Evening Routines That Promote Good Sleep with Alex Sanfilippo

MORE FROM THIS EPISODE: HTTPS://PODMATCH.COM/EP/156

Do you have a consistent evening routine that promotes good sleep patterns in your life? Most entrepreneurs that I talk to about this do not. In fact, most sacrifice any form of routine in the evening to get extra work done or to veg out in front of the TV. In this episode, part 2 of the 4-part solo series I’m doing, I dive into the importance of creating a consistent and meaningful evening routine for yourself and how it can ultimately lead you to a better morning and more productive, energized, and fulfilled following day. Get ready to develop your own evening routine that will set you up to win!

MORE FROM THIS EPISODE: HTTPS://PODMATCH.COM/EP/156

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

You're listening to the Creating a Brand podcast, where we deliver weekly interviews on topics to help entrepreneurs make their first or next step in business the right one. I am your host, Alex Sanfilippo. Do you have consistent morning routines to promote good and healthy sleep patterns in your life? Most entrepreneurs that I talk to about this do not. In fact, most sacrifice any form of routine in the evening for extra time to work or just to veg out in front of a TV because they are worn out from the entire day they just had. In this episode, which is part two of four in a solo series that I'm doing, I dive into the importance of creating a consistent and meaningful evening routine for yourself and how it can ultimately lead you to a better morning and more productive, energized, and fulfilled following day. For links to resources that will be mentioned during this episode, please visit creatingabrand.com. And now get ready to develop your own evening routine that will set you up for a win. Welcome back, everyone. Thanks for joining me again for part two of the four-part series we're in. In the last episode, I talked all about morning routines, which was a really valuable episode. And if you have not heard that one, go back to the previous episode or go to creatingabrand.com slash 155. If you go there, you'll be able to listen to that. And I encourage you to do that before starting this episode. Now, something I referenced throughout that last episode, though, about morning routines was that a good morning routine actually starts the night before. So it all begins with your evening routine. And I have found this to be So true. Let me give you an example real quick. If you stay up all night drinking and eating junk food and watching TV, do you really think you're going to wake up in the morning and have an amazing morning routine? That's not going to happen. And that's why your morning routine is directly impacted by your evening routine. The whole idea of a good evening routine is basically to promote good sleep and get you primed for that next morning. So when you wake up, you're ready just to move forward and start crushing it right away. So without thinking about the evening before and making your evening routines a win. And when you do that, you'll be set up for success the following morning. All right, before we jump into the content today, I'm gonna start off with an additional four disclaimers. You might remember in the last episode, I actually had eight. And I will say that those eight things still apply. So go back again and listen to that if you haven't heard it. So I'm not gonna repeat myself here again. But I do have four more disclaimers to add today. Disclaimer number one, I mentioned in the last episode that a successful morning routine starts In the same suit, a successful evening routine starts with your daily habits. I'll get into those a little bit throughout this episode, but in the next episode of the series will be all about daily habits and how we can create them in a way that they help us be set up for a successful evening routine, which in turn makes a successful morning routine. So they will all play into each other. Disclaimer number two, I do not have an alarm to wake me up in the morning. However, for a long time, I had a alarm slash reminder to go to bed at night because it's all about hitting that eight hours of sleep. That doesn't mean eight hours in bed. That means eight hours of sleep. So you want to be in bed with enough time to let yourself fall asleep, depending on how long that is for you. So for you, it's going to look a little different than me. But just remember, getting to bed at the right time is really what's going to set you up to wake up at the right time to start your morning routine. So when you're thinking about your evening routine, you have to have your bedtime in mind. Disclaimer number three, and it's time for me to lose 90% of you all again, and I'm so sorry for that. But the last hour that I'm awake, I don't use my phone. I don't watch TV. I'm not on a laptop. There are no screens. or digital devices at all. And if for any reason I have to be on one of those devices, I wear blue light reduction glasses, which is super important to get your brain on track with, hey, we're getting ready for bed, we're not staying awake, but those screens tell you to stay awake. So again, the last hour that I'm awake, I am priming myself to sleep by not being on screens if I have to. I have something to combat the blue light with. And I know what you're probably saying at this point. You're saying, Alex, what the heck am I supposed to do if I'm not on any digital device? What is left? You can do things Things like read and things like that, right? But I'll tell you what I'm doing during the last hour I'm awake. I'm actually doing my evening routine. It takes me not quite an hour, but close to it. And then I like to just kind of relax and talk to my wife a little bit and things like that. So that's what I'm doing with that last hour. But I encourage you think about not having any digital devices or screens in the last hour that you're awake. It'll help you fall asleep