Sleeping without your phone: practical tips
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I am guilty of it too: happily scrolling through Instagram or Telegram while lying in bed. Until, at some point, you are so tired that the phone drops out of your hand and onto your head.
It is hardly ideal, but fortunately there are other ways to have something to do without bombarding your brain with stimuli that disrupt a good night’s sleep.
You can get there step by step by replacing all the functions your phone serves, such as your alarm clock.
Why sleep without your phone?
There are really two main reasons: physical and mental. Of course, they influence each other, both negatively and positively. It is worth pausing to consider this, because the effect hits you twice as hard.
Blue light blasts into your eyes
Your body’s day-night rhythm is largely regulated by light.
The blue light from a phone, shining straight onto your retina, is particularly likely to keep you from falling asleep.
As well as making it harder to fall asleep, it also makes the quality of your sleep worse.
The seven or eight hours you sleep
Sleep is complicated. Scientists still do not really know the purpose of sleep and dreams. What we do know is that it is necessary for recovery and repair.
The way you fall asleep contributes directly to this. Sometimes you dream about the last thing you were doing. That essentially means your sleep is influenced by what you did beforehand.
The last thoughts you have as you drift off, and your overall state of mind, are very important for how you recover.
Since seven or eight hours of sleep every night make up such a large part of your life, it is useful to give this some thought too.
How to sleep without your phone
It may seem silly that we even need to discuss this, but I know better than most how hard habits can be to break.
That is why it is important to work in small steps. If you demand that you put your phone away completely straight away, you might manage it for a week, but it is hard to sustain in the long run.
So change things in small steps, allowing yourself to keep it up and get used to the new way of doing things.
One way is to think of the habit of sleeping with your phone as a tangled pair of wired earphones.
To untangle them, you work step by step, starting with the easiest knot.
Replacing your phone’s functions
Your phone serves several functions in the evening. We will replace them one by one with better alternatives.
This does not have to be the final destination. You can always introduce an even better habit afterwards.
An alternative to using your phone as an alarm clock
If you also use your phone as an alarm clock, the easiest step is simply to put it on your bedside table. At least you will not fall asleep holding it. The disadvantage is that you still pick up your phone first thing in the morning to turn it off.
The next step is to put your phone inside your bedside table. An alternative to its alarm function could be an alarm clock from Blokker, for example. If you go for that, buy a battery-powered one so you can also take it with you when you go somewhere.
I use my smartwatch as an alarm. It vibrates to wake you, which is a gentler way to wake up, although not everyone wakes up from it.
Something to do before bed
And how can you replace scrolling through Instagram or watching YouTube videos?
The ultimate goal is to be able to fall asleep with only your own thoughts. That can be very difficult, but fortunately there are always a few intermediate steps.
An e-reader is really good for this. I am still at this step myself, using my Kobo. An e-reader provides far less stimulation in the evening than videos or other multimedia.
First of all, an e-reader can only do one thing: display books. There are no notifications, no browser, nothing. You can also choose for yourself what kinds of books you enjoy reading.
In other words, you are much more deliberate and much more in control than you are with your phone.
But what about an e-reader’s light? That is much better too. My Kobo even has a blue light filter and a setting for a very small amount of light.
The light also does not shine straight into your eyes; it comes more from the edge toward the screen. In other words, it is very different from the light of a mobile phone.