to follow the exact same principle.

I'm not going to be putting the phone on the nightstand anymore.

Instead, I'm going to keepit away from my nightstand, have it across the room, it's still going to bemy alarm clock for now, but if it's across the room, if it's plugged in for the night, then I'm not going tobe tempted to grab it and check stats or socialmedia or whatever it is.

That just leaves us with the issue of staying up too late watching movies.

Now, I see this as a differentself-discipline issue, because it's not reallya 20 second rule issue since sitting down and starting a movie seems to be a bit moreof a significant thing, it's not something thatyou just do impulsively.

For me I think part ofthe problem here is that if you've been watching mychannel you probably know, I've taken a much greater interest in the cinematography and the production aspect of my content.

And as a result, I'm a lot more interested to watch movies these days because I take a lot ofinspiration from them.

Especially my favoritedirector in the world, who is, Edgar Wright.

So I will convince myself to watch movies even if it's too late in the evening to really start it and still be able to go to bed on time.

So, I think I need to takea more holistic approach to solving the problem from this angle.

And like I've talked about in the past, when your self-discipline fails, the best thing you can do is to essentially put trainingwheels on the bike.

To enlist the help of an external system to help you to get back in the correct pattern of habits that you want, and then slowly build your self-discipline up from there so it can sort of maintain those habits on its own.

So recently, I found outabout an app called SleepTown, which was created by the same people who made the Forest app, and I've talked about Forest before, it's basically an app where you kind of grow virtual trees, if you don't touch your phone for a certain amount of time.

Which means it actually kind of functions as a really nice Pomodoroapp for getting work done, and SleepTown is basically the exact same concept, applied to sleep.

Instead of growing a virtual forest, you are building a virtual town, and you get to build a building every single night that you go to bed before a specific going to bed time, and then wake up at aspecific wake up time.

So this is going to bemy experiment for now, I'm going to try using that.

And then of course, like I'vetalked about in other videos, I also believe in trackingmy progress over time, so I'm going to be using the Martin System that I outlined in myrecent habit tracking video, to also be physically checking off every single night thatI do go to bed on time, and hopefully I'll be able to develop that habit once again and be able to start getting up early in the morning once again so my morningroutine doesn't take so long.

And that's going to be important, because I'm not always doing good work at night when I'm staying up too late.

Like I said, I'm often like watching two hour video game retrospectives, which is definitely not productive.

But if I get up early in the morning and get an early start to the day, I have a lot more time to put into pushing my content.

Which is really what Iwant to be doing right now, and you've probably seen that in the last few videoson the YouTube channel.

There's actually one othervideo where we did that, and really, reallyproud of the work we did that you probably haven't seen unless you are a member of Nebula.

Now, if you haven't heard of Nebula, Nebula is a completely independent, self-funded streaming service that is created by both myself, and a lot of other creators that you probably recognize such as, Devin from LegalEagle, Sam from Wendover Productions, Brian from Real Engineering, lots of great educational creators and we're essentially building this service so we have a way to pursue ideas that mightnot work on YouTube since the YouTube algorithm kind of favors staying in your lane, forlack of a better term.

And the video that I created recently was a deep dive into the secrets and the intro sequenceof one of my favorite TV shows of all time, which is Gravity Falls.

And if you've seen thatshow you know there are lots of cool secretsin that intro sequence and actually throughout the entire show.

We are incredibly proud of the work that we did on that episode, and I would love it if you checked it out over on the Working Title series, which is where it lives on Nebula.

In addition to that, being on Nebula means you get ad free versions of my videos, which actually go up on Nebula before they go up on YouTube.

So it's a great way tojust support my content without having to watch ads.

If you get on Nebula right now you're going to see abehind the scenes video with myself and my editor Tony where we talk about how we made that Skill You're Slowly Losing video, which was absolutelythe most complex video we'd ever worked on up until that point, so you might be interested to see that.

And, the best part isthat subscribing to Nebula and supporting us, getting ad free videos, also comes with CuriosityStream.

We have worked with CuriosityStream to create a bundle so you can actually subscribe to CuriosityStream, get access to thousands of high quality documentaries, including documentaries covering nature, history, technology, science.

There're documentariesfrom David Attenborough, there is one on theScience Of Sleep actually, which would be a greatfollow up to this video, so you get access to all of that, plus access to Nebula, for just $3 a month, or 20 bucks a year if you want to pay for a year upfront.

But, the best part is, if you go over to http://www.

curiousitystream.

com/thomas you can get access for31 days, completely free.

So you can try it beforeyou even put any money up, but again, it's three bucks amonth, it's a fantastic deal, and that $3 a monthgets you ad-free videos, you get to support creators, and well, just thank youif you choose to do it.

Thanks for watching this video as well hopefully you found it helpful, again, I'm kind of layingthese things out for myself, and I have to make this video quickly 'cause I'm going off to a conference that I have to speak at.

But, I think this is an issue that is not mine alone.

I think a lot of peopledeal with this issue, especially with all the social media apps that we have such instantaccess to these days.

So if you did enjoy this, definitely provide a like if you feel like it was worth it, that definitely helpsthe YouTube algorithm to, you know, think mychannel is worth promoting to other people, which makes me feel good.

So thank you if you do that, thanks for your support as always.

If you want to watch some other videos I've got some more on screen right here, you can also get subscribedif you want notifications, maybe, of new videos.

You can hit the bell if you want a little bit more of a guarantee of notifications, but no pressure if you don't want to and I will see you in my next video, go do what you want, I'm notyour dad and I'm outta here.

Special effects!.