much faster and also get into much deeper REM sleep. And finally, disclaimer number four, sleep is the number one contributing factor to your overall health. It's not about how much you work out. It's not about how great your diet is. It's not about anything other than how great your sleep is. Because of this, your sleep should be your number one priority. In my life, my number one priority is my sleep. I do not let anything get in the way of my sleep. The most important thing is that I get a solid eight hours. I have tried everything from five hours to six to seven to eight to nine. I can tell you for me, eight hours is the best. There's a few rare people that can get less than 8, but it's very, very rare. 10 hours a day, eat perfectly. If your sleep is wrong, then your health will be wrong as well. You're also primed to perform at an optimal level if your sleep is right. So again, for me, when I tried sleeping six hours a night and working a little bit more, my work suffered from that. When I slept more and worked less, I actually produced better and more results. It'll happen for you as well. There is no exceptions to this rule. Sleep is number one contributing factor to your overall health. So keep that in mind. That's why you need an evening routine because you have to prioritize sleep in the proper way. All right, I'm done with that rant there. As you can tell, I'm very passionate about sleep because I just know how important it is for our health. Now let's go ahead and get into my evening routine. And I encourage you to take notes and think about how what I'm sharing will fit into your own life. As I've mentioned in disclaimers previously, not everything's going to work for you. You're going to have to find what works best for you. All I want to do is give you some clues as to what might be something that will be beneficial for your own evening routine that you develop for yourselves. Also, I want to mention that I have a checklist that I check off every single day. It's pre-printed and basically just has every day of the month on it and I will check off all seven parts of my evening routine. That way I don't have to remember any piece of it. It's just all right in front of me. I check it off as I'm going through that every single evening and I can look at the whole month because on one piece of paper to make sure I'm keeping up my evening routine on a consistent basis because consistency is key to success. Hey, Alex Sanfilippo here, and I want to take a quick moment to intentionally serve the world with you. Here's what I want you to do. Think of the one person you know who would most benefit from listening to this episode today. Now, I want you to send it to them, but also include an encouraging note explaining why you share this episode with them specifically. By doing this, you're helping me grow this podcast, and you're also adding value to the people you care about. With that said, thank you for your continued support. It means the world to me. And now let's get back to today's episode. As I just mentioned, my evening routine consists of seven rituals or seven habits along the way. I'll provide an overview, then dive into each of them. Number one, start fasting two hours before bed. Number two, disconnect one hour before bed. Number three, hygiene. Number four, evening ritual page and gratitude expression. Number five, stretch, breathe and clear my mind. Number six, review today and preview tomorrow. And number seven, make AM decisions. These seven things take me about 30 to 40 minutes to do. So I start this around 10 p.m. That way I'm asleep, not in bed, but asleep before 11 a.m. And that will really automatically cause me to wake up right around 7 a.m. after eight hours of sleep. Now to dive into each of these in more detail. Number one, start fasting two hours before bed. My last meal of the day is at 9 p.m. And this gives me 14 hours of intermittent fasting. And intermittent fasting is something that's been proven to be very healthy for your body. It really speeds up your metabolism. It helps you burn some fat and things like that. Very important that you don't fall asleep on a completely full stomach because you won't be able to sleep as well either. So I find that for me, because I'm thankful, I do have a very quick metabolism. So if I eat two hours before bed, by the time I'm going to bed, I'm not quite hungry, but I'm also able to really burn a lot of fat and speed up my metabolism for you you might find that it's three or four hours before or for some of you have like a lightning fast metabolism you might need to eat 30 or 45 minutes before bed it's gonna be different for each and every one of us what's important is you just take some time to practice this and figure out what works best for you and make sure that you at that point put on your calendar so you know okay i need to eat one hour before bed or i need to eat three hours before bed that's a very important thing for all of us to do and to get in mind with that last meal of the day is very very important in the next episode in part three of this series i'm actually going get into what I'm actually eating throughout the day and including this last meal. So we'll dive into that at a later time. Just know it's really important that you set the expectation for your last meal of the day. I set a reminder in my calendar because I do not want to forget it because it's just such an important thing that contributes to my sleep. Number two, disconnect one hour before bed. I mentioned this in the disclaimer, but at this point I put away all my screens. There's no more laptop. There's no more phone. The TV is off. And this is when, and if I do need to, like I said, I put on my blue light reduction glasses, which just triggers your mind saying, okay it's time to to go to sleep you can look those up there's a lot of science behind it that i'm not going to get into but it's actually really beneficial and helps you fall asleep a lot quicker some people