The Ultimate Guide To Creating An Evening Routine

A successful day begins the night before with a positive evening routine. An evening routine helps you to wind down from the day and prepare for tomorrow. Doing so will give you the best chance of having a successful day.

In this post, we’ll look at the core elements of evening routines. You’ll learn how to create an evening routine. From ending the day to preparing for tomorrow, here is all the information you need.

Ending The Day

An evening routine begins at the end of the day. It is often used to signal the completion of the day. This helps you to tie things off and relax. You’ll sleep better knowing that the day is over.

When starting your evening routine, you are telling your brain and body that it’s time to prepare for bed. The simple act of having a routine can promote better quality sleep.

That’s easier said than done, though. Particularly if you work from home. There isn’t always a clear divider between work and leisure.

Unlike people who work 9-5, people who work from home have to define their own boundaries. Coming home from work, which signals the end of work for the day, isn’t applicable in this scenario.

It’s much harder to mark the day as ‘completed’ when you don’t have a clear divider. This is where having an evening routine comes in. We can use an evening routine to signal the end of the day.

Sticking To A Schedule

For the best evening (and morning) routine results, it’s useful to stick to a specific schedule. What this means is to start your evening routine at the same time every day, and wake up at the same time every day.

To do this, we first need to decide a wake-up time.

Choose a time to wake up each morning. For the best results, you’ll also be waking up at your chosen time on the weekends. So, keep this in mind when choosing a time and pick something manageable.

How much sleep do you need each night?

Most adults need at least 7 and a half hours of sleep each night. That’s 5 complete sleep cycles of 90 minutes. Some people prefer to get 6 sleep cycles totalling 9 hours of sleep.

If you plan to wake up at 6AM, you’ll need to be asleep by 10:30PM the previous night to get 7 and a half hours of sleep.

A quick tip – it’s much easier to wake up at the end of a sleep cycle. Keep this in mind when planning your wake and sleep times.

Decide on the time you want to wake up, then go backwards by the amount of time you want to be asleep for. This should be at least 7 and a half hours. You’ll need to be asleep by this time to ensure you get enough sleep every night.

Factor in the time it takes you, on average, to fall asleep. For most adults, this is around 20 to 30 minutes. To make it easier to work out, let’s use 30 minutes.

The time you arrive at should be at least 8 hours before your wake-up time. This is your bedtime. At bedtime, turn out the lights and try to sleep.

Keep in mind that if you plan to change your wake-up time, you’ll also have to change your bedtime. Try to keep these times in sync; if you wake up 30 minutes earlier, go to bed 30 minutes earlier.

The Beginning Of The End

From here, you’ll need to consider roughly how long your evening routine will take. Work backwards from your bedtime with the time needed for each activity. You’ll get to the time when you should begin your evening routine. More on this shortly.

Almost any evening routine, like a habit, begins with a prompt or Cue. This will mark the start of your evening routine. From there, that will lead to other habits and activities. You’ll repeat this every evening.

If you’d like to learn more about habits and Cues, check out this post.

For example, your Cue might be an alarm sounding, noticing the time, or feeling tired. The important thing is to ensure the Cue is consistent and available every day.

Feeling tired isn’t the best Cue, as the time you feel tired each day will vary. The amount of sleep you got the previous night will cause this Cue to fluctuate.

Let’s use noticing the time as a prompt since that is consistent and reliable. You can set an alarm for a reminder if need be. Later on, you’ll decide on the time to start your own evening routine.

For the sake of example, we’ll use 9PM. If you notice the time is 9PM or later, you’ll know it’s time to begin your evening routine.

Try to complete all activities that need your immediate attention before this time. Having a form of closure promotes ease and relaxation in the mind. This will help you to fall asleep.

Once you’ve finished your day’s activities, you can begin your evening routine. When thinking about your routine, separate your day and your evening routine activities. Doing so will act as a divider between finishing your day and preparing for bed.

Your First Habit

The very first thing to do from here is to turn off and put away any technology. Phones, computers, tablets, TVs; turn them all off or put them away.

