Get Back on Track: 5 Evening Habits to Wake Up Focused, Recharged, and in Control

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Hey, it's your friend Mel. Welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast. I am so excited that you're here. First of all, it's always such an honor to spend time with you, to be together, and I wanted to take a moment and acknowledge that if you're a new listener, welcome to the Mel Robbins podcast family. I am so glad that you are here, and because you made the time to hit play and listen to this particular episode, I know that you're the type of person who values your time. You want to make the most of your evenings, you know, need to get a good night's sleep, you deserve to, and you're looking for simple ways to make that a reality. And boy oh boy, have you picked a winner. And I also want you to know something that you are spending your days right now, giving so much of yourself to everyone else, to your work, to your family, to the responsibilities that you have, to the constant stream of emails that are coming in, the texts, the demands of life that are pulling you in every single direction, that by the time the day is done, I know how you feel.

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I feel the same way you are wiped out the tank of gas in your brain. It is on empty. And today you and I are going to do something about it. So I want to applaud the fact that you're making time to listen to something that's going to help your life be a little bit better. And I want to also point out something kind of cool. If somebody forwarded this to you and told you you should listen to this episode, you want to know what's cool about that? It means that you have somebody in your life that's looking out for you, that cares about you, that wants you to feel better. I just think that's so cool. And so thank you again for being here. Thank you for taking time to listen to this and I'm really excited to share everything with you because I know it's going to resonate because I'm struggling with this issue too, which is it's time for you and me to reclaim our evenings.

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And I'm going to teach you the simple five-step evening routine that never fails me. Whenever I feel exhausted, overwhelmed, and weary, this is what I return to these five steps. These are the basics. This is the foundation for creating an evening routine that really takes care of you. It sets you up to have a great day in the morning. And most importantly, what I love about this particular five-step evening routine, first of all, it's so simple. Second, this has nothing to do with productivity. I don't know about you, but I don't feel right now like, Ooh, let's attack the goals. I feel like life is so overwhelming and the headlines are so depressing and everybody's got so much going on and there's so much information coming at us that by the time I get home and my God, I have unpacked my backpack and I have put away the groceries and I've cooked dinner, I'm exhausted.

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I feel like I've given everything that I had to give to everyone else and now I've made it to the end of the day. It's seven or eight o'clock. I can't believe I'm still standing and now I don't want to do anything. But here's the problem. The things that you do in the evening actually set you up to have a great day tomorrow or to wake up feeling even more exhausted, more overwhelmed and more weary. And here's why I wanted to talk about this right now. 

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Why is it that we live in this moment of time where you know, need to get a good night's sleep, you know that you don't want to waste your entire evening scrolling on your phone, you know that you don't want to stay up past midnight or past 11:00 PM and then screw yourself over because you don't actually get in bed in time to get a good night's sleep. So if we know that what's good for us is winding down and taking care of ourselves and getting into bed at a reasonable hour, why aren't we doing it? Well, there's a really interesting explanation for why so many of us are getting less sleep and we're wasting our evenings doing nothing, and it has to do with something called decision fatigue. See, you and I are making decisions all day long. In fact, I have this really interesting article that I found as I was researching our conversation today.

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It was an article that was published by the American Medical Association and in it, you can hear me flipping through the pages, the reporter is interviewing Dr. Lisa McLean, who is a psychiatrist and the chief Wellness Officer at Henry Ford Health System in Michigan. Now, this is an entire article about something called decision fatigue. And the reason why I want to unpack this is because I want to give you some credit. Do you know how much you're doing all day? I don't even think you understand how you're showing up for everybody else, how you're doing a great job at work, how you're answering the emails, how you're returning the texts, how you're making decisions all day long, and decision fatigue, according to Dr. McLean and all of this research that she's citing is a very real thing. It's the idea quote that after making many decisions, your ability to make more and more decisions over the course of the day becomes worse.

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The more decisions you have to make, the more fatigue you develop and the more difficult it can become. And she goes on to write, because I don't think you've stopped to consider just how many decisions you make every single day. Well, the researchers have figured it out. Here's what Dr. McLean has to say. By the time the average person goes to bed, that's you and me. You've made over 35,000 decisions. I mean, just even trying to embrace that number is exhausting 35,000 decisions. And if you're sitting there going, no, I don't, 35,000 decisions in a day, well just stop and think about it. Everything from what do you wear to when are you leaving for work to picking up your toothbrush to whether or not you make the left turn or the right turn, or you hit the brakes or you read the book or you don't, you answer the text or you like all day long you are making decisions, which means all day long.

