| Last year, I set a resolution which seemed easy enough: get more sleep. But time and again I found myself up too late, blowing all my own self-imposed bedtime schedules. Instead of trying to set yet another resolution, I decided to seek out expert information for how to sleep better in 2025. I reached out to Lynelle Schneeberg, a sleep psychologist at Yale Medicine, to get her take on why I struggle to go to bed as early as I'd like. She's got an entire handout on "revenge bedtime procrastination," the bad habit of putting off bedtime in favor of binging on Netflix or catching up on household chores. And Schneeberg has lots of ways to conquer it. First, she says, there are a few basic reasons people protest bedtime to their own detriment: not enough personal time during the day (that applies to me), housework piling up (yep) and a stressful job (no comment). The goal is to attack the stress buildup that can cause a person to avoid going to bed. One idea that made a lot of sense was "batching" housework. For me, that would mean making multiple days' worth of lunches at once, which seems feasible, or picking one night a week to go through all of the paperwork that comes home from school rather doing it every night. Schneeberg also suggests finding more personal time during the day so you don't feel like your free time starts when the chores are done at 9:30 p.m. To test this, I'm going to try taking breaks at lunch with colleagues instead of just plowing through a sad desk salad. She also says bedtime has to be something you look forward to. So I have started using that wind-down time to listen to an audiobook while I drift off. (For entertainment at night, Schneeberg recommended reading, audiobooks or podcasts.) Then there's the dreaded topic of night wakings. She says they aren't as scary as we make them out to be, since the average adult actually wakes up two to six times per night. "Good sleepers," as I aim to become, are just better trained at putting themselves back to sleep. Schneeberg says if you can't quiet your mind quickly when you wake up, you can read or listen to a podcast. She also suggests keeping a little journal next to your bed so, if you're like me and wake up with to-do lists racing through your mind, you can jot them down and doze back off. What advice is the most salient? "For me, batching and being sure that there is personal time available, because if there's not you're always going to be slightly angry about that," she says. I can definitely relate. So here's to a new year full of more personal time and batching housework. And hopefully, as a result, a lot more sleep. — Cynthia Koons | 
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