Your devices emit blue light. This is a wavelength of light that suppresses melatonin, the sleep hormone. When this happens, it’s more difficult to fall asleep. You can learn more in the Ultimate Guide To Sleep.

This doubles up as a nice metaphor for ending the day. Shut down technology as you shut down your thinking brain for the day.

What’s next?

For now, let’s focus on the core activities for ending the day. These make up the bulk of your evening routine. Later, we’ll look at filler habits to bring it all together.

Reflection

Reflecting on the day is an amazing tool which you can use to enhance your daily success. Daily reflection allows you to wrap up the day in a nice way and ensures you are improving every single day.

Reflection involves looking back on the day’s activities and considering how they went. You look for any successes and any way that the day could have been better.

Asking reflective questions can help to provide more insights. These types of questions get your brain working and aimed in the right direction.

Here are some areas to reflect on, with relevant questions:

You don’t have to answer every question here every night. Pick one or two, or think of your own questions, then reflect on them each day. Additionally, you can rotate these questions to keep things fresh.

Reflection isn’t limited to the day either. You can take a step back and look at the bigger picture of progress towards your goals.

Did you make progress towards your goals today, even if only by a little? How did it go? What could be better?

This is a useful way to ensure you’re growing, improving, and heading in the right direction each day.

If you’re reflecting in a journal, you can save space by using a memory technique.

Begin by choosing a question or questions that you want to reflect on every day. Assign each question a number. Then, each evening, you can write the number followed by your reflection.

For example, say you want to ask yourself the question ‘What went well today?’ each night. You also want to ask ‘What could I have done better today?’.

In your journal, the first time you reflect on the question, you could write ‘1. What went well today?’. Do the same for your chosen question(s), using the next appropriate number.

Then, the following evening, you wouldn’t need to write the question out again. Instead, write ‘1. *answer*’.

Using this method also makes it easy to change the question/number association. Whenever you want to change a question, write out the new question with your chosen number.

Gratitude / Prayer

If you want to be happier, you can form an evening gratitude practice. Gratitude is a powerful activity that takes 2 minutes or less each night. It produces serious results.

Without going into too much detail (you can learn more here), gratitude helps you to end the day on a positive note.

You could direct your gratitude at a higher power, such as God or the Universe, or at nothing in particular. You can choose to write, speak, or think. I find the first two to be most effective.

Whatever your choice, saying ‘thank you’ for a few things each night can put a positive spin on your day. It allows you to get into bed and fall asleep in a happier state of mind.

Relaxing The Body

A core part of ending the day is allowing the body to relax and get comfortable. A warm shower can help to relax your body and muscles, also making you feel nice and clean.

Taking a warm shower can help you to fall asleep quicker, too. Your body needs to cool by about 1.5 (C) or 3 (F) degrees before it can fall asleep. By taking a warm shower and increasing your body temperature, it makes that drop much easier to reach.

If you don’t want to take a full shower, splash warm water on your inner wrist and neck. Warming your pressure points can have a similar effect in making you feel tired.

Once showered, you can get changed into comfy clothes or dedicated sleeping clothes. Pyjamas or a dressing gown are two good options for this.

Stretching is another activity you can do to help prepare the body for bed. Take 5 minutes to stretch out your body. Putting tension into your muscles promotes relaxation. It also helps to body to cool down before sleep.

A quick tip – If you’re in bed and struggling to fall asleep, tense up each part of your body. Hold this for a few second, then let go. This will help you to relax.

Calming The Mind

Another useful way to end the day is by calming the mind. Mindfulness or meditation can help to clear your head and minimise thinking.

The closer you do this to sleeping, the better, as your mind will be less busy with those late-night thoughts.

I recommend using Headspace to meditate. They have a broad array of courses and a dedicated section for sleep.

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Thanks for reading so far. If you’d like to learn more, continue to part 2 of this post.

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Further Recommended Reading:

These posts are relevant to the post you just finished reading:

• Habit Creation
• The Ultimate Guide To Sleep
• Evening Routine Ideas

If you want to learn more about routines, why not check out our Ultimate Guide To Morning Routines?