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If you think about a human being, I think about it this way. I think about you and I having a gas tank, and so you wake up in the morning and this is so elementary, but this is how I try to process this for myself. When you wake up in the morning, you've got a full tank of gas and all day long, every single decision that you're making, all the effort that you're exerting, all the caretaking, all the consideration, all the talking, all the thinking, every time you make a little decision or you put in a little effort, guess what? You're just slowly draining that tank of energy and what's the result? Well, by the time you get home and you've taken care of everybody else, you are exhausted. The fuel tank is near empty. And if you're anything like me, what do you want to do?

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Nothing. You want to do nothing because you have been doing something all day long. You've been doing something for your boss, you've been doing something for your professors. If you're in school, you've been doing something for your parents, for your kids, for your significant other. You've been doing things for your friends by texting back, you've taken care of work, you've taken care of bills, you've taken care of feeding the dogs or feeding the cat like it is going on and on, and aren't you just exhausted thinking about this? Of course you are. So am I, and this is why I wanted to explain this because if this is what you're doing all day long, you're literally reading the news and then you're reading emails, and then you're talking in a meeting and then you're driving from here to there, and then you're thinking about your friends and you're exerting all this effort, no wonder that by the end of the night all you want to do is nothing.

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See, Dr. McLean says in this article that a person with decision fatigue, which you and I have, have you ever at seven or eight o'clock at night just been like, I don't want to think anymore. I know I've said that. You just literally put your phone. I don't even want to think about it. I don't want to do anything. I don't want to have to fold laundry. I can do it tomorrow. Well, according to Dr. McLean, check this out. This is decision fatigue. You're tapped out because of everything you've already done. We're not giving ourselves credit for that. Of course, we're just feeling exhausted. She says, A person with decision fatigue may feel tired, have brain fog or experience other signs and symptoms of physical or mental fatigue. And the phenomenon is cumulative so that as the person makes more decisions throughout the day, guess what? You feel worse or you might be more drained as the day progresses.

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Holy cow. I feel like I've had nothing but a string of days recently whereby the time I'm finishing my last meeting at work, I feel like I am army crawling through the end of one of those Spartan marathon races through the mud up a mountain where they're electrocuting you at the very end. As you're crawling underneath all these barriers, I know that you feel the same way and it gets even deeper. 

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Yep, that was last night. Avoidance. Avoidance. Yes, I avoid anything that requires a decision, which is why I scroll like a mindless zombie idiot on my phone because that doesn't require me to do anything except for zone out. Are you saying same? Same. And you want to know the fourth symptom that medically speaking means you're struggling with decision fatigue, indecision. How many times have you parked yourself on the couch and you've picked up the clicker and you literally spend an hour clicking through trailers trying to find something online to watch? I mean, I will literally spend an hour watching trailers only to make no decision about what to watch. It's almost like looking at trailers online on Amazon Prime or on Netflix or Hulu or whatever it is that you like to watch that looking at trailers is the new way to doom Scroll on social media.

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Only you're doing it on tv. I know you're laughing because you do it. Or do you do that thing where my husband has this notes app and he has been keeping track of movie recommendations from people for literally like four years. I guarantee you every other night he pulls it out as I'm flipping through trailers and he is like, well, let's take a look at the list. And we have read through the list 55,000 times and there is nothing on the list that I want to watch. And now I know why. Because one of the symptoms of decision fatigue after a very long day, which you experience and I experience is indecision. I can't decide what I want to watch. I have no fricking brainpower left to make a decision. And this brings me to the fact that you and I are losing control of our evenings because of this decision fatigue.

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And I want to take a giant highlighter and highlight it because if you don't know what you're up against, it will continue to win. And so understanding and giving yourself credit that your days are long, you got a lot on your plate, you are doing so much, you're doing a great job. You are pouring into everybody else. You are doing your best and what feels at times like an impossible workload and an overwhelming world. And then you come home and you want to know what? Holy cow, I don't blame you. You've made enough decisions. Where's the reward? Here's the problem, and this has been a problem for me for several weeks now, is that it's understandable to feel exhausted at the end of the day and you deserve a pat on the back. And you should be saying to yourself, I did a great job today.

