A good night's sleep is required for optimal health, skin regeneration, feeling energized through the day, fat burning, etc. In the age of fast-paced life, surrounded by gadgets and endless information its difficult to reduce the brain activity required for deep sleep. I will not go into the details of alpha, beta, gamma, REM stages of sleep. 

Well, I have morning and evening rituals that I follow every day after I wake up and before I go to bed. The book Miracle morning helped me build the morning ritual.

There are a few apps I have been using for over a few years and some I picked up along the way. I am going to share my three absolute favorites. 

The LED screens of the phone and laptop emit blue tints. Prolong staring of the blue light is associated with sleep deprivation and insomnia. Twilight changes the tint of the screen to warmer colors like orange, red and yellow. You can schedule it to change the color based on sunset sunrise timings or your custom hours. The warmer colors will help you have a restful sleep.

For iOS, Mac, Windows, and Linux you can use the alternative F.lux app.

Avoid exercising, or listening to loud music or anything stressful like news, before you sleep. You may try listening to some calm music like nature, forest, birds, beach, rain, waterfall, traditional instruments and binaural sounds on the Atmosphere app. You can make your mixes and loop through them. 

The app also has a feature of the timer to automatically turn off. So you can kick the timer off and gradually fall to sleep. 

The goal of this app is the same as the Atmosphere. But it has an entirely different content. Calm has music, songs and different guided meditation voice overs. It can also read you bedtime stories to bring back the childhood. The content is always new and fresh. I shuffle between this and the Atmosphere depending on my mood. 

Other than these apps there are several other things I do. I read a few pages and play the piano a little bit. Sometimes I write on my gratitude journal. Washing my feet with cold water before I go to sleep helps as well. 

You can download these apps from Google Playstore or Apple AppStore.

I hope these tips help you. What are the things you do have a good night's sleep?

Shekhar