Most people try to fix their sleep at 10pm.

That's way too late. Sleep quality is built across the entire day. You can stack magnesium, melatonin, and every sleep supplement on the market. But if your sleep hygiene is broken, you're pouring water into a bucket with holes.

Let's fix the bucket.

Rule one. Caffeine cutoff.

Caffeine has a half-life of five to six hours. Half the caffeine from your 3pm coffee is still in your blood at 9pm. A quarter is still there at 3am. Your cutoff should be noon. 1pm at the latest. No exceptions.

Rule two. Temperature.

Your body needs to drop its core temperature by about one degree Celsius to initiate sleep. Research from the National Sleep Foundation puts the ideal bedroom temperature between 15 and 19 degrees Celsius. That's 60 to 67 Fahrenheit. Cooler than most people keep it.

Rule three. Darkness.

Real darkness. Your skin has photoreceptors. Even small amounts of light -- a standby LED, a charging phone, streetlight through curtains -- can suppress melatonin and fragment your sleep. Blackout curtains. Tape over LEDs. Phone face down in another room.

Rule four. Blue light.

Blue light wavelengths directly suppress melatonin through your retinal ganglion cells. Two hours of evening screen exposure can delay melatonin onset by 90 minutes. Blue light blocking glasses after sundown. Or better yet -- put the phone down two hours before bed.

Rule five. Consistency.

Your circadian clock doesn't understand weekends. Going to bed and waking up at the same time every day -- including Saturday and Sunday -- is the single most powerful sleep intervention that exists. More powerful than any pill. Pick a wake time. Stick to it within 30 minutes.

Rule six. The wind-down.

Your nervous system needs a transition period. You can't go from emails and Netflix straight into deep sleep. Give yourself 30 to 60 minutes of low stimulation before bed. Dim lights. Physical book. Stretch. Boring is the goal.

These six rules cost nothing. No prescriptions, no gadgets, no subscriptions. From my training in neuroscience, they work better than most of what you'll find in a pharmacy.

Once your sleep hygiene is locked in, that's when supplements like magnesium glycinate and L-theanine really start to shine. The foundation has to come first. Check out the sleep supplements in the Sleep journey -- they pair directly with everything we just covered.