The embarrassing simple habit that has me sleeping better, waking up happy, and living with more energy
I spent too much of 2020–2025 staying up late, waking up groggy, and force-feeding my nervous system with anxiety-inducing data.
It was all because I was trapped in the habit of reaching for my phone after I turned out the lights.
Can you relate?
When night fell, the dangerously easy cycle would start:
Invent a legitimate reason to unlock the device. What time is my first call tomorrow? Shoot, I need to reload the kids’ school cafeteria money…
Jump to a doom loop of Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, email, text, back to Twitter.
Find a meaningless rabbit hole that would grab my eyeballs and not let go.
I’d finally either:
A) Feel a tightness in my chest (literally!)
B) Get an uneasy feeling in my stomach (the visual overwhelm) or
C) Start to nod off while scrolling.
Then, and only then, I’d finally put the damn device down on my nightstand.
Each of the scenarios above feels insane and embarrassing to type out, yet they all happened to me many, many times.
Arguably the worst part:
The next morning, the phone was still there.
Now, though, there’d be – ta-da – notifications that would pull me back into flipping through apps while I brushed my teeth and before I even began the day with my family.
Is this post for you? A warning before you read on.
If the images above sound exaggerated, I can assure you they are not. I’m willing to admit I may be more predisposed to phone addiction, considering that I know others can simply put it away when they go to bed and not feel the urge to pick it up.
On another note, some people may have the same habit but not feel affected by it. I’m not claiming to be holier than thou for wanting to stop scrolling myself to sleep. I’m claiming that I had a bad habit that made me feel terrible.
If you can’t relate to anything you’ve read this far, then the rest of the post will sound equally silly to you. I can fully accept that, and I’m not writing to you.
But I’m willing to bet that reading this far means you may have dealt with a similar problem as I have. You might even be craning your neck against your pillow, slowly scrolling up with your thumb to read this post when you should be sleeping.
If you can relate, then I want you to understand how I ended that nasty cycle and have significantly improved my quality of life.
I now leave my phone in another room before I go to sleep.
I want to be very clear. I do NOT do any of the following:
Leave it on airplane mode, or turn it off, before laying it on the bedside table.
Place it across the room on a dresser before tucking myself in.
Use an app to place limits on my usage for nighttime hours.
Those options are complete bunk if you currently spend your nights scrolling.
Instead, I drew a hard line in the sand and now leave a full flight of stairs and at least one door between me and that digital demon. The great part is that there was very little in the way of a process, journey, or adjustment period. The first night or two, I stared at the ceiling for a little longer than I would’ve liked. That was it.
Now, I’m fully enjoying the benefits.
I’ve begun to peacefully drift off to sleep without a nagging urge to check apps.
If I do wake at night, a quick toss and turn doesn’t become a one hour scroll sesh.
The next day, I forget the phone exists unless I need info for my kids’ school day.
All of those are beautiful feelings.
The deeper issue for me was that my mind is active in the evenings. It’s not necessarily filled with stressful thoughts or bad ideas; the brain just likes to do something around the time I lay down.
To replace the scrolling habit, I reflect on the day in a notebook before heading to bed. Then, I use a soft yellow personal reading light to read a physical book for a few minutes before I go to sleep.
I can hear your objections. And I’ve got answers.
I need an alarm —> get an old-school alarm
What about emergencies —> get a landline
I can’t fall asleep —> get an exercise bike from Facebook Marketplace
And the list goes on.
Leaving my phone as far away as possible when I go to sleep is the simplest habit I’ve formed to rapidly transform my relationship with evenings, mornings, and daily energy.
Give it a try and let me know how it goes for you.
This is basically exposure therapy in reverse. Remove the stimulus and suddenly sleep returns. Wild how the simplest solution is usually the one we avoid the longest.