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If you’re reading this, you’re probably a busy adult with a job, partner, maybe kids, and plenty of stuff to do.

When you were young, sleep came easily and even if it didn’t, it wasn’t a big deal. You could sleep like crap for a couple nights in a row and barely notice. I’m convinced I got through high school and college on almost no sleep.

You probably ate right before bed, watched whatever you wanted before bed, and passed out when it happened for you. The alarm woke you up the next morning and it was uncomfortable but you made it work.

Now that you’re older though, it’s not so comfortable.

One or two nights of crappy sleep is painful. It can ruin your whole day. I get it. That’s me now. This was all me.

It used to be so easy that it was mindless, then reality hit me. I struggled for years to find what worked for me.

But the beauty is, I think I’ve done it. Years of experimentation, research, and struggle was worth it because I’ve found the answers for me and likely for you too. Here they are: 

Fix the Lights

This article is titled ‘in the modern world’ for a reason. Let’s be honest: you have a bunch of bright lights on and a screen in your face until the moment you go to bed.

No surprises, that’s an issue.

We all know it is but we don’t want to give our screens up. Fair enough, neither do I. Here’s exactly what you need to do:

Buy light bulbs that are a darker color than the normal clear bulbs you have. Mine are orange. Why? Because the clear bulbs allow all the light to fill up your room at night and some of that is blue light (the kind that keeps your eyes and mind awake).

By using an orange bulb, I naturally darken my room and make the light more red/orange to extinguish the blue light altogether.

Next, wherever your lamp is, lower it. If it’s sitting up high, it’s creating more brightness in the room. What I’ve done is lowered the lamp I use to a short nightstand that sits far from my bed. This keeps the room slightly dimmer and less intense with the light.

As for your screens, download the program f.lux. It’s free and it automatically darkens your screen as the day goes on so it’s less intense on your eyes. You can set your sleep and wake times so the program will adjust the screen colors to your liking.

My mom regularly asks me how I can see anything on my computer at night because it’s so red. That’s because all the intense blue light has been removed. I just laugh and try to explain that’s how I like it. The difference is insane. Try it and let me know.

Stop Eating Before Bed

This has been literally life-changing for me and I will certainly talk about this in the future because there are so many benefits and ways to do this.

I have always been someone who likes to eat late in the day, particularly right before I go to bed. When I was young and didn’t care, I’d eat my dinner and then gorge myself with sweets. As I started to care more about what I ate, I would eat foods that were a bit better, but I never changed the timing of how I ate.

Not until a few years ago when I picked up casual intermittent fasting. This was a “solution” for me for a while because I didn’t like eating in the morning. Eating before school or work always made me feel sick and uncomfortable and I thought that’s just how I was.

So I gave up breakfast altogether. I did this for a few years until very recently, I tried experimenting again. I kept hearing reasons why you shouldn’t eat close to bedtime, you should eat earlier instead. So I played around with cutting off my eating earlier.

I go to bed very late so I first tried stopping eating at midnight, now I’ve moved it up to 11:30pm. Then I would eat the next day, later at first because that’s what I was used to. But now I eat earlier and sure enough, I feel fine.

My whole problem was eating so late at night that when I woke up I still had not digested most of the food.

I didn’t realize how bad that was for me at the time. I would regularly be uncomfortable while falling asleep or waking up, didn’t sleep as well, couldn’t eat the whole beginning of the day, was not digesting well, and overall didn’t have enough control over the way I was eating.

I already feel much better with what I’m doing now and there’s even more that I could do. I could do intermittent fasting with a much earlier eating window (Stan Efferding and Thomas DeLauer have discussed the benefits of this) or I could do one large meal a day (something I’ve been interested in).

Consistent Sleep Time, Ignore Wake Time

I have struggled forever with my sleep and wake times.

Like the eating problem, I’ve always believed that I couldn’t go to bed early. It turns out I was wrong there too.

I would always go to sleep late, try to force myself to wake up early on short sleep, and then assume I would start going to bed earlier from the tiredness. It’s a terrible strategy and just meant I would shut my alarm off and sleep another couple hours after I first got up.

I now have a different strategy that I got from Alex Hormozi. I try to go to bed around the same time each night and I let myself sleep until I get up naturally. Then, I will start my personal work for the day, go work out, and then get ready for real work.

I was so tired of being short on sleep and feeling like crap during the day. That is one of the most annoying things to deal with as I’ve gotten older.

I’ve built my life so that I don’t need to have such a strict sleep and wake time, I have plenty of wiggle room. I prioritized getting sufficient sleep as my #1 and if it means I sleep in a little later than normal, so be it.

Sleep is possibly the most important nutrient our bodies can get when it comes to health and recovery. We spend about a third of our lives doing it so I decided to give it more respect. 

No Alarm

Expanding off the last point, I do not use an alarm anymore unless I have to. At the moment, I use one once a week so I can wake up early to play soccer. 

I would encourage people, even those that have to get up early for work, to develop a synchronized “internal alarm clock” so you can wake up at the same time naturally every day from practice.

I think waking up every day to a blaring noise is shocking to the system and stress-inducing. That being said, I did it forever to wake up on time. But I’ve worked to make my life not reliant on an alarm.

Not only do I have leeway on when I wake up, but I worked on my sleep and wake times and got myself waking up within 5 minutes of the same time for a couple weeks consecutively.

This makes life much easier and more pleasant as I no longer feel like I’m fighting my own body on when to be ready and when to be relaxed. 

Keep the Room Cool

I will admit, I didn’t believe in this a few months ago.

After experimenting and going through multiple seasons of weather again with this new awareness, it is clear to me that I sleep better when the room is cooler. I realize some people like the room very cold at night, I’m not someone who enjoys that. So I say to at least keep it cool.

Humans certainly evolved being more exposed to the outside weather and we all know that the temperature is lowest in the late night and early morning and warmest in the middle of the day. This drop in temperature allows us to reach deeper states of sleep.

There are all kinds of things you can do to make this happen: sleep with air conditioning on, sleep with the window open, have a fan running, sleep shirtless, sleep naked, it doesn’t matter.

Just keep yourself cooled off so you can avoid shallow sleep and instead get deeper, more rejuvenating sleep. 

I often notice during the warmer months that I can’t fall asleep quickly. I will lay in bed for a while and have to be pretty tired to fall asleep. The temperature makes a huge difference.

No Pillow

I prefer to sleep with no pillow at all anymore.

I originally started doing this because I had a feeling my pillow was restricting my breathing and forcing a forward head posture on me. Now, whether I was correct or not, I just prefer it.

I love the simplicity, I love that my spine is straight, and I love that I never have a tweaked neck when I wake up because I was fighting with my pillow in the night.

I’ve tried different sleeping setups like sleeping on a mat on carpeting, sleeping on firm beds, on soft beds, etc. The one thing I have found for sure is that if I’m on a soft surface, I don’t need a pillow. If I’m on something firm, I want a very thin pillow.

The reason for this, is that when you’re on a soft bed, you will sink in more. That means your spine is getting more bent where your body is but staying a bit higher where your head is. This is just because of sheer weight. When you’re on a firm bed, you don’t sink in much so it’s nice to have a thin pillow.

Basically, I allow my mattress to create the natural pillow for me as I sink in. That’s just what works for me.