Removing A Device From The Bedroom – Two Days of Rest!

Those groggy mornings when my eyes are burning because I was more in a light-sleep than a deep-sleep the night before.  When these mornings happen and I have a full days of teaching ahead, around 1-3pm I find myself inhaling a small glass of black coffee (with no additives) to wake up — and I despise coffee!

I had to figure out what was happening.  I always did meditation into sleep, but anytime I woke up in the middle of the night, I would check my phone.  When this happened, and depending on how long I checked my phone for, the amount of time I stayed awake can range from 10 minutes, to 2 hours.  There’s something about the brain becoming stimulated after reading information.  Most of the information I read would be senseless, too.  There weren’t any important emails to reply to and emergency texts — it was simply me checking the stats of my podcast, blog, and then going on a useless website to see what’s happening in the world.

ENOUGH!

When I would do that (and you’re going to see a lot of ‘when’ clauses in my writing today), the next morning my eyes would have a slight burn.  Not sure why.  I would sleep 8 hours, mind would be fully awake, but eyes would burn marginally.

So, I did an experiment.  The experiment was conducted a long time ago, too, but now I decided to get back into the swing of it.  Because I have a FitBit blaze watch, I now remove my phone from my room and use the blaze watch bedside to see what time it is.

First Night

After getting a 1-2 times to run to the restroom, I never once turned to my working desk to look at my phone.  I realized that sleep was much more important than stats and whatever is on my phone.  I went back to my room, and woke up COMPLETELY around 5:15am.  After that, I went right into a meditation.  This requires using my phone (because the meditation app is guided), but all the notifications were switched off the night before, so NOTHING is on the home screen.  I do my guided meditation (overcoming procrastination – to be specific), and after that, I banged out three podcasts in the morning, started packing for the big move in less than two weeks, and cleaned up literally EVERYTHING.  I checked my messages and saw that it was a relatively slow night; therefore, I set aside the phone and went straight to work.

How perfect was that! Leaving just a watch, a clock, or something bedside for the time and sticking the phone outside works wonders!