Sleep 🌙 Your Personalised 4-Week Reset
28 days to a good night's sleep PLUS Sleep Journal
PART 2: BETTER SLEEP TWO-PART SERIES
Part 1: A-Z of Sleep Strategies
In this issue: Part 2: The 4-Week Sleep Reset + Toolkit
A simple, personalised ‘self-drive’ journey to a personalised sleep program
Sleep Profile — capture where you are now
Basic Roadmap — the sleep hygiene essentials
Strategy Tracker — personalise your roadmap
Journal — daily and weekly reviews and resets
🌙 BONUS: 8-page Sleep Journal & Workbook
This companion workbook to the 4-Week Sleep Reset includes daily and weekly journal page templates. For instant access subscribe see end of this post.
Welcome to Part Two of our 2-part Better Sleep series.
If you’re ever stuck for conversation, here’s a tip: no midlife woman yawns in the face of a chance to vent about their sleep. Open the door and stand back for the furnace fire. Hell hath no fury.
I’ve discovered this, up close, over the last few months whenever I mentioned that I was working on a series about sleep for women over 50.
The refrain I heard time and again is that being a woman in midlife is l›ying awake at 3am stressing about not being able to sleep, because you know how bad it is for your health not to sleep, which makes you even more awake, which ramps up the stress even further, and round and round you go—more awake, more stress—until your alarm goes off at 7am.
On that basis, in the interests of protecting your sleep, I’m not even going to mention the downsides of not getting good sleep. I’ll just mention there’s plenty of amazing upsides if that happens to make you want to welcome the pillow.
This 4-Week Sleep Reset is all about getting you headed in the right direction. It’s essentially a self-drive tour, with a toolbox of science-backed strategies. Over 28 days, you’ll move closer to discovering what works for your body, your schedule, and your unique sleep challenges.
Whether you've been struggling with sleep for years or simply wanting to optimise an already decent sleep routine, I hope it will give you less to vent about and perhaps even something to celebrate.
For extra help, paid subscribers receive the 8-page Sleep Journal — the companion workbook for 4-Week Sleep Reset. I’ve included a few previews!
Welcome to the 4-Week Sleep Reset!
🌙 WHY 4 WEEKS?
The science-backed magic of 4 weeks
There’s compelling evidence supporting four weeks as a timeframe to turn your sleep around.
Clinical studies show sleep habit changes begin kicking in with measurable benefits within 3-6 weeks.
Studies show that 28 days is a typical point at which a consistent sleep hygiene practice starts to yield sleep quality improvements.
4 weeks is also in tune with the body's circadian rhythm — the pace of adjusting and normalising to new sleep patterns is around 2-4 weeks.
The practical magic of 4-weeks
This timeframe gives us time to:
Try different strategies and techniques
Monitor results
Notice patterns
Establish new habits
See initial improvements
THE SLEEP RESET TOOLKIT
Your Sleep Profile
Before you begin, take time to capture where you are right now. This gives you a useful benchmark of where you started. You’ll be glad you did this. It’s amazing how we forget how far we’ve come, and the progress we’ve made.
Can you name 5 things that are working or show promise?
What are your 5 biggest struggles?
What’s your current schedule on a typical day?
Bedtime
Wake time
How much sleep do you get on average per night?
What are your sleep goals?
Record your key motivation or motivations for turning your sleep around.
Your Basic Roadmap
As we plot out a roadmap for our day, top of the list is basic sleep hygiene — these are the things that can make or break a good sleep.
It’s captured here in this Better Sleep Fast Track: the 10-3-2-1-0 Sleep Optimiser.
Your Strategy Tracker
This is where we start personalising our program — to personalise your roadmap— build your own personalised self-drive program we’ll be taking a structured approach to choosing the sleep strategies that best fit our needs, schedule and preferences from a broad range of science-backed solutions.
For this, we’ll be using the strategies we laid out in the Ultimate A-Z of Sleep in Part One — this is the framework for the 4-Week Sleep Reset.
As part of the 8-page Sleep Journal & Workbook, I’ve included a handy printable one-page worksheet. It’s interactive with checkboxes and ratings section for each strategy.
How to use your Sleep Strategy Tracker
Select the strategies that most resonate with you and your personal sleep challenges.
Test drive at your own pace across the four weeks.
Give each strategy a fair chance before moving on—ideally over a few nights or for up to a week.
For each one you trial, check the box, and also add a rating.
Experiment until you find the personal sleep formula that really works for you.
Note that this 4-Week Sleep Reset is a self-drive tour. I’ve deliberately kept it unstructured so you can tour at your own speed and pace and make your own discoveries along the way. Just like a road trip!
Remember: Your body needs time to adjust to new routines, so be patient.
KEEP A JOURNAL
A journal as a companion tool is one of the most powerful steps you can take towards achieving better sleep.
Your Daily Journal
Here’s the one-page format in 8-page The Sleep Journal & Workbook.
Notice that it’s completed in two parts:
evening: just before bedtime
morning: soon after wake time
Here’s the structure:
Complete every evening at bedtime
Your Bedtime
Basic Roadmap checklist
How did you go today? Tick the boxes belowDid you cut caffeine 10 hours before bed?
Did you cut food 3 hours before bed?
Did you cut alcohol 3 hours before bed?
Did you cut work 2 hours before bed?
Did you cut screens 1 hour before bed?
Evening Thoughts & Learnings — include any strategies you’re trialling
Complete first thing in the morning
Your Wake time
Total hours slept
Sleep rating
😞 Bad
😐 Not Easy
🙂 Good
Morning Thoughts & Learnings—what worked, lessons, and plus and strategies for the day and evening ahead.
Your Weekly Review
Don’t be tempted to skip this journal entry. A review of the week is often where the real gold is. This is where you identify patterns and game-changers.
Here’s the one-page format in The Sleep Journal & Workbook:
Here’s what to include
Time period
Review of the week including number of sleep hours each day
Average daily hours of sleep across the week
Average sleep rating (😞 Bad vs 😐 Not Easy vs 🙂 Good)
Learnings — what were the week’s biggest lessons?
Final thoughts — what are the takeouts, theories to test, and things to stop, start or continue into the coming week
After 28 days
Review your notes to identify the most effective strategies
Thoughtfully craft a personalised sleep routine based on what worked best over the 28 days
Keep refining and improving your sleep, continue your Daily Journaling and Weekly Reviews.
What I really appreciate about this tracker is I can return to it whenever my sleep needs a tune-up, or seasonally as my body's needs change throughout the year.
I’d love to hear about your progress, challenges and frustrations. I’m also here if you just need to vent. You know I love it! ◡̈ Drop a line below.
Here’s to sweet dreams!
SNEAK PEEK - 8-page Sleep Journal & Workbook
SLEEP TRACKERS, WORKSHEETS AND JOURNAL PAGES
While this post is free and open to everyone, I’ve also created a Sleep Journal & Workbook as a bonus and thank you to paid subscribers. It’s a beautifully designed 8-page companion to the 4-Week Sleep Reset with trackers, worksheets and journal pages. Here’s a preview of the cover and a few pages.
All paid subscribers can instantly download the Sleep Journal Sleep Journal & Workbook below. It’s ready to go. Subscribe for access. ⤵️
