Hands up fans of the snooze button!

or maybe you are a weekend lie in lover?

Whilst having an occiaionla late night or weekend lie in is totally fine, regularly changing your schedule and you’ll end up with a confused 24hour body clock that doesn’t know when to release cortisol to wake you up (cue groggy mornings or early waking) and when to release melatonin to send you off to sleep (cue that wide awake feeling at bedtime).

I’ll add in one more thing here too, your body clock signals get weaker with age, so whilst you might’ve been able to burn the candle at both ends in your twenties, you might need a regular schedule these days

What to do…

Stick to your same weekday wake up time most days, and keep those weekend lies in to an hour max!

A consistent bedtime helps too, but think about a 20 minute bedtime window to allow for those nights you need a little extra winding down.

And check out “The Working Day” for all the chat about light, a key signal for that body clock too!

or should I say caffeine fix…

Caffeine works by blocking your natural sleepiness (sleep pressure) from building throughout the day. Sow whilst a few cups of tea or coffee won’t affect most of our too much drinking caffeine too late int he day or having too many cups can mean your sleep pressure isn’t high enough at night to send you off to sleep and let you sleep deeply throughout the night.

Let’s add to this that many women find they become more sensitive to the effects of caffein in midlife and you might find a little adjustment is needed.

Try this…

Keep a caffeine log for a week or two and bring forward your last cup and/or reduce the amount. see if you notice an effect.

Many women find that a 12-2pm caffeine curfew works well.

Your day to day life might be working against your sleep!

We’ve evolved to be outside and moving lots but nowadays we spend so much of our days sat inside! No judgement though… its the modern world!

The things is out brains are prngammned to response to daylight cues, so it can keep that body clock running to time (see: the Broken Clock section).

add to this that generally moving about will build up sleep pressure that sends you off and keeps you asleep at night, and you might be beginning to see how the normal working day isn’t helping our chances of snooze!

How to fix it…

A daily walk of 15 minutes before 10am is a great start. If there’s really no chance of getting outside then an investment in a light box might be wise (look for one with 10,000LUX). And try to add in a few more “mini moves” to your day - think 15 minute walks, yoga or whatever suits you best!

How many of us treat our evenings like an extension of the day? Still switched on, multi-tasking work, parenting, domestic tasks… No boundaries, no evening and time to descend from the busyness of our lives.

The problem with this missing evening time, or descent as I call it, is we find ourselves crawling into bed with a brain that’s still switched on. It’s called being tired but wired. A nervous system that’s still thinking it’s in daytime mode. Cue that phone in hand as to try to scroll away the day..

And then we’ve lost another hour to a simple scroll, or “just one more episode” as we try to claw back some lost “me time”. This has a name too, revenge bedtime procrastination.

The solution?

Firstly set a boundary, a virtual “out of office” - pack away work, set a deadline for difficult conversations, prioritise an evening. Mine is 8pm. You get to decide yours…

Then indulge in some GUILT-FREE wind down time. TV is great (just maybe don’t end on those gruesome true crime docs), hobbies, reading, yoga… whatever relaxes you.

And end with your bedtime ritual (You’ll find more chat about this in The REST plan)