Get Fit for ’26
This article is part of our Get Fit for ’26 series, in which our writers talk about the wellness and fitness challenges and experiences they’ve taken on, and the ones set to shape the year ahead. You can read all the articles in the series here.
None of the men in my family are good sleepers. When we were children and young teenagers, my Dad would struggle with his sleep – a vicious cycle of working late, commuting, getting up, and doing it all again, day after day, year after year. It meant that he rarely felt rested, and, as we grew, my brother and I found ourselves grappling with the same issues: grogginess during the day, but total inability to sleep during the night.
For years, it felt biological; something in my genes or anatomy that decided I was neither an early bird nor a night owl—rather, it felt like I had inherited a clock that never really kept the right time. No matter how much I tried to tweak it through my twenties, the biological mechanism seemed set to run slightly off, leaving me perpetually out of sync with the rhythm of the day and reliant on various external stimulants, from magnesium and coffee to intense, pre-dawn workouts that would leave me wrecked by the evening.
Today, I’m in my early thirties and, as more responsibilities (and external anxieties) get added to the pile, I’m finding that my state of restfulness and readiness is where my days are won and lost.
On the rare occasion I’ve slept well, I genuinely feel like I can achieve anything, and feel more sociable with a sunny disposition to match; but on the more frequent days I’ve underslept, feelings of dread, anxiety and poor mental health abound. When there’s such polarity between these two states of being, it can feel like a raw deal. With elements of my mental and physical health on the line, something had to change.
The Expert
Up to this point, I hadn’t fully grasped what systematically poor sleep can do to your body – insomnia, for example, has been found to increase stress levels, memory and production of stress hormones – but I had unknowingly been feeling the early signs, with patchy memories and simple tasks often feeling overwhelming on my tired days.
A need to understand these risks, know the factors behind them, and ultimately vanquish them was what led me to Dr Sophie Bostock, a sleep scientist who specialises in helping more people to sleep well. Together, across a four-week experiment, Dr Bostock helped identify what elements of sleep I was struggling with and why, and helped me add various strategies — ranging from simple behavioral changes to cognitive games — to my new arsenal.
Alongside Dr Bostock’s tried-and-tested method, I used the Oura Ring 4, TechRadar’s health and fitness device of 2025 and one of the best sleep trackers, to help me keep tabs on my sleep, activity, readiness, stress levels and heart health, each a fundamental element in my journey to improve my rest and recuperation.
Sleep expert and host of the Sleep On podcast, Dr Bostock has provided keynote conference talks on sleep for the likes of Google, Unilever and the Royal Marines, alongside consultancy and coaching for teams and individuals interested in improving their sleep patterns.
The Game Plan
During our first meeting, I described to Dr Bostock how I see sleep as the fourth estate of a well-rounded wellness — alongside effective exercise, nutrition and recovery — and have written about each topic widely, but struggle to grasp what makes effective sleep so elusive, and it starts with how much I actually need. “A minimum of seven hours’ sleep is protective for adults,” she explains. “We’re all different but you need to work out your sleep needs; it might be less, or it might be more.”
As a self-defined ‘seasonal sleeper,’ in which I sleep well for a batch of two to three weeks, then struggle for the same amount of time, Dr Bostock quickly dismantles several of my long-held beliefs about sleep, and begins to form a clearer picture of where I’m slipping up.
“If you’re getting anxious and dissatisfied overnight, ultimately it’s that daytime function—the ability to focus or write—that is probably going to be the most important metric.”
Interestingly, our experiment began by identifying my habits at the start of the day—rather than at the end. More specifically: what time I’m getting up, and understanding how to use the stress hormone cortisol to my advantage.
“Waking up at the same time every day helps maintain a regular rhythm,” explains Dr Bostock. “When you have a regular rhythm, you get a surge of cortisol in the morning that helps you get out of bed.” This “vital morning surge of cortisol,” she says, is instrumental in that get-up-and-go feeling that I often lack after a poor night of sleep. On the flipside, “missing out on sleep also puts the body into a state of hyperarousal, which makes subsequent rest less restorative,” she explains.
By forcing myself to get up at the same time every single morning — my time was 7:30AM, crushing any chance of weekend lie-in — I began to re-train my circadian rhythm: the body’s natural, roughly 24-hour internal clock that regulates sleep-wake cycles. “The circadian rhythm involves cortisol, as well as melatonin, which helps cue the body for sleep,” Dr Bostock explains.
In practical terms, this meant that whether I went to bed at 10PM or 2AM, I should fundamentally stick to my wake-up time—and that’s where the difference would be made.
Mind games
‘Cognitive shuffling’ is a mental strategy designed to help you fall asleep by intentionally mimicking the random imagery of a dream state.
To perform it, you simply pick a random word or starting point and begin visualising unrelated items, which Bostock notes is effectively “a more intentional take on counting sheep” for those struggling with a period of light sleep or a racing mind.
