Have an Early Night

Most early nights are not really chosen. You give up on the evening somewhere around nine, you drag yourself up the stairs, and you go to bed feeling faintly defeated by the day. That is not an early night. That is a surrender with a bedtime attached.

Today's idea is a deliberate one, and the deliberate part is the whole trick. Decide now, while it is still light and you are still perfectly functional, that tonight you are going up early. Not because you are shattered. Not because there is nothing on. Because you have decided to.

It changes the entire feel of it. The evening becomes something you are choosing to end rather than something that wore you down. Same stairs, same bed, completely different thing.

So have the bath. Take the book up with you. Get in a full hour before you normally would, with the light still going outside. There is no prize whatsoever for staying up, and no one is counting. Going to bed early on purpose is one of the most quietly luxurious things available to anybody, and unlike most luxuries it is entirely free.