Everyone looks for the solution to poor sleep at the wrong time.
No screens before bed. Go to bed earlier. Relax a little before sleeping.
All well and good, but most people skip the most important step, and that step happens within the first hour after you wake up.
If you miss that step, the rest matters very little.
How your body clock works
Your body has an internal timing system. A clock that keeps track of when you should be alert, when your hormones peak, and when you should sleep.
But that clock needs a daily reset. Without it, it slowly falls out of sync. You get sleepy at the wrong times, have a harder time falling asleep, and wake up unrefreshed in the morning.
That reset signal is daylight. Directly into your eyes. Within the first hour after getting up.
Deep in your brain are cells that do nothing but keep time. Those cells receive direct information from your eyes. As soon as daylight reaches your eyes, they send a signal through your whole body: it’s morning. Time to start.
Cortisol rises. Your body temperature goes up. Your metabolism gets going. And your body clock is reset.
Miss that signal? Then your clock lags behind. Your body thinks it is still night while you are already starting the day.
Why this directly affects your sleep that night
This is the part most people don’t know.
Morning light doesn’t just determine how awake you are during the day. It also determines when your body makes melatonin in the evening. Melatonin, the hormone that makes you sleepy, starts to rise about 12 to 14 hours after your first exposure to daylight.
Think of it as a timer. Daylight at 7 a.m.? Then melatonin starts rising around 9 p.m. Your body prepares for sleep exactly when you want it to.
No morning light or too late? That timer starts later. You feel more awake in the evening than you want to be, have a harder time falling asleep, and wake up tired again the next morning.
Research by the Salk Institute for Biological Studies confirms that exposure to daylight in the morning is the strongest external factor for regulating your circadian rhythm and therefore your sleep quality.
Why indoor light doesn’t work
Most people think turning on lamps does the same thing. It doesn’t.
Indoor light has an average intensity of 100 to 500 lux. Outside on a cloudy morning, it quickly reaches 10,000 lux. On a sunny day, it climbs to 100,000 lux.
Your eyes need that intensity to pass on the right signal. Indoor light is simply not strong enough. Even on a gray winter day in the Netherlands or Belgium, the light outside is many times stronger than the best indoor light.
Ten to twenty minutes outside is enough. You do not need to stare at the sun. Just be outside, keep your eyes open, and look roughly toward the sun (note: it must NOT hurt).
What this means for your morning
Grabbing your phone as soon as you wake up is the worst thing you can do. Not because social media is bad (it is, of course), but because you waste the most valuable window of your day.
Those first minutes after waking are when your body clock is most receptive to the reset signal. The sooner you get outside, the stronger the effect.
No elaborate routine needed. No hour of meditation or five-kilometer run. Just stand outside. Five minutes is better than nothing. The longer, the better.
The habit for this week
Go outside within five minutes of waking tomorrow morning. No phone, no sunglasses. Just stand outside and let daylight reach your eyes.
Do this for seven days in a row and pay attention to how sleepy you feel in the evening. Not forced, not from exhaustion, but at the moment your body signals that it is ready.
That’s what a good morning routine does. Nothing more, nothing less.
1% Better Every Night.
Guy Veeke
PS. Your morning routine sets the tone for the night. But what happens during that night also depends on how you breathe. People who breathe through their mouth at night sleep more restlessly and recover less well. Our mouth tape helps keep your mouth closed during the night so you automatically breathe through your nose. Check them out here: https://snoozeless.nl/products/mondtape
