A life experiment thought: in the evening, shut off your iPhone, and also, shut down your laptop. With iPhone, you have to do the strange sequence: up volume down volume and side button and literally shut your iPhone totally off. This will prevent you from having the temptation to check it or use it.

With your laptop, do not just close the screen and put it into sleep mode. Instead, shut it down and power it off completely.

In terms of timing, some ideas: turn off your phone in your laptop before dinner time, or after dinner time. Or assuming if you go to work and have to commute, the second you come home turn off your phone and your laptop. or, turn off your phone and laptop after you take your evening shower.

But what if someone needs to contact you? C’est la vie.

Why do this? At least for myself, I found that when I use any devices in the evening, whether it be my phone or my laptop, I get a headache. Also, I am quite certain that if my goal is to have an earlier bedtime, using any type of screen, no matter whether it is in night mode or not, is inimical to my goal.

Also, in terms of my physiological well-being, I found the greatest predictor whether I’m going to have a good day or not is this: how early I slept. Or how early I got into bed.

Now that we started sleep training baby Seneca, the earliest I’ve been successfully able to jump in to bed is around 9:30 PM. It probably took me an hour to of lying in bed before I actually fell asleep, but, this is better than me jumping in bed at 11 PM or midnight, not sleeping until one or 2 AM.

I am very convinced: if your goal is to have maximal productivity in life, be insanely rigid and disciplined about not using any device in the evening. This will allow you to power down sooner, sleep better at night, and therefore have more power to conquer the next day. With almost 99% of things in life, it could wait until tomorrow.