actually just wear them when they're even getting ready for bed which i do occasionally if i'm feeling kind of like wired because it helps calm me down a little bit and now that i've shut everything down i'm disconnected it's one hour before bed i start the next five parts of my evening routine which are the really meaningful parts to get into those more meaningful parts the next thing i do is my hygiene and really start getting ready for bed this is one of the more obvious parts of my evening routine when i'm when I brush my teeth, right? I get completely ready for bed. I change into what I'm gonna sleep in, all that type of thing. I'm doing that when I start this evening routine. I do that for two reasons. Number one, I like to eat. And sometimes I'll slip back into the kitchen and find something to snack on. I've found that if I brush my teeth, my mind doesn't even think about food anymore. It knows, okay, we've brushed our teeth, we're done for the night. And that's very helpful. Also, I change out of the clothes I've been working in or kind of wherever I was, I change into what I'm gonna sleep in. When I do that, it reminds me that, okay, I can't go take out the trash now, or I shouldn't get back into some sort of project. Like, I'm getting ready for bed. So for me, I do this... at the start of the more meaningful part of my evening routine, number three, instead of it being number seven, the last thing I do, because I want it to really trigger my mind to know, hey, here's what's happening. We're not going to get into anything else. And I'm a high strung person. Like I said, I like to eat. I like to work. I want to make sure that I'm setting myself up for a win in my evening routine by doing this stuff first. Number four, evening ritual page and gratitude expression. Much like my morning routine, I have an evening page as well that I go through. It is very different than what I do in the morning though. And let me explain that. My morning page is all forecasting about the upcoming day, what I'm going to have going on. My evening page is all reflection, reviewing the results of the day. I mentioned in the last episode, my morning routine page has six sections. In this one, I also have six sections, but it's actually just a collection of 35 different questions I ask myself every night. I'm not going to get into each of those specific questions because that would be a lot. If anyone is interested, as I mentioned in the last episode as well, feel free to reach out. I'll help however I can. I'm willing to share anything that I have going on if you want to see more about those. I do want to share the six different sections with you because I think that'll help give you some context as to what I have going on here. First off, I have accountability points. So I have 12 people who hold me accountable and I'll get into that in the next episode, but I want to make sure that I'm actually checking how I'm doing in each of those points that those people are holding me accountable for so I can be accountable to them so I can reach out to them the next day and say, hey, I failed here. I've been doing really well here type of thing. I want to make sure that I'm really constantly looking at that and asking myself questions in those areas. The next one is my goal points. I want to think about my goals, my progress with them. So I ask myself probing So I can really think deeply about, did I do anything today to help me get closer to achieving the goals that I have? The next one is self-evaluation points. I do some deep soul searching here. One thing that I'm always trying to do, which we'll be explaining the next episode, is get 1% better every single day. So I really want to do some self-evaluation, some self-reflecting to decide, did I actually do something to make myself 1% better today than I was the day before? The next section is forward self-reflection points. I visualize myself as an older version of me teaching the current younger version of myself. And I ask some questions along that line to be able to help me just get myself through some of the stuff maybe I'm stuck in. Doing this forward reflection thing is a very, very intentional act, but I find that really helps a lot. And section five here is actually all related to my wife, Alicia. My marriage and my wife are very important to me, so I want to make sure she doesn't get lost in the mix of all this. And so I have just a few questions I ask myself about how I'm treating her, about how I'm loving her, and that sort of thing. I want to be very intentional with that. As I mentioned in the last episode, I don't have any breathing or living thing that I'm responsible for, but I am responsible for the health of my marriage. So I want to make sure I prioritize that and think about it every day to make sure that I'm doing well in that. And the last part of it is the actual gratitude expression. This is where I thank God for the various things throughout the day. I thank all the people that help me. I want to end my day with a mindset of thankfulness. Then at the bottom of this page, I have an evening declaration, which is similar to how I end the morning ritual page as well. Again, I know I just kind of skimmed through these things. And if you have any questions, feel free to reach out. I'll have a way you can do that in the show notes. Moving on to step five of my evening routine. As I just mentioned, step four takes me about five to seven minutes. And this next part takes about three to four minutes is what I find it takes and I'm going to mention that number four number five I'm doing those while standing on that vibration plate I already mentioned that in the morning routine so if you haven't heard I'm not going to dive into it but go listen to what that was basically I'm saying this thing is vibrating super fast which again is just kind of loosening up my muscles from the day it's great for waking up it's also great for putting you to sleep so number four number five I am