Here’s How Your Daytime Routines Are Keeping You Up At Night

Productivity is golden. Or at least, that’s the story we’ve been told most of our lives. But there’s a danger in that: When we praise productivity and efficiency above all else, we often let proper rest and sufficient sleep fall to the bottoms of our (lengthy) to-do lists.

But, if you’re getting by on just five hours of sleep every night, you’re not alone. In fact, maintaining a negative relationship with sleep is by no means abnormal. According to Courtney Bancroft PsyD, an NYC-based clinical psychologist specializing in insomnia and sleep wellness, this relationship is a vicious cycle. The daily stress of a “productive” lifestyle often thwarts our bodies from properly shutting down. “The more that we can think of sleep as a luxurious, healing restful thing, the better our relationship with sleep will be,” she explains.
 
And while you’ve certainly heard plenty of tips and tricks to help you get to sleep by way of your nighttime routine, Dr. Bancroft believes there are plenty of daytime habits we can adopt while in quarantine to help foster a more positive relationship with sleep.

That's why we tapped Dr. Bancroft along with Joyce K. Lee-Iannotti, MD, an Arizona-based neurologist with a focus on sleep medicine, to break down a few of the simple habits we can all implement in our daily lives that will help us get the sleep we deserve — without sacrificing that productivity we love so much.