Stop Phone Scrolling Before Bed & Do This Instead | Cal Newport
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0:0 Cal's intro00:00:00.000 | From Joel, "I'm getting the recommended eight hours of sleep every night, but constantly
00:00:04.720 | feel exhausted both when I wake up and throughout the day.
00:00:08.120 | I've been watching videos on the importance of limiting screen time before bed and I think
00:00:12.040 | I may be a culprit for my bad sleep.
00:00:15.160 | Do you have any advice on ways to reduce screen time before bed as I find it very addicting
00:00:20.200 | and hard to break that habit?"
00:00:22.520 | I love the irony of watching videos about how to reduce screen time.
00:00:27.800 | I imagine him, Joel, up late, late into the night watching videos about how to not watch
00:00:33.560 | videos before bed.
00:00:36.200 | All sorts of contradictions and irony in the online productivity space as the channels
00:00:40.420 | are exactly the causes of productivity issues in the first place.
00:00:43.240 | All right, Joel, a couple of things here.
00:00:45.040 | I mean, first of all, of course, if you're tired throughout the day and you're getting
00:00:48.120 | enough sleep, if you actually are getting enough sleep, go back to the opening segment
00:00:52.600 | of the show, make sure that you're not excessively context shifting.
00:00:56.280 | Some of that tiredness may actually be mental fatigue and not actual rundown tiredness.
00:01:00.880 | So you want to just set up your day to be less unnecessarily exhausting, but if we're
00:01:05.160 | going to focus specifically on this issue of your sleep being disrupted, I mean, I agree
00:01:11.680 | that good sleep hygiene can help and going on to, I think the right way to think about
00:01:18.740 | it is highly salient, highly distracting, highly arousing content should not be consumed
00:01:24.540 | near bed.
00:01:25.780 | So anything where it's coming through an app that makes money by how much time you look
00:01:30.640 | at it, avoiding that, I think is important.
00:01:33.640 | So you should not go on YouTube before bed.
00:01:36.400 | You should not go on to Instagram or Twitter or TikTok.
00:01:39.840 | Anything that's attention engineered is going to be a problem because, again, these services,
00:01:44.320 | those services work services you don't pay to use work by getting you to look at the
00:01:47.960 | service longer.
00:01:48.960 | So they're going to be pressing buttons within your brain to get a response that makes you
00:01:53.580 | very engaged and aroused emotionally and wanting to actually come back and keep watching more.
00:01:58.080 | That's not a great state to be in if you want to go to bed.
00:02:01.640 | So if you're going to be looking at a screen before bed, a general rule of thumb here is
00:02:04.960 | look at things where they don't make money off of you spending more time on it.
00:02:09.940 | So if there's a The Office on Peacock, like I watch an episode or two of The Office because
00:02:14.840 | it's comforting and it's dumb, that's going to have much less of a negative impact, right?
00:02:19.120 | These streaming services make money by you paying a subscription fee, so they want to
00:02:22.200 | make sure there's stuff on there you like, but they don't particularly care if you binge
00:02:26.920 | for seven hours in a row or not, they're just, here's, we have a bunch of shows we think
00:02:30.120 | you'll like.
00:02:31.120 | So there's a real difference.
00:02:32.580 | They both seem like screens, but watching a comforting, somewhat boring show could actually
00:02:37.720 | help your brain calm down in a way that watching TikTok videos or following YouTube recommendations
00:02:42.560 | might actually get your brain fired up.
00:02:45.220 | So the intent of the platform, is it an engagement or is it customer experience, makes a difference
00:02:51.100 | on how it's going to affect your sleep.
00:02:53.640 | The other thing I want to throw in here, that's sort of the curve ball, is another common
00:02:57.480 | sleep disruptor is not necessarily what you do right before bed, but what's happening
00:03:01.140 | inside your head.
00:03:03.880 | If your head is keeping track of a lot of open loops, to use a term from David Allen,
00:03:10.040 | tasks that you're responsible for, projects you need to work on, ideas that might lead
00:03:13.640 | to cool opportunities.