actually standing on this vibration plate while I'm doing these things and this gives me exactly 10 minutes because that's what they set the timer for on this thing and so step five is I stretch breathe and clear my mind So after I'm done going through those pages, mostly as I'm actually doing the gratitude expression at the end of it, I'm also stretching while I'm saying this thing. So I'm just stretching out my legs, my arms. I'm breathing deep. I'm just clearing my mind. Again, getting in that attitude of thankfulness, but kind of forgetting and washing everything off from the day, which is a super important act for everyone to do to make sure that you leave the day behind you, right? There's a saying that yesterday ended last night. You've got to leave it in last night. You can't take it to bed with you so you don't wake up with it in the morning. Very important that you... do the stretching that you breathe and you clear your mind all these things are very healthy for you to do when i say breathing i want to also clarify i'm not doing anything fancy i'm literally just breathing in very deep holding it for a moment and then breathing out really slow and i do that just five to seven times just depends on the night on on how i guess mindful i am at that moment but did you know that stress is actually killing your brain cells but when you breathe in really deep you stop those negative side effects so when you're breathing in really deep holding it for a second and then releasing it slowly you can actually And here's the thing, if you stop, hit pause right now and try that, breathe in really deep and then breathe out and then hold it and then breathe out really slow and do that five times in a row, you can actually feel in your head the difference it's making. So again, pause it, do that for 30 seconds and you'll realize how beneficial this is. So I end my day with that because it's such an important thing for me just to leave, again, that stress of the day so it can be behind me. Part six of my evening routine is to review the day and preview tomorrow. So at this point, I now know the day is over. I can visualize as a win I can know that you know what I did some great things today maybe some things didn't work out but then the day it was a good day like I always need to have that mindset of being thankful once again and so I'm just gonna review the day once more to look over my actual journal that shows all the things that I did as I talked about in the last episode about my morning routine I make a checklist for the day I identify my meaningful work I'm gonna do for the day I'm looking over all that to see okay what I miss how did I do do I need to putting that on the next day so at that point I'm actually writing it the next day if I missed it or I could I'll also look at my my calendar briefly. Again, I'll put on blue light glasses if I need to do that. I'll write down some of the key things I need to do the next day so I can just get a jump start on what I need to do that next day. And it's not so I can start just having my mind wander about or anything like that. It's just so that I don't have to think about, man, what time do I need to wake up? Do I have any early meetings? Do I have any late meetings? What am I doing tomorrow? I just want to get all that out so I just know exactly what's going to be happening the next day. And again, reviewing my current day to make sure that those two things align really well together. They're not standalone days. It's all just part of of a journey that I'm on. So I want to make sure that I'm really strategic about planning out that next day and thinking about it. There's a productivity genius out there named David Allen. And he says, your head is for having ideas, not for storing them. I actually had him on this podcast to talk about that more. And you can find that episode at creatingabrand.com slash 143. And the whole reason I'm bringing that up is because once again, you want to get any idea you have in your head at this point on paper. So when you're going to sleep, your mind isn't wandering, being like, oh, I need to remember this for tomorrow. Oh, I need to remember that for tomorrow. The whole idea of this steps to review today and preview tomorrow is to really get everything out of your head from that day and for tomorrow out on paper again go check out that episode because I think it'll be really beneficial for many of you one more bonus about this point here subconsciously when you're going to bed you feel a little bit excited like you already have a jump on tomorrow you already have something started and planned out that are part of your morning routine you've already done them it actually makes waking up easier because you know that you've already taken off some of the load the night before which is a really great feeling all right the final step in my evening routine is to make AM decisions. So make morning decisions. In the last episode, I talked a lot about decision fatigue. You don't lose your ability to make decisions. They just get worse and worse the more that you make. And it does take a lot of brainpower to make good decisions, especially the further along the day it gets. So the idea here is to set yourself up for a win tomorrow so you don't have to waste any decisions on things that you don't need to waste them on. Some examples include to put your clothes out that you're going to wear tomorrow, pick them out the night before. And if you're like me, you'll even line them up in the way that you like to put them on. Like I know I like to put on my pants first and I like to put on my shirts So I will literally stack them in that order. Also, I mentioned a foam roller is something I use at night and in the morning. So I want to make sure that I'm actually putting that on the floor. Once again, the order that I use it. So it'll be like right after my clothes. I'll line up my toothbrush. I'll line up my toothpaste. Anything else you do with hygiene, I'm going to