My Enhanced Evening

My Miracle Morning was going well during April 2021 but it was clear that if I was a bit late in the morning or missed a day altogether, it was usually because I’d been up too late the night before. I’m guilty of eating too late, getting distracted by the television and taking my phone to bed to look at social media until I fall asleep. All these things are recipes for a poor night of sleep and simply get in the way of falling asleep in the first place.

Hal Elrod recommends setting your intentions for the next day to make the Miracle Morning more effective. I started reading up on evening routines and came up with my own based loosely on the advice of Austin Gills – 12 Super Effective Evening Routine Ideas and Crystal Raypole – 23 Ways to Revamp your Nighttime Routine and a few others.

My primary focus was to take away the distractions and screens, so I started by planning to finish the evening in bed reading a novel. It’s important that it’s a novel and not the type of book that will make your brain start ticking. Light fiction is best!

I also wanted to make a regular habit of doing some pull-ups because my arms and shoulders are quite weak and it affects my ability to do rock climbing. I don’t expect that too many others will have this in their routine! Just a side note – you’re meant to avoid exercise too close to bedtime, but pull-ups are not something that raises my heart rate too much and I don’t do that many either (well at this stage I’m just hanging there…).

A constant frustration is having dirty dishes sitting by the sink, so I knew if I added a quick clean up of the kitchen to my routine I would feel so much better in the morning. Getting my clothes ready means I can sneak out for a walk without disturbing my husband. I added in the knitting, because I liked the idea of getting just a little done each night and it’s a nice wind-down activity. My husband goes to bed much later than me, so I’ve thrown in a quick cuddle because stuff like that is important for relationships. Otherwise, the other steps are just things that need doing each night. On the edge of the page, I’ve added a pixel a day tracker for the months I expect to complete in my newest journal. The spread sits alongside my Miracle Morning spread.

I’ll track my progress for seven days below so you can see how I go, even though this won’t be a trial because I’ve decided to commit to it.

Day 1 – I started on a Sunday evening (2 May). I’d already had a try out a few nights ago, but this will be my first run in combination with my Miracle Mornings. I followed my routine pretty well, but started 10 minutes late and missed journaling because I’d been journaling earlier anyway. I really enjoyed just doing one row of knitting because now it feels like I might actually finish this top I’ve been knitting since the end of last year. For some reason I still took my phone to bed but only looked at it for five minutes before moving on to my book. I went to sleep at 10:40pm. Not too bad. The best thing was getting up the next morning to a clean kitchen!!

Day 2 – I put on a huge roast lamb for dinner that took much longer to cook than I planned and meant that we had dinner very late and I missed the start of my planned evening. Not to worry, I still did all the essentials, washed up and read in bed before going to sleep at 10:30. It seems the sacrificial items are the pull-ups, journaling and knitting. Maybe I need an early evening routine to make sure dinner happens on time…

Day 3 – I was so excited about my evening that I started early! I did all the tasks and activities and had extra time to draw in my journal before I went to bed. The best thing was that it felt so good the next morning to have a clean kitchen.

Day 4 – Crappy day at work so I didn’t do my enhanced evening and I should have because I got to bed too late, and the next morning I looked at my messy kitchen and felt even worse 🙁 I’m finding it much harder to commit to the evening schedule than to the morning schedule, perhaps because by the evening you’re tired and the events of the day influence how you feel.

Day 5 – Once again I started my evening early and had time for extra journaling before going to bed and reading myself to sleep. It’s interesting that once you knock off the pull-ups and the washing up, the remainder of the list has to be done anyway and is done quickly, so if you start early enough there is plenty of time for the knitting, journaling and reading. It’s definitely important to eat dinner before 8pm, which I’m aiming to do anyway, so I don’t cut into my evening routine. I got to bed on time but I had a terrible night’s sleep because I’m stressed about work at the moment. Tomorrow night I’m going to make sure I’ve written down a few intentions around my stress so I can sleep a little easier.

Day 6 – When it works, it works! I got the washing up done early because there was a lot of it, then settled in for my other tasks. I skipped the knitting as I wanted to journal for longer. I’m trying to be strict about doing my routine without being rigid and it seems to be working.