Lights Out by Ten

A practical method for going to bed on time

Sleep advice usually starts at the pillow. This one starts two hours earlier, with the small decisions that quietly push bedtime back by thirty minutes at a time.

About this book

Most sleep advice begins at the pillow: the room temperature, the screen, the breathing exercise. This book begins two hours earlier, on the grounds that the pillow is rarely where bedtime is lost. It is lost between eight and ten, in a series of small decisions each of which is entirely reasonable on its own.

The opening chapters are about those thirty minutes that go missing every night — the episode that was going to be the last one, the tidying that could have waited, the message answered at 22:40 that produced a reply. None of these feels like a decision about sleep, which is precisely why they are so effective at moving bedtime.

The method sets a marker before the marker: an hour that ends before the last hour begins, after which the evening is allowed to be unproductive. There is a four-minute closing routine, kept short on purpose, and a set of rules for the evening that runs over anyway — because some evenings do, and a method that only works on good nights is not a method.

The last chapter is the morning test. Whether the approach is working is not a question of how the evening felt but of what the first forty minutes of the next day are like, and the book gives a short, specific way of checking that does not involve a tracking device.

What is inside

• The thirty minutes that go missing every night
• Setting the last hour before the last hour
• A closing routine that takes four minutes
• What to do when the evening runs over anyway
• The morning test: how you know it worked

Who it is for

• People who are not tired at bedtime and exhausted at seven
• Anyone whose evenings reliably run thirty to sixty minutes over
• Readers who have read the standard sleep-hygiene advice and still go to bed late
• Those wanting a change to the evening rather than to the bedroom

From the book

Bedtime is not lost in an instant. It is lost ten minutes at a time, each one easy to justify on its own.

Details

• Format: PDF ebook
• Length: 48 pages
• Language: English
• Delivery: instant download after payment
• Protection: none — no DRM, no device limit
• Thirty-day refund on every purchase