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Adventures of Mattman: Bedtime Deep Dive

Hello Superpower Seekers! Today I’m wide awake and pondering a word I have said thousands of times.

In my journey for 1% better sleep every night, I have come to realize that we all have different interpretations of the word bedtime. 

What is bedtime? When is bedtime? Since the beginning, I’ve been saying you need a bedtime routine. But looking back and after conversations with my friends and people I meet, I have discovered that bedtime is thought of differently depending on the person. The execution of your bedtime routine and timing of it is critical to properly maximize your sleep.  

I talk to a lot of people about bedtime! A question I ask is what does bedtime mean to you? According to today’s definition of the word, it is the usual time somebody goes to bed. But I have heard responses from what the heck is bedtime to bedtime is when I show up for my tomorrow self! There’s a wide range.

So, is bedtime about the time you begin to think about falling asleep? Is it the actual beginning of your bedtime routine? Is bedtime the actual time you fall asleep? Yeah. That’s it. Fall asleep time. A key phrase not commonly used to describe the moment you go to bed.

What I’m getting at is that the word “bedtime” is vague! And thus I will ask what time you fell asleep last night? Thanks to my Google Hub Gen 2 and its sleep sensor, I caught onto this language discrepancy. So subtle, yet so important!

So how about you? Last night, did your bedtime match your fall asleep time? If those times aren’t syncing up, you may not be getting as much sleep as you think you do. Perhaps if you clear up the language, you can get more sleep cycles!  

Me personally? My bedtime routine is straightforward. It takes about 15 minutes.  We have three dogs that need to be let out.  Yea, I let the dogs out… And a cat that gets fed and put up in her three-story princess palace to sleep. Then there’s the kitchen where I am prone to making a mess and drinking our filtered water to null. So I refill the water and clean up as best I can. Then I brush my teeth and use the bathroom. I walk upstairs and if my wife hasn’t gone to sleep yet, I make the bed. Super important last step! I don’t want her to wake me when she gets in. If the bed is made, there is no struggle to get comfy. 

Now my fall asleep time? Holy smokes. This year it has been late. Like super late. However, my average in March, thanks to Lent and giving up caffeine and alcohol, is about 10:20.  What I know from my schedule is that I need to fall asleep before 10:30 PM. Later than 10:30 PM and I can no longer get a full night’s rest.  Seven and a half hours is my minimum and I’m really good at being down for the minimum.

Sleep cycles are the currency in which we pay our bodies for peak performance. Fifteen to 30 minutes of lost sleep on any given night might not sound like much. But adding up a year or many years’ worth of the lost sleep cycles and it becomes a gigantic number. Numbers like that are what keep me up at night! I have to do what I can to help educate others in order to quell my stress and fall asleep quickly.

I have an awesome episode coming up next! I did an interview with a fellow Dream Team member Ally Husk! We were talking about sleep one day while I worked beside her and I was very impressed with her bedtime routine and sleep habits. We sat down and discussed it more in-depth and I can’t wait for you guys to hear it!

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