May 19, 2026 May 19, 2026 2026-05-19

In January 2011 I wrote about 33 ways to end your day, built on a specific premise: that the miracle of waking up each morning actually begins the evening before. Evenings create mornings. The 33 methods ranged from planning tomorrow to recapping today’s highlights — and the underlying argument was that most people invest heavily in morning routines while leaving their evenings to chance. Fifteen years later this is still true.

The only thing I didn’t see was how thoroughly the smartphone would claim the hours between dinner and sleep — and how to reclaim them.

What the 2011 List Got Right

The asymmetry the original post identified has gotten more pronounced, not less. The morning routine industry now has hundreds of books, podcasts, apps, and cold-plunge enthusiasts arguing about optimal wake times. Evening wind-down gets a fraction of that attention — even though the morning routine functions poorly if the previous evening was a spiral of notifications and screen light until midnight.

A few things from the 2011 list I’ve genuinely kept.

Project the next day. Not elaborate planning — just knowing what the first task is before I sleep. The decision was made when I was still functional. This removes the overhead of figuring out where to start when I’m not yet fully awake.

Recap. What actually happened today? What was the one thing that mattered? A brief written accounting prevents the day from slipping away, feeling formless. I’ve been doing this almost every evening for fifteen years. Because it’s disciplined, yes — but mostly because it works.

Disconnect before sleep. I had this on the 2011 list. I was right. I also badly underestimated how hard it would become to actually do it.

The Smartphone Problem

In 2011 the phone was still mostly a phone. By 2015 it had become a portable anxiety device. By 2026 it’s a full environment: work, news, entertainment, social signals, and an algorithmically optimized system designed to keep you inside it as long as possible.

The problem isn’t only sleep hygiene, though that’s real. It’s what the phone does to the transition itself. The 2011 list assumed a natural winding-down — you finish the day’s activity, you review it, you project forward, you rest. The phone disrupts the transition. You don’t finish the day so much as you get interrupted by sleep. You resume the next morning mid-scroll, mid-thread, mid-anxiety, without ever having properly closed the previous day.

What actually worked for me: the phone goes in another room at a fixed time. Not airplane mode on the nightstand — physically in another room. This sounds extreme and it isn’t, it’s just moving an object. If the phone is in another room, checking it requires standing up and walking there, which is enough friction to stop most of the triggers.

What Wasn’t on the 2011 List

One thing that completely changed since 2011 is my one-year-old son. Two things happened at once: it created absolute chaos for the first year — and it still ripples now, at one and a half — and it created moments so joyful I could never have projected them back in 2011.

He still falls asleep wherever he wants, which means sometimes we — me and my wife — spend two or three extra hours just playing with him. But I wouldn’t trade this for anything the self-help industry is selling.

The Evenings Still Create the Mornings

The 2011 premise held. The evening still shapes the next day — what mood you wake up in, how much bandwidth you have by 9am, whether you start the day already behind or with something like a clean slate.

What changed is the cost of protecting the evening. In 2011, a quiet evening was just a lifestyle choice. In 2026 it’s an active decision against an entire industry whose business model depends on you not making it.

The 2011 list was built around protecting the evening. In 2026, the most important thing that happens in my evenings isn’t something I protect — it’s someone I love and care for.