# Long Days Make Short Nights: How Living Proactively Helped Me Sleep Better. I look at my phone, and it's currently 1:15 AM. I'm currently on my 50th iteration of some combination of cover on, cover off, pillow sideways along my body, pillow propped up, or flipped to the cooler side. One second, I am hot and on the verge of sweating, so I uncover my feet; the next, I am uncomfortably cold and cover my feet back up and pull the cover up over my shoulder. "I have to get some sleep! It's going to be such a long day at work tomorrow," I think to myself in the quiet darkness, the humming of the oscillating fan the only sound in the room. Other uninvited random thoughts take their turns parading through my mind one at a time: > "I really should exercise more." > "Am I a good dad?" > "The house could use some new windows." > "When is the last time I had a checkup?" > "Maybe some milk will help me sleep. Yeah, some milk would be good." I get up and feel my way down the dark hall, carefully shuffling my feet so I don't kick or step on Bluey's family car or some scattering of blocks that we forgot to pick up before we turn the lights off for the night. I finally arrive at the kitchen, where I flip on the light, grab a cup, and pour a cold glass of milk. That hits the spot. I flip off the light, make a pit stop by the restroom, and then slide back into bed. I continue making adjustments, trying to find that elusive position of comfort, when all of a sudden I am awakened by the alarm on my phone, not entirely sure what time it was when I was finally able to doze off. I feel around for my phone on the nightstand beside me, trying my best to be careful not to turn the alarm completely off, but to just hit the snooze button to get those coveted nine more minutes. I do this three more times before I am finally forced to pull myself up and half-stumble to the bathroom, where I wash my face, brush my teeth, and wet my hair. I am half asleep as I go through the rest of my morning routine on complete autopilot, finally arriving at work not remembering much of the drive to get there. > **Short days make long nights.** So, what's the great mystical secret that makes nights like these a lot less frequent for me? I won't keep you in suspense, and don't worry, I am not selling you a $49.99 course to help you get the best sleep of your life. It is a simple shift with a deeper principle empowering it. Are you ready for it? Here it is. ## I Wake Up Earlier WAIT! WAIT! I know what you are thinking; this isn't necessarily the secret to the universe. But stick with me for just a few minutes, and I will show you that the reason this works for me is different than what you think. I guarantee you the reasoning behind this idea will guide you to a more empowering perspective. Before making this shift in my own life, most of my days start off just as I describe above. I scramble to work; I scramble through work; and I make it home and fill my evenings with activities that I believe help me relax and unwind. I play video games, watch the same reruns that I have watched dozens of times, and do generally common things that normal people do that give me a sense of immediate gratification without moving the needle in the overall quality of my life very much. I probably know what you are thinking right now: "Hey Pat, that doesn't seem so bad." And I get it; these activities in and of themselves are fine. I am not saying anything is wrong with any of these. But if you are like me, you have positive intentions for the direction of your family, career, and life, and accomplishing these intentions will require a higher degree of focus and effort. As I begin to desire more for myself, I notice the activities I am filling my time with are not conducive to the life I want to build for myself and my family. I can see the new possibilities, I can taste the sweetness of living in that new reality that my mind has conceived, but my consistent actions are keeping me on the opposite side of the looking glass, where I can only see the prize but cannot possess it. I believe this to be the source of discontentment: when consistent action is disconnected from vision or intention. You are probably asking yourself right now, "What does any of this have to do with helping you sleep better?" I promise, I am getting there. Stay with me a little longer. As this seed of discontentment germinates over a period of time, it grows and begins to produce fruit; the fruit of unresolved discontentment is stress. ## Stress Does Not Stay at Work Stress does not always show up looking like stress. Sometimes it looks like being impatient with the people you love. Sometimes it looks like getting easily frustrated over something small. Sometimes it looks like feeling like you should be doing something important while you are trying to relax. And sometimes it looks like lying in bed at 1:15 in the morning, pulling the covers on and off, unable to turn your mind off because your mind knows there is unfinished business. I am not talking about unfinished business at work. I am talking about unfinished business in myself. There is a difference between having a full day and having a meaningful day. There is a difference between being busy and making progress. A person can be completely exhausted at the end of the day and still not feel satisfied. I know because I have done it many times. I used to fill my days reacting to whatever came next. An email comes in, I react. Something goes wrong, I react. Someone needs something, I react. Work ends, and I react by looking for the quickest thing that makes me feel like I can finally shut my brain off. But the problem is that I am not really shutting my brain off. I am just distracting it for a little while. Then the distractions run out. The television gets turned off. The game gets paused. The house gets quiet. My head hits the pillow, and every thought I have managed to avoid all day finally gets its chance to speak. That is when I realize I am tired, but not at