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I did my best. I showed up. And I want to say that in case you're not saying it to yourself, but when you reach this point where you have decision fatigue and medically speaking, you're like, I'm up against avoidance and indecision and impulsivity and procrastination. You know what that sounds like? That sounds like a recipe for disaster because here you've been focused all day long, you've been making the best decisions that you can. And now when you've got an evening all to yourself now impulsivity, procrastination and indecision takes over and you screw yourself over. That's what I've been doing. 

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Now, at this moment where you and I just can't even think about another thing, this is where we procrastinate. See, you and I are making a decision consciously to get less sleep. Why are we doing that? Why are we consciously deciding to flip through channels? Why are we mindlessly scrolling on our phones? Why are we doing this? I'll tell you why. This is crazy. You're just trying to regain some personal time. I mean, it kind of makes sense, right? That's why you collapse on the couch. That's why I do it. And you want to know the totally screwed up thing is that my husband doesn't do this. It's kind of annoying. The man is so disciplined, he has his habits dialed in. His number one habit is sleep. And that man, when it is ready for him to go to bed, boom, he pops off that couch.

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He will leave me stranded on a deserted island called the couch in front of the TV while I am flipping through the phone and flipping through the channels. And then honest to God, this is what happened to me last night. The man was in bed at nine o'clock at night, 1135. I look up and I'm like, why am I still sitting here? Why am I still sitting here? And then of course I make myself wrong. Of course you do the same. I should have gone to bed hours ago. I should have gone to bed hours ago. And now I have allowed decision fatigue to turn into procrastination at bedtime where I'm making a decision. I'll just scroll a little longer. I'll just flip through the channels a little longer. I'll just avoid going to bed when I know it's the best thing for me because I'm now struggling with indecision because I gave it all to everybody else.

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No more, no more. I've done this to myself for several weeks now it's time for me to get serious about putting myself first again. And that brings me to the five steps of this super simple evening routine. This is an evening routine. When the world is making you feel weary, this is the evening routine that helps you set yourself up without requiring any kind of motivation, any kind of effort, any kind of willpower. This is so simple, and yet it is going to pour back into you, and that's why you're going to love it. And every one of these five steps, you're going to be like, oh yeah, I know this. I just needed to be reminded of this. And the best advice in my mind is the advice that reminds you of what you know to be true. Because when you have this sense that yeah, this is actually true, and yeah, I am struggling with decision fatigue, and yeah, I do do a lot.

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And since I do a lot, instead of rewarding myself with three hours of mindless social media, why don't I just get a couple extra hours of sleep? Wouldn't that be awesome? And before we jump into this, I want to just share one more piece of research to really just say, it's okay. It's okay if you're resonating with everything and you're nodding the lawn, you're like, that's me. That's me. And there's a reason why this happens. It's not you. This has to do with the fact that your brain's just tired. In fact, in this article, Dr. McLean says, research shows that the best time to make decisions is in the morning. The morning is when we make the most accurate and thoughtful decisions, and we tend to be more cautious and meticulous. How many times have you woken up in the morning and thought, all right, tonight, I'm actually going to go to bed early tonight.

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I am not going to waste three hours looking at social media tonight. I am not going to flip through the channels tonight. I'm actually going to do my thing and I'm going to get to bed early. Well, the reason why you can think clearly in the morning is because research shows that you have the ability to be more accurate and thoughtful and cautious and meticulous. And the opposite is true at the end of the day, that according to the research, you and I hit a plateau in the afternoon, and by the evening, your decisions are more impulsive. And that explains why you can know that you need to go to bed, but you make an impulsive decision because you're tired to not go to bed. So again, I'm going to tell you it's not your fault. This is happening to all of us and simply because you and I know that we shouldn't be doing it.

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It just isn't enough to overcome all the things that are working against you and what an incredible job you're doing all day long. And so here's what you're going to do. First of all, you're going to give yourself a break. You're going to recognize that this is a thing. You're going to acknowledge that this actually isn't your fault. And I'm going to walk you through the five steps of this super simple evening routine. And the best part, none of this actually requires any true decision making. Like for real, this is the kind of five step routine you can do on autopilot, you can do with zero gas in the tank. That's how easy this is and it works. 

