I Put Mel Robbins’ Bedtime Routine to the Test, and It Totally Backfired

I’ve been an insomniac for as long as I can remember. Going to bed early, especially when I have plans the next morning, never works. My brain is too loud, and my body is too active. It probably doesn’t help that I’m also an incredibly light sleeper. (One twitch from my husband and I’m awake while he’s blissfully sleeping away.) 

Suffice it to say, I do not have a good relationship with sleep. I’m like a jilted bride, spurned at the altar of my headboard, every single night. My bedtime routine has evolved to watching hours of videos on YouTube and TikTok after I get in bed for the night, just to have something to focus on that isn’t me trying to sleep. I inevitably don’t fall asleep until close to the next morning and then wake up at a normal hour feeling completely worn out.

Recently while browsing some videos by author, podcaster, and motivational speaker Mel Robbins, I ran across one of her YouTube Shorts with advice that will supposedly reclaim my sleep from my phone, and save me from morning exhaustion. I’ll try practically anything to wake up bright and bushy eyed for once. I decided to give her method a try for a week and see what happened.

In her video, Robbins explains her bedtime routine by laying out what’s so bad about the rest of ours. She talks about revenge bedtime procrastination. You may have heard of it. It’s the idea that because everyone else took up my time during the day, I’m getting back at them by hanging out on my phone at bedtime or staying up late when I should be tucking myself into bed. 

It’s supposedly a way of reclaiming the time that was stolen from me throughout the day. The problem, she says, is that reading from or using a device that emits light (like your phone) alters your body’s clock and reduces the amount of melatonin in your body. So basically, I’m making my own problem worse by watching videos at night for hours before I try to close my eyes. 

According to Robbins, the fix for this is to “tuck in your phone.” Put it to bed 30 minutes before you go to bed, she says, and don’t look at it anymore for the rest of the night. If you do that, you will reclaim your sleep, rest well, and wake up refreshed and ready to start the day. Why not, I thought. I’ll give it a try.

I gave it a really good try. For a week, I tucked in my phone at least 30 minutes before I went to bed. I also decided to set a cutoff time for the television and to take off my smartwatch and put it on the charger the same time I put my phone on the charger. I don’t have a set bedtime (I’m a night owl), so I decided that nightly, I would end all screen time at 11 p.m. That way, I knew it would be at least 30 minutes until I slept.

Once the screens went off, I defaulted back to my time growing up before the internet. I read books. I started working on a jigsaw puzzle. I cleaned the kitchen and my office. It was, in short, fantastic. I truly enjoyed the no-screen time, and honestly, will probably keep it up moving forward. It gave me a chance to get settled and tap back into some hobbies that often get woefully left behind in the chaos of my days. So for that, Robbins, I thank you.

The problems started when I went to bed. As soon as my head touched the pillow, my mind began to race. I was suddenly very acutely awake. My husband suggested I was detoxing from staring at my phone every night, but after a week of this still happening, I don’t know that I agree with him. I struggled to sleep. I woke up every few hours. I couldn’t settle my brain down enough to end my day. And so, today, I’m exhausted. Every day this week, I’ve been exhausted. I actively dread trying to sleep without looking at my phone first.

My ultimate conclusion with this experiment is this: Everyone’s brain and body works differently. While light from a phone may keep some people up, it actually helps me unwind by helping me not think about sleep as much — how badly I want to be asleep, worrying about when I’ll fall asleep, etc. Watching the videos I do at night relaxes my brain enough that I can stop thinking about a million things and eventually drift off to sleep. Otherwise, my thoughts are too scattered and active. So, while I will continue the no-screen time rule before bed, I will continue to look at my phone when I get in bed to go to sleep. I’ll try to limit it to a few videos only and see how that goes. Give me another week.