peace. Stress and poor sleep are closely connected. Stress can make it harder to fall asleep or stay asleep, and a bad night of sleep can make the next day feel even more stressful. That creates a cycle that can be hard to break.pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih+1 For me, the beginning of breaking that cycle is not some complicated sleep hack. It is not a special drink, a new mattress, or some elaborate nighttime routine. It starts much earlier in the day. ## The Shift to Proactive Living Stephen Covey talks about being proactive in *The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People*. Being proactive means I take responsibility for my response. It means I quit spending all my energy focused on things I cannot control and start investing that energy in the things I can influence. Covey calls this the Circle of Influence. There are always going to be things in my Circle of Concern. There are bills, work problems, things I wish I could fix for my family, things that happen in the world, and problems that are bigger than me. But there are also things I can influence right now. I can influence whether I get up when my alarm goes off. I can influence whether I take a walk. I can influence whether I read something that makes me better. I can influence whether I spend a little time planning my day. I can influence whether I make the phone call, study for the certification, write the article, work on the project, clean the room, or do the thing I have been putting off. When I live reactively, it feels like life is always happening to me. When I live proactively, I start to recognize that I have a part to play in the direction of my life. This does not mean I suddenly control everything. I definitely do not. It means I stop using everything I cannot control as an excuse to neglect the things I can. That shift alone begins changing the way I feel at the end of the day. ## Waking Up Earlier Changes Everything Waking up earlier is not the goal. It is the trigger. I do not wake up earlier because I think getting less sleep makes me tougher or more productive. I am not trying to turn myself into some kind of 4:00 AM productivity guru who drinks green juice while answering emails and running a marathon before sunrise. I wake up earlier because it gives me a small piece of the day that belongs to me before the world starts making demands. Before the emails. Before the phone calls. Before the meetings. Before the problems that need to be solved. Before work, family, and life begin asking for my attention. That early time becomes a keystone habit for me. A keystone habit is a habit that starts a chain reaction. One intentional action makes other intentional actions easier to follow. The habit itself may seem small, but the results are not small because it changes what I do next. When I wake up earlier, I have time to think instead of immediately react. I can pray. I can read. I can write. I can exercise. I can plan. I can work on something that matters to me and my family before my day gets crowded with everything else. Most importantly, I begin the day by keeping a promise to myself. That does something to a man. I do not start the day already behind. I do not start the day feeling like I barely survived the morning routine. I begin with a small win, and that win begins to stack. James Clear writes extensively about how small habits compound over time. One small choice may not look important in the moment, but repeated choices begin shaping the kind of person you become.[jamesclear](https://jamesclear.com/atomic-habits) For me, waking up earlier begins changing more than my mornings. It begins changing the way I approach my entire life. ## Long Days Make Short Nights As I begin living more proactively, things that have evaded me in the past begin falling into place. I start doing more of the things I have been saying I want to do. I spend more time improving myself. I become more deliberate about my work, my family, my health, and the direction I am taking. I do not do this perfectly, and I still have days where I waste time, procrastinate, and fall back into old patterns. But I start moving the needle. That is what makes the difference. At the end of a long day, I can look back and see that I did something useful. I made progress. I kept a promise. I took responsibility for something in my Circle of Influence. I did not just spend the day reacting to life; I helped shape it. There is a deep satisfaction that comes from that. It reminds me of a farmer after a hard day of good, clean, meaningful work. He may be tired. His back may hurt. His hands may be dirty. But when he lays down at night, he knows what he did with the day. He knows he planted, built, repaired, harvested, or cared for something that mattered. He does not have to wonder whether he spent the day well. He sleeps. I am not saying waking up earlier is a cure for insomnia. There are real physical, medical, and mental-health factors that can affect sleep, and sometimes those need attention beyond a change in routine. But I am saying that, for me, living with more intention removes some of the mental noise that used to follow me into bed. Persistent sleep problems deserve a conversation with a qualified health professional.pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih+1 When my actions are conducive to my vision, I experience contentment. When my actions are disconnected from my vision, I experience discontentment. And if I allow discontentment to sit unresolved long enough, it becomes stress. Stress follows me into the night, and stress makes it hard to rest. But when I spend the day moving toward the life I want to build for myself and my family, I can lay down in peace. I am tired, but it is a good tired. It is the kind of tired that comes from effort with purpose. > Long days make short nights. > But a day spent moving toward your vision makes sleep come easy. That is the simple realization that makes a world of difference for me.