00:03:15.120 | If you have a lot of these things that exist primarily in your head, and if you forget
00:03:21.420 | about them, it's going to be a problem.
00:03:23.620 | Your brain is going to have a hard time falling asleep because it feels like the juggler where
00:03:27.060 | the things it's juggling are very fragile and valuable and doesn't want to drop anything,
00:03:30.580 | so it has to keep moving.
00:03:32.900 | So ironically, one of the biggest things you can do to help you sleep at night is be better
00:03:37.700 | about how you control your work during the day, being better about how you shut down
00:03:42.120 | your work at the end of the day.
00:03:45.240 | Organizational systems that are built around notions like full capture and planning.
00:03:49.840 | So every task that you need to do that you've committed to is captured in a trusted location
00:03:53.800 | that you review regularly, so your brain doesn't have to keep track of it.
00:03:56.360 | It makes a huge difference for your sleep.
00:03:59.280 | Multiscale planning.
00:04:00.280 | I have a plan for my season, which gets turned into plans for my week, which gets turned
00:04:03.760 | into plans for my day, so that my brain doesn't have to just keep thinking, "Hey, what am
00:04:08.680 | I working on?
00:04:09.680 | What should I be working on?
00:04:10.680 | Should I be thinking more about this or that?"
00:04:12.700 | Helps you sleep.
00:04:15.720 | Having in general a good shutdown routine.
00:04:18.280 | Okay, the day is over.
00:04:19.800 | Before I shut down work, let me check all of the inboxes, my email, my plan, making
00:04:24.480 | sure that everything has a place, anything that came up has been written down.
00:04:28.360 | I know what's happening tomorrow.
00:04:29.640 | There's nothing I need to be keeping track of.
00:04:32.320 | We have a good plan.
00:04:33.320 | Everything's captured.
00:04:34.320 | Great.
00:04:35.320 | I can check that shutdown complete checkbox in my time block planner or have a ritual
00:04:41.560 | or phrase I say, and so later, if my mind starts to get ruminative about work, I can
00:04:47.600 | say, "No, no, no.
00:04:48.600 | I checked that checkbox in my time block planner.
00:04:50.520 | I said that phrase.
00:04:51.520 | That means I successfully reviewed and shut down all open loops.
00:04:54.560 | I don't have to worry about things till tomorrow."
00:04:56.480 | That makes a big difference for sleep.
00:04:58.080 | All right, so to summarize, we have a couple different things going on here.
00:05:02.640 | Be careful about what screens you expose yourself to before bed.
00:05:06.400 | It's probably going to be easier if you have a bedtime screen habit to just change what
00:05:10.480 | you look at than it will be to just cold turkey stop looking at a screen before bed.
00:05:14.560 | Just shift your screens to things that's not emotionally salient or emotionally arousing.
00:05:20.200 | And then care a lot about how you organize your work, open loops, shutdowns, and multi-scale
00:05:25.880 | planning.
00:05:26.880 | And finally, make sure that some of your daytime exhaustion is not actually from context shifting
00:05:30.400 | as opposed to sleep disruption.
00:05:31.960 | Those are my three points, Joel.
00:05:33.200 | I think all three of those things combined will make a difference.
00:05:37.160 | I'm noticing, Jesse, we got, not only do we have a bunch of J names in a row, but the
00:05:43.720 | next name is literally JJ.
00:05:46.880 | It's as if we go through our questions alphabetically.
00:05:48.880 | I like it.
00:05:49.880 | Unfortunately, it's the last of the J names.
00:05:51.440 | I wish we had more.
00:05:52.440 | But anyways, let's get, after John and Joel, let's get rolling with what JJ has to ask
00:05:57.240 | us.
00:05:58.240 | Yep.
00:05:59.240 | So JJ has to say, "I'm constantly feeling stressed during the evenings when I'm not
00:06:04.080 | at work because I feel like I'm wasting time.
00:06:06.520 | I want to constantly be improving myself, but I also want to take time to do fun things,
00:06:10.560 | video games, see friends, et cetera.
00:06:13.400 | What should I do?"
00:06:14.400 | Right.
