Bedtime Routines That These Celebs Swear By

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Have you ever heard one of these restless overachievers brag they don't really need sleep? Donald Trump famously says he snoozes only about five hours a night. Many celebs claim the same. But there's a difference between what people say and what is actually required for a long and healthy life free of paranoia, psychosis, and other super-fun side effects of chronic sleeplessness. And according to Unfold Today, 76% of your favorite stars do actually get the recommended dose of dozing.

Science has a lot of confusing data on sleep — given we know almost nothing about the subject. We don't even know why we sleep. Not really, anyway. What we do know is getting too little is linked to just about every disease in the book. But there may indeed be an elite one percent functional on far less than your standard eight-hour recommendation. For those so predisposed, according to Time, less may actually be more.

For normies, a full night of REM cycles is required, and unfortunately, so hard to do. The world's foremost sleep evangelist, publisher Arianna Huffington, troubled by a culture of chronic sleep deficits, has made it her mission to put Americans to bed. She likes to emphasize the "transition to sleep" (via "The Ultimate Health Podcast"). According to Arianna, you can't expect to go from your stressful daily routine straight into dreamworld bliss. A solid ritual is needed to bridge the gap to the land of nod. These celebs have shared how they do it.

Influencers love to optimize. They're willing lab rats, constructing their own mazes — with perhaps less than scientific scrutiny — for our edification and entertainment. Jay Shetty, podcaster, influencer, and former Hindu monk, is very big in this self-improvement space. His Youtube channel boasts over four million subscribers – all eager to be enlightened.

Shetty shared his eight "evening routine" tips in 2021. The list starts before his actual sleep ritual commences. His first step is checking his schedule for the next day. Knowing he's organized helps him "mentally prepare." Thinking about work isn't usually relaxing, but Jay then switches to some light reading — not with a physical book, but via a sponsored self-improvement app on his iPhone, so take that rec with a grain of salt. Next is more screens, a little TV time with his wife.

Finally, Shetty gets serious. He turns his phone to airplane mode an hour before bed and does some gratitude journaling followed by picking out clothes for the next day. Then things get cute: he literally schedules time to tell his lady he loves her. Next comes a prayer: thanking god, setting intentions, and a reminder to be kind and compassionate. "I am happy, healthy, and focused," goes his nