Sleep on it

You might know the feeling. You’ve showered, brushed your teeth, had dinner. You enter your room and, like a scarily magnetic reflex, pick up your phone. Signals rush to your brain. You were just feeling relaxed and ready for bed. Now you’re on high alert. 10 new notifications. A crisis has unfolded at work. Friends asking for a favour you can’t quite say yes to. You realise that you left your Amazon cart open without paying. You scroll through a see an important reminder you missed from earlier in the day.

It can be hard—so difficult, in fact, that I believe it is a skill that must be trained—to heed the advice you would’ve so often dismissed, and sleep on it. I write this because I have now tested the theory via trial and error many times.

Whether you respond now, or in the morning, probably doesn’t matter in the slightest to the person you’re messaging back. They’re cozy in bed themselves right now, relieved of the weight they were holding before sending that message. Or, they’re seething with anger because you’re not responding. Scary extreme case. One that might wander through your thoughts, but equally, a reason to wait until the morning. You can talk about it calmly in a less emotionally charged state tomorrow.

If you reply now, there might be seven new messages to deal with. The fallout is unpredictable. In the morning, you’ll be more calculated. Less reflexive. You’ll have time to sit with the message and process it more clearly.

Sleeping on it might feel like laziness. A cop-out for doing work that matters. I’d argue that the adage signifies a strategy focused on quality over impulsiveness. Even if you think you could tackle something tonight, resist. The same problem will still be there in the morning. If you worry that things may have escalated by then, well, you’ll want to have had a sound night of rest, and you’d probably rather sleep early so that you can wake up before the person on the other side does. You can defuse the bomb then.

I think routines and habits before bed are important. Not one-off tasks. They can be hard to avoid though. Hence, in the vein of habits, I believe that a strong system should revolve around separation from the phone. If you give yourself the opportunity to check, you will. Make the decision easy, not a battle of willpower. For example, I wouldn’t want to leave my phone on my bedside table. A quick glance before calling it a night can suddenly derail said night.

Sleep is awesome, for many reasons. That being said, it won’t solve your problems overnight. I’d argue that it can’t make them any worse, though.