Manage your environment

Like many people these days, I use my phone as my alarm, which means it’s next to my bed overnight. That’s different from many recommendations that advocate leaving your phone outside the bedroom. As a mitigation, I’ve set my phone to automatically enter Do Not Disturb mode each night so I’m not awakened by any notifications while I’m sleeping.

I also have my phone set up so I can toggle between having my screen in grayscale and colour as this makes it much less desirable to use – on iOS this can be set up under the Accessibility settings. If you have an Android device, the Wind Down feature can do this for you at night – just set at bedtime and it will automatically turn your screen to grayscale and have your phone enter Do Not Disturb mode. On iOS, if you don’t want to manually switch to grayscale mode, you can enable Night Shift which will automatically adjust the screen colour so it’s less harsh on your eyes. You can also use the Bedtime feature, which will remind you to go to bed and set an alarm to wake you in the morning.