The Unselfish Act of Turning Off Your Phone at Night
When it comes to the quality of your sleep, you can do one small thing that will pay big: turn off your phone when you go to bed.?
At the end of our days, we need to be able to shut down completely. That’s why sleep gurus talk about darkening our rooms, about quitting screens early in the evening, about preventing ourselves from eating and drinking late at night.
Our brains also need to know they’ll get to shut down completely—to know they’ll get a break from being the god-like creature of our phone’s creation.?
And yet, when I suggest to people that they can, could, and should turn off their phones at night, I get all sorts of pushback. They tell me they could never, because what if someone needs them? Theoretically, they’re being giving and prosocial. They want to be available and that’s laudable. Except: there are two significant flaws in this line of thinking.?
Let’s say the worst thing did happen to your brother, your mother, or your significant other. That’s bad news, and I’m sorry about that. But as far as you know, this worst thing hasn’t happened until you become aware of it.
It can wait until morning.?
领英推荐
Then there’s the cost. The chance that your sleep might get interrupted hangs over your head like a guillotine, even if it’s just a miniature guillotine. Let’s say, for example, that keeping your phone on at night is causing you to sleep 0.5% worse each night. Your first night of keeping your phone on means you sleep 99.5% as well as Zero Day. You keep it on again the next night. Now you’re at 99%. Not so bad! Until it’s a year in and you’re at 16% of your original capacity.
Death by a thousand cuts—mini-guillotine cuts.?
Consider the version of you that’s well-rested and ready for the day’s battle. That version isn’t just better at work, in your relationships, and in your creative pursuits. That version is also much more useful to the mother, brother, and significant other that had the terrible thing happen to them.
By keeping your phone on at night, you’re actually taking away from your ability to be helpful to your mother, brother, or significant other. You have a finite amount of energy, attention, and cognitive ability.?
Use it wisely.
And use it lovingly—not by being available tonight, but by getting ready tonight?for the rest of your life.?
25+ years trying cases in federal district court and administrative fora. Mediation and negotiation, theory development, client advice.
1 年This is nonsense. Until recently, we had only house phones. If your elderly parent had a crisis in the middle of the night - "my basement is flooding", "I think I'm having a heart attack" - the phone would ring, and you'd get up and answer it, and you'd go over to their house (or follow the ambulance to the hospital) to help. Because being there matters. Nobody turned their ringers off at night. If you're too worried to sleep with the outside possibility that bad things may happen in the night, that's a mental health problem, not a phone problem.