00:06:15.400 | So this could be an issue for people who care a lot about productivity writ large is evenings
00:06:21.160 | can be stressful.
00:06:22.160 | It can be stressful because if you're not doing anything structured, you feel just unnerved.
00:06:31.480 | You practice multi-scale planning.
00:06:33.640 | Your workday is time block planned.
00:06:35.480 | It's connected to a weekly plan and a seasonal plan, and it can feel unnerving to be just
00:06:39.380 | around, feel unproductive.
00:06:42.960 | But then you're worried about like, well, what do I want to do is if I treat my day
00:06:45.420 | like my workday, that's exhausting because it's also really hard to be very structured
00:06:48.480 | during the workday.
00:06:49.480 | So this can be in a dilemma like JJ is in as well.
00:06:54.440 | So the two things I recommend in this situation is one, clear separation between work and
00:06:58.640 | non-work.
00:06:59.640 | Okay.
00:07:00.640 | So clear shutdown routine.
00:07:02.560 | We just talked about this in the answer that I gave to Joel in the previous question.
00:07:07.640 | So you really can shut down work.
00:07:09.960 | That'll help your mind leave the work productivity mindset of we are constantly trying to keep
00:07:15.440 | track of what's going on and making sure nothing's being misplaced and we're making good use
00:07:18.960 | of your time.
00:07:19.960 | You want to clear shutdown.
00:07:20.960 | So your mindset can shift.
00:07:23.440 | But the second thing I would advise is that especially if you're an organized person,
00:07:29.200 | having no plan is overrated.
00:07:32.400 | We often tell ourselves that the solution to maybe the exhaustion we feel from work
00:07:37.760 | is nothingness.
00:07:40.760 | The goal is if I could just have nothing to do, then no plan, no intention.
00:07:47.680 | That will be the opposite of being, having too much to do and I'm going to find relaxation
00:07:50.800 | and rejuvenation actually does not work that way for a lot of people.
00:07:54.480 | Especially if you're organized, having nothing to do, having no plan is stressful and you
00:07:59.880 | get that unnerving feeling that you talk about.
00:08:02.720 | So what's the right thing to do?
00:08:04.160 | Sketch a plan, but make sure that plan is varied and rejuvenating and interesting.
00:08:10.520 | The problem that people have, what stresses us out about work is not the fact that we
00:08:14.560 | have things to do.
00:08:15.640 | It's not the fact that we have a plan.
00:08:17.320 | It's just that we have too many things to switch back and forth behind us because the
00:08:20.800 | work is hard.
00:08:21.800 | The work is stressful.
00:08:22.800 | It's not the plan itself.
00:08:23.800 | It's what the plan is actually is in the plan.
00:08:25.480 | Work is hard.
00:08:27.960 | You sketch a plan after you're shut down.
00:08:29.360 | It shouldn't be a detailed time block plan and be like, yeah, I want to get a reading
00:08:32.180 | session in and work out and then why don't we watch this show with the kids that I've
00:08:36.160 | been reading about?
00:08:37.160 | I think it's going to be special and I want to make sure that I have a, go for a walk
00:08:40.880 | before we get ready for bed.
00:08:41.880 | You sort of sketch a plan of things that are meaningful and useful for the family and useful
00:08:46.080 | for yourself and varied and rejuvenating, and it's not a tight minute by minute plan.
00:08:50.720 | You're actually going to feel much better about that.
00:08:53.200 | So again, the key to get away from the stress of a busy work day is not to significantly
00:08:59.720 | reduce what you do.
00:09:01.560 | It's not the significantly reduce the idea of having a plan is to make the things you
00:09:05.120 | do much better, to make the things that you've planned to do fun or interesting or useful
00:09:10.720 | to the world beyond the world of work and completely unconnected.
00:09:13.600 | So shut down work, shift to non-work mode, but then say, I want to hit the pillow proud
00:09:19.200 | tonight.
00:09:20.200 | Like what do I want to do with my time that makes this an evening that I'm proud of?
00:09:23.040 | And it has nothing to do with productivity.
00:09:24.840 | It's not how do I achieve this or get ahead of this?
