This is part of an ongoing series, that will stretch out over the next month. They will cover possible upgrades that you can make for your mental and physical game. Feel free to pick out the ones you like and leave the rest for another day. We don’t have to make getting fit too complicated.

The Issue – Blue light at night is a major sleep disruptor, and one of the key reasons why 40% of adults can’t get a good night’s rest.

So in the first edition I mentioned the importance of shining a big bright light in your face. But that’s specifically for the morning. Using the same idea in the hours past sunset will only trick your body into staying awake past your bedtime. And that’s exactly what we tend to do on a nightly basis.

Blue light is given off by electronic screens and messes with the body’s internal clock, almost certainly disrupting sleep. We just haven’t had enough time to evolve past our cave-dwelling beginnings. So the brain isn’t going to interpret blue light as a separate from the light of the sun.

So should you just drop your phones and turn off all the lights at sunset? You could, but you don’t necessarily need to go that drastic. One simple way of minimising the damage, without giving up everything you love, is installing apps on your electronics that filter out the light to give it an amber tinge instead.

The one I go for is f.lux, available across all major devices. I use a few other strategies to coax the brain into the bedtime mindset, but I’ll leave them for another piece. 

Head to the flux website here.

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All the levers that make up a stress-free, aesthetic, healthy lifestyle. Technique-focused training, total nutrition, mindfulness, resilient habits, and more. Head to the guide repository.