If You Wouldn’t Wake Up Early For It, Don’t Stay Up Late For It

One of the reasons Reddit is great is that you can find genuinely wise, pithy, and applicable advice from someone named SmellsLikeUpfoo.

In this case, the advice is simple: if you wouldn’t set your alarm one hour early to do something, don’t stay up one hour later to do it the night before.

Whether you lose it on the front end or the back end of the night, you’re losing the same hour of sleep. The only reason we allow ourselves to fall into this trap is because staying up late doesn’t feel bad. Once you’re awake, staying awake an extra hour is pretty easy, even if you’re relatively tired. But the thought of waking up at 4:30 instead of 5:30 is miserable. Once you’re asleep, giving up an extra hour of sleep feels really bad, even if you’re relatively well rested.

So, force yourself to think about whether it’s worth getting up an hour earlier to do whatever it is you’d normally be doing late at night. I’ll bet your evaluation of your nighttime activities changes pretty quickly.