My second tactic, as advised by Dr Bostock, was being far stricter about my exposure to daylight, especially as I had decided to take on the experiment during winter, where darkness makes up to 60-70% of the day.
“At this time of year, we get lagging melatonin because we haven’t had enough daylight during the day to remind the brain that it’s time to switch off.” Not only would fresh air and light exercise give me a boost in energy if I were feeling flat, it would also provide “the most powerful signal you can give to your internal body clock to stay aligned,” says Dr Bostock. “Morning light is the ultimate anchor for your internal body clock and helps your brain anticipate exactly when to wake up.”
Combining this with research published in Frontiers in Psychology, in which just 20 minutes of sitting or walking in nature is enough to significantly lower cortisol levels, a daily total of 90 minutes spent outside became the absolute minimum and would pay dividends in improving my sleep.
For both of these shifts, Dr Bostock likened their importance to the demands of physical training. Improving my sleep is built on the same core values as any physical training, she explains. “It’s all the same things, discipline and consistency—that’s it.”
The System Reboot
Despite having interviewed neuroscientists about the toll of doomscrolling and the hazards of digital lifestyles, I’m overly reliant on my smartphone (if you feel the same way, here’s 3 ios tricks to curb doomscrolling). Although Dr Bostock didn’t suggest any major overhauls on my tech use, she offered a few practical pointers that were simple in execution but no less significant in their impact.
One of the most effective suggestions was to leave my phone in a different room once I was going to bed — ideally, turn it off even an hour or two before that — thereby eliminating the temptation to scroll in bed. However, this isn’t about blue light exposure (“the light intensity that you get from a phone or a laptop is really relatively low,” says Dr Bostock), but about what we’re seeing on our screens.
“We use phones to deflect uncomfortable feelings in a constant stream of content,” says Bostock. “We can’t necessarily blame the phone for that — it’s the uncomfortable feelings and thoughts that actually are keeping us awake at night.” Enough said.
In addition, I toggled my iPhone’s colour to black and white (long tap on the home screen > edit > customise) to make the apps’ colour schemes less appealing, and use f.lux on my laptop, a software that made my computer screen a warmer, amber color, while I worked.
The results
After a week or so of cementing these habits into my daily routine, things began to click into place. As my conversations with Dr Bostock never centred around caffeine or alcohol intake, these areas didn’t require much adjustment; however, I did approach other habits and situations with a fork in the road mentality: whatever I was doing, it would either help aid me in my mission to better sleep, or hinder it. An evening session on the PS5 with friends, for example, would be less beneficial than turning off the TV at 9PM and picking up a book.
Before the experiment, my moods would peak and trough — punctuated with sunny highs and gloomy lows — yet as I continued to work with Dr Bostock’s insights and advice, these moments would begin to soften and everything (everyone, more like) seemed more amicable and approachable as the weeks progressed.
“Daytime function is the gold standard metric for how well you are actually sleeping,” Dr Bostock would confirm, as we discussed my sleep and stress data from the Oura Ring 4. “Your ability to focus and feel good in yourself is what defines a quality night.”
Digging deeper into the data, there’s a clear shift between the days preceding the experiment and the weeks during and after. My REM sleep increased by 40 minutes on average, and greater stints of deep sleep — 90 minutes or over — became far more frequent. The effects of an improved REM sleep pattern left me re-energised in mind and body, a direct result of my work to improve my circadian rhythm.
The same can be said for my periods of deep sleep. As the Oura identified, periods of 90 minutes of deep sleep are when muscles grow and repair and the immune system is refreshed—helping me dodge any signs of winter flu and wake up fighting fit, or as close to it as possible. Elsewhere, my light sleep improved — “it’s crucial for motor focus and memory consolidation,” says Dr Bostock — and my stress levels rarely peaked enough for me to get concerned.
As with physical training, there were plenty of personal bests, including one night with 10.5 hours of total sleep in mid-December — numbers I hadn’t seen (or felt) since I was a teenager recovering from a festival. Below, you can see a few examples of screenshots from the Oura app.
Image 1 of 3
Despite these successes, my familiar pattern of good and bad sleep would eventually return. The difference, after four weeks with Dr Bostock, is that setbacks no longer feel like a permanent biological flaw, but a temporary glitch — one I now know how to course-correct with a few behavioural adjustments rather than an immediate admission of defeat.
“Sleep science really isn’t that complicated, but it does require discipline and consistency,” Dr Bostock told me during our final session. “If you can say, ‘I did this and it made a difference,’ that’s hugely valuable.”
At the start of the experiment, I was fixated on chasing a perfect sleep score of 100 on my Oura. By the end, I’d realised that better sleep isn’t about hitting a single, ideal metric, but about showing up consistently and using data to keep yourself honest. These days, I’d happily take an 85 or 90 — and my wife will just as happily take an earlier bedtime.
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