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Her name is Dr. Rebecca Robbins. She is a medical doctor and a sleep researcher at Brigham and Women's Hospital here in Boston, Massachusetts. And she basically explains that the mistake that a lot of us make is we think that, oh, if I got to get eight hours of sleep, I'm going to go right to bed at 10 o'clock. That means eight hours of sleep at 6:00 AM badda, bing, badda, boom. She's like, no, no, no, no. Even the best sleepers actually take about 20 minutes to truly fall asleep. And so here's a simple rule of thumb. I'm going to give a huge shout out to my friend Amy. This is the rule of nine hours. You ready? This is going to blow your mind. If you want to get eight hours of sleep, you need to spend nine hours in bed. You ready? You want to get eight hours of sleep?

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You got to spend nine hours in bed. And so here's how I want you to find your real bedtime, and you can make this decision first thing in the morning, first thing in the morning. When you don't have decision fatigue, you can say to yourself Tonight, I'm going to get a good night's sleep, which means I got to spend nine hours in bed if I want to get eight hours. And so what time do I need to wake up? And then let's work backwards. So let me explain how this work. Let's say that you want to get up at six o'clock in the morning in order to follow this rule. You want eight hours of sleep, you got to spend nine hours in bed. We got to move from 6:00 AM all the way back in time, nine hours. That means your bedtime is 9:00 PM. So if you want to get eight hours of sleep and be up by 6:00 AM you got to be in bed by 9:00 PM I love this rule of thumb.

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And now let's give you some more examples. If you want to wake up at 7:00 AM and you'd actually like to give yourself eight hours of sleep, if we go from 7:00 AM back in time, nine hours, you got to be in bed by 10. You got to be in bed by 10:00 PM If you are going to get up at eight o'clock in the morning in order to get eight hours of sleep, do not be in bed at midnight. That was the old Mel Robbins pull right in, right on the deadline there. I got to get right in bed for the eight hours. No, no, no, no. You're not giving yourself actual time to fall asleep. So by the time you get into bed, you're already late, you're already behind. And so your bedtime is not when you fall asleep. It's when you physically get in bed.

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Just think to yourself, when do I actually need to get up in the morning to set myself up to have a good day? So give yourself time for me. That's 6:00 AM. 6:00 AM is really the golden hour for me. If I get out of bed at 6:00 AM and I've had eight hours of sleep, I am a different human being. And the problem is that if I do this math, I got to be in bed for nine hours to get eight hours of sleep. And if I want to get up at 6:00 AM that means I got to be in bed by 9:00 PM. That's not what my bedtime's been. So no wonder I'm screwing myself over. And so I want you to think about this right now because you know what time you should be getting out of bed because it just gives you enough time to set yourself up and get your morning started in a way that empowers you, which you deserve, by the way, because you're doing so much all day long.

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Let's start there. Do you want to get up at 5:00 AM 6:00 AM seven, eight? What time do you want to get up? And then let's move the clock backwards. Nine hours, and that's your bedtime. And one more also piece of research here that will help you with this is you can pick this as a general rule for yourself. Like my husband's bedtime is 9:00 PM That's when the man goes to sleep and he falls asleep very fast. He wakes up at 5:30 AM like clockwork every single day. He has no drama, no procrastination because he has picked his bedtime. And what's interesting is there's research from Harvard Medical School. This comes from their guide to a good night's sleep, that having a consistent bedtime helps you fall asleep faster and get deeper sleep. So step one, what you can do right now is I want you to pick your bedtime, and I promise you it's earlier than you think it should be, because I never did the math properly until I sat down with Dr. Rebecca Robbins and had this, whoa, wait a minute.

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If I want eight hours of sleep, I got to be in bed nine hours. That gives me time to read a book. It gives me time to kind of lay there. It doesn't put pressure on me. I don't start getting nervous. I'm actually working with the science. And since you pick your bedtime ahead, you don't need to worry about decision fatigue. And here's another simple tip you can do. If you're just starting to learn this new routine, put it in your phone as an alarm because that way if you're sitting on the couch mindlessly procrastinating and doom scrolling or flipping through the channels, boom, it comes up and it's like bedtime. You need to be in bed for nine hours to get eight hours of sleep and you deserve that. And if that pops up, it's like a little nudge from you when you had clearer thinking to remind you, okay, put the phone down because it's time to turn back toward you and give your energy back to you.