00:09:26.960 | It's like, how do I like get time to read this book I really like?
00:09:31.080 | How do I get some one-on-one time with like my oldest son who I haven't seen recently?
00:09:35.880 | You want to make intentional use of your time, which is separate from some notion of optimizing
00:09:41.760 | time or maximizing output.
00:09:43.920 | So doing little can be stressful.
00:09:45.760 | I mean, that's the, there's so many books, Jesse, there's a while where do nothing, how
00:09:49.400 | to do nothing.
00:09:50.400 | The art of doing nothing.
00:09:51.400 | It was this whole notion of what we need to do is nothing.
00:09:54.560 | Doing nothing stresses a lot of people out.
00:09:56.560 | Yeah.
00:09:57.560 | Like humans don't like to do nothing.
00:09:59.160 | Yeah.
00:10:00.160 | Because people are like really afraid of being bored.
00:10:02.160 | Yeah.
00:10:03.160 | And boredom is actually a useful human emotion, right?
00:10:05.600 | Yeah.
00:10:06.600 | We feel such a strong, distasteful, uh, emotional reaction that doing nothing is because we're
00:10:12.120 | evolved to actually want to be doing things.
00:10:14.560 | That's what drives humans to unlike a cat who's completely happy.
00:10:19.240 | If I can lay in the sun for seven hours and I'm a cat, it's a good day, right?
00:10:24.060 | Cats don't get bored.
00:10:25.720 | Humans do, but that is the drive that's like, okay, well, what else are we going to do?
00:10:28.400 | Well, I don't know.
00:10:29.400 | Let's invent fire or organize a political system or invent religion.
00:10:33.840 | Like the boredom is part of what drove humans that take advantage of this larger brain that
00:10:38.240 | we grew.
00:10:39.240 | Yeah.
00:10:40.240 | So, you know, we shouldn't, boredom is important indicator.
00:10:42.680 | The key is, I mean, again, people are not stressed out by doing things, they're stressed
00:10:45.600 | out by what they're doing.
00:10:47.040 | Yeah.
00:10:48.040 | The reasonableness of what they're doing, whether they have enough time to do it, the,
00:10:50.840 | the actual demands of the work they're doing.
00:10:54.160 | That's what's stressful.
00:10:55.160 | Not the doing itself.
00:10:56.160 | I mean, you can stop your work and be reading and woodworking and, you know, movies and
00:11:03.200 | watching sports, all sorts of things you can do, which are things, but they're very different
00:11:06.400 | than work.
00:11:07.400 | It's really the content of activity.
00:11:10.040 | Not so much the, uh, planning around activity.
00:11:13.840 | Planning itself is not too stressful.
00:11:15.560 | Yeah.
00:11:16.560 | Actually Lex had, um, Yuval Harari on like a couple weeks ago and I listened to that.
00:11:21.040 | They were talking about like civilization and boredom and stuff like that.
00:11:24.680 | Oh, interesting.
00:11:25.680 | Yeah.
00:11:26.680 | Yeah.
00:11:27.680 | Yuval is real big on, um, the conceptual, the cognitive conceptual developments in human
00:11:31.240 | evolution that just unlocked everything.
00:11:33.240 | Yeah.
00:11:34.240 | I'll listen to that one.
00:11:35.240 | Yeah.
00:11:36.240 | Yeah.
00:11:37.240 | It was just before the Isaacson one.
00:11:38.240 | I think.
00:11:39.240 | Um, I saw someone the other day attribute sapiens to me.
00:11:43.440 | That's pretty good.
00:11:44.440 | They said Cal Newport's book sapiens.
00:11:45.440 | I sold like millions and millions of copies.
00:11:46.800 | Yeah.
00:11:47.800 | Yeah.
00:11:48.800 | I was like, I like that.
00:11:49.800 | I suppose.
00:11:50.800 | I mean, it's probably bad news for Yuval Harari, but I guess good news for me.
00:11:52.600 | I was like, I'll take it.
00:11:54.880 | I'll take it.
00:11:55.880 | Hey, if you liked this video, I think you'll really like this one as well.