Principles Mental Health Sleep
Days are busy and it is often difficult to carve out time to read during the pace of a typical day, but all days end in the bed and getting sleep. For me reading puts me to sleep so reading prior to sleep is a win-win for me.
It helps my brain explore, but also slow down and often leads to a handful of ideas before relaxing and going to sleep. I can normally tell that I’m ready to sleep when I begin reading the same line multiple times or can’t retain what I read.
If you’re going to be staying up late I can’t think of many things as productive as reading.
I also find that the quality of my sleep is better. Reading calms me and puts my mind and body into a state that makes it easier to transition into sleep. Reading before bed (at least non-fiction) is almost like Pre-sleep.
When I was younger I had a routine of masturbating before bed to help go to sleep, but looking back now I think this created some form of hormone that caused me to get worse sleep. It’s not that I didn’t fall asleep easily (I did), but I don’t feel that I was as well rested in the morning.