Having a good night's sleep. That would be the most precious thing. But when you're the parent of three young children, that's the rarest thing.

It took a lot of time for me to understand how my sleep cycle was working.

Thanks to a few simple habits, I'm able to manage to get enough sleep to go through the daily cycle of parenting, entrepreneurship, and living a great life. I am fortunate enough not (yet) to have older family members to care for, and I am living in a Western European nation.

I wish that I had gotten to understand these habits earlier in my life. Maybe one or two decades earlier. Health information used to be less accessible that today, and I wished that I got the opportunity to educate myself on sleep when I started having trouble getting asleep during my university years.

Here are the few rules that I am following religiously:

1. Consistency above all. Getting to bed by 10 p.m. to be ready at 7:20 a.m.
2. Reading each night. I really like my Kindle that allows me to read a whole chapter of a book each night without keeping lights on.
3. Sport diet. No eating or drinking after 8 p.m., light lunches only, when it is not a social night, of course. And during social events, I now rarely drink more than the equivalent of two glasses of wine.
4. If relevant, a small magnesium supplementation is also welcome. I'm not a specialist, but I go by a few hundred mg of magnesium glycinate.
5. If acceptable, a weighted blanket is a great addition to your bedding habits. I got myself the Cura 7kg. I always liked heavy blankets, but that's really the step above! Not always easy to sell to your partner, though.

Needless to say, sports and physical activity matter a lot. I'm not a big sports guy, but if I do not run my 5km each Sunday, the thought machine will go crazy in anticipation of the upcoming week each Sunday afternoon. Riding my bike to work is also another chance to vent out my brain and make these mitochondria sweat a little bit!

I'm just 40 years old. And I want to age gracefully. Working in the field of longevity was really a wake-up call, as nothing would matter if I did not get my sleep under control. And I am glad that I did: bad nights that used to be weekly occurrences are now in the single digits per quarter.

Now, as an avid listener of various health podcasts, I also learned a few things that might also help you, if you wake up during the night due to stress-related or too much information being processed in your brain. That would be the main cause of bad nights for me: the toll of running companies!

Also, I did find that it was really hard for me to get asleep if I do not break the cycle of: thoughts about work, ranting about them, understanding that I will need to wake up in a few hours, being hurt by the idea that my sleep will not be a quality sleep at all. So, breaking the cycle really takes two things for me. And you know that I love algorithms!

1. Step out of the bed. Beds are for sleeping, and you do not want the ranting to go on and on inside the holy place of quality sleeping.
2. Out of the bed, label what's going on inside your brain. It might take some practice but that's something as easy as telling yourself "damn, I'm ranting on this stupid thing". That's where I might open my computer and draft an email or a note with the topic, ideas to explore tomorrow and after.
3. Wind down, and accept the fact that yes, the night was less than optimal. But the great news is that you might have an opportunity for a power nap during the day, or that the upcoming night will be a better one.
4. Start moving your focus out of these topics, simply by doing a few breathing exercises like the physiological sigh or quick inspiration/long expiration.
5. Step in the bed. And let the magic do its thing.

This article might sound nuts to people that did not experience sleep issues going for years or decades. But I might assure you that these issues alter the quality of life of so many people, that I hope that at some point we will all teach our children and students a few tricks to enjoy great nights!