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It's the difference between waking up fresh and feeling behind because you got all this stuff all over the kitchen counter. You got all this stuff lying on the floor. You got all this stuff spread out all over the place. You got all this stuff piled up in the sink. How does that make you feel? It makes me feel like I'm behind. It makes me feel like I got stuff that I need to do that I should have done yesterday that's now sitting here staring at me right in the face first thing in the morning. And so when I just do step two, and again, this is kind of that thing where you got 15 minutes before it's your bedtime, and now it's time to just clean up today's mess so you can start tomorrow fresh. What does that look like? It takes five minutes. I'm not talking about doing a deep clean.

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I'm talking about just cleaning up the mess. Why? So when you wake up tomorrow, it's fresh, you're calm, you're in control, you got nothing you got to do, but just step into the day. And so here's what I do. It takes less than five minutes. And what I love about this is I do this on autopilot. So I've worked a full day. I don't want to do anything. I've made dinner. I've fed the dogs, I've done a little laundry, I've collapsed on the couch. Maybe I've clicked through channels, maybe I've scrolled a little bit. All of a sudden I'm like, oh my gosh, it's getting close to my bedtime time to clean up today's mess. So I first walk through the kitchen and I get everything out of the sink. I literally load the dishwasher. I wash out the pots, I clear off the counters.

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If the trash is full, I take out the trash and walk it into the garage. If there's things that are not where they belong, like somebody has hung their jacket on the chairs around the island, and I pick up the jacket, I walk it and put it on the hook. I plug in my laptop. If I've got things that I need to remember for work, I stack 'em in a little pile and I put 'em on the countertop. That's all that I'm talking about. That's it for you. It might mean that pile of clothes that are in the corner of the bedroom, put 'em in a laundry basket instead of letting 'em lay there. The other night, I got home for a trip and I had opened up my suitcase, but I hadn't unpacked it. Do you know what cleanup today's mess meant? It didn't mean unpack everything and start laundry.

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I literally folded my suitcase back up and stuck it in my closet, clean up the mess, because when I wake up in the morning, the first thing that I see is not the open suitcase and something that I needed to do that I should have done yesterday. And there's something really incredible that happens when you just have no energy and you're starting to widen down and you just kind of make a pass like a Zamboni through the kitchen and you just kind of clear off the counters, you hang up the coats and you get everything out of the sink. And why does this work? Multiple studies show that living in a messy environment, it actually raises your stress level because you see things that aren't done. And when you wake up to yesterday's mess, it drains all of your energy for today before you even get into your day.

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And so the first decisions that you're making in the morning are, should I do the dishes that I left for last night? Should I hang up the, you could have mindlessly done those as part of your wind down routine and see doing it at night, it actually takes less effort. Why? Well, you already have no gas lift in the tank, so you're not going to be a perfectionist about this. You're not going to turn changing things around into some big project where you're now organizing kitchen drawers. You're just going to take the scissors and stick 'em in the drawer instead of taking the scissors first thing in the morning and be like, oh my gosh, this drawer's a mess. Now I should be organizing this thing. And next thing you know, you're running even later because you took on something more in the morning when you had more energy.

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Don't do it. Don't do it. In fact, we were talking as a team about this, and one of our team members was like, oh my gosh, I have so gotten into a habit of leaving the dishes at night for me to do in the morning. And every time at night, I'm like, I'll do it in the morning. Why decision fatigue. We know you procrastinate, you're impulsive, and you avoid things when you have decision fatigue, which we all do at the end of the day. But what happens when you wake up and you've gotten up and you're ready to start your day and you walk in the kitchen and there is a disgusting pan that is full of soapy leftover chili that you have filled last night with hot water and soap thinking, oh, I'll just let it soak all overnight and it'll be easier. There is nothing easy about plunging your hands first thing in the morning into a greasy, cold, chunky pot that has been soaking all night, and now it's waiting for you like a dish hangover for you to deal with.

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And this is how you're starting your day. Don't do it. And look, again, I'm not trying to blame you. This isn't about becoming an ultra marathoner and killing your goals. This is literally the world's already beaten you down. You got enough to deal with. And so while you're already exhausted, while you're starting to wind down, while you're starting to turn off the lights and close the doors and all this stuff, literally just clear off the counters. Do you see how this works? That you can just boom, do yourself a little favor while you're tired? You're kind of zombie in your way to bed, all good, and when you clean up today's mess, so you can start tomorrow, fresh five minutes, and it's a gift you can give to yourself.