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by throwaway4aday 1225 days ago
A really important addition there is to make sure you get your sleep routine in order. If you don't sleep well then sticking to any of the other habits is going to be incredibly hard. Decide on a sleep schedule that gives you between 7 and 8 hours in bed with no distractions, lights out. Even if you can't fall asleep easily just disciplining yourself to stick to this schedule will help. I can't stress how important it is to not use your phone in bed, no books either. If you're going to read before bed then do it before your scheduled bed time and make sure you have a reminder set to tell you when you need to drop what you're doing and go to bed. Set an alarm to wake yourself up and try to stick to it even if you didn't get much sleep. You'll be tired but that should make it easier to fall asleep the next night. If you can get this routine locked in then the rest of the habits will be much easier to stick to.
1 comments

Good sleep hygiene really is a prerequisite for this stuff.

I would recommend removing the phone from the bedroom entirely. If you want to use your phones alarm clock, make sure that no other notifications can come through during your scheduled sleep time and put it on the other side of the room (this also forces you to stand up in the morning because you can't turn off your alarm otherwise).

You say 'no books either', and I agree with it, a bedtime routine works best if the bed is only used for sleeping, but I had great success with first replacing my phone with my ereader and allowing myself to read as much as I want. And then later on I removed the ereader. That was much easier than just removing the phone at once.