make sure I line all those things up. For me, my journals are also in order. To take this a step further and to give you another powerful recommendation here, I recommend that you quickly tidy up the house and you also clean up your workstation if there's any mess on it. What this does is actually freeze up your mind and leaves more room for you to have productive work instead of it being bogged down by the mess that's around it. So when you actually tidy up the house and you wake up the next morning, it's a lot easier to wake up because you feel like you're in a new, clean environment. And when you finally sit down to work after your morning routine, you'll realize, oh, I have a clean desk. That's really nice. That's actually going to help you get into a productive flow a lot quicker. I actually had the opportunity to talk to Gretchen Rubin on this topic. I'd highly recommend you listen to that episode. It's really incredible. And it's at creatingabrand.com slash 077. And of course, I'll I'll link to it in the show notes as well. But that'll really help you understand why you want to tidy up and kind of keep things in proper order. And I find when you do this the night before, again, you feel accomplished when you're going to bed and you wake up the next morning feeling refreshed and like you're in a clean, new environment with no mess to take care of or anything like that. You probably already caught on to this by now, but the idea with your evening routine, especially this number seven to make AM decisions, is to do all the thinking that you have to before the morning rolls around. That way you're ready to start work once the morning routine is done and you can make those million dollars and not have to say, what the heck was I thinking later on when you realize you made a mistake? You can make those big decisions because your mind is set up in prime for them. And I'll admit here, sometimes in the evening, again, if I'm just like really fatigued, especially mentally, picking out clothes that actually matches can be a bit of a challenge. But I'd rather do it at night and take the extra five minutes it takes me to, for whatever reason, pick shorts and a t-shirt that match, than do it the next morning when I'm tired and sluggish and having to waste that brainpower on it. Take the extra time, take the extra effort, do all this stuff in the evening. And that's it. That is my entire evening routine. To quickly go back over those things, it is number one, start fasting two hours before bed. Number two, disconnect one hour before bed. Number three, hygiene. Number four, evening ritual page and gratitude expression. Number five, stretch, breathe, and clear my mind. Number six, review today and preview tomorrow. And number seven, make AM decisions. Now, at this point, it is between 1035 and 1045. I'm going to get into bed. My wife, Alicia, and I will get into bed together and we'll normally talk for just a moment We'll both mention what we're thankful for from that day. We'll pray together. And then I literally pass out. And I will say, I'm very thankful that I fall asleep, usually within five to 10 minutes. And many people are like, oh man, it takes me hours to fall asleep. I want to challenge you with something in the next episode. I'm gonna talk a lot about my daily habits and we'll dive into some ways you might be able to actually fall asleep quicker. I'll give you a quick little preview of that. The trick is if you give 110% to what you do throughout the entire day, it's really easier to fall asleep because you will be very tired at that point. And if you have a meaningful evening rest, routine, it's going to help you also be primed to go to sleep. So you might be able to fall asleep quicker than you've previously thought, or even quicker than doctors have told you've been able to fall asleep. I can't give you medical advice, but I can tell you that a lot of the reasons that people have to take hours to fall asleep is because they're not being intentional the way that we talked about in this episode. So like last week, I covered a lot in this episode and clearly left some gaps. I do hope that I was able to give you enough that you can piece together your own meaningful evening routine, and I hope that overall you just found this very helpful. If you do have any questions about my evening routine or how to build yours at all, please feel free to reach out to me. I will help you out however I can. I'll have ways that you can reach out in the show notes. In ending this episode, I want to reinforce something. A successful morning routine starts the night before. And what you do before you go to bed directly impacts your ability to sleep well and also affects the way that you wake up. You have to be intentional with this. You have to be consistent with this if you really want to succeed. So I really encourage you, take seriously your evening routine. Don't leave this up to chance. If you get this right, you're you will start having more powerful and effective sleep. And as a result, you'll wake up feeling happier, healthier, and have a more productive day and ultimately life and work. I really hope this was helpful for all of you today. And I'm looking forward to bringing you part three. Thank you again for listening, everybody. I mentioned this after the previous episode in this series about morning routines. I know I'm intense, but if you want an evening routine that's going to be meaningful and promote good, healthy sleep, it's going to require you to stretch yourself and also stay consistent with what you're doing in the routine. By doing both these things, I trust that you'll begin living a more energized and fulfilled life. Again, I appreciate you listening to this episode on another topic that I'm very passionate about. For links to resources mentioned, please visit creatingabrand.com slash 156. Thank you as always for listening. I'm looking forward to bringing you part three of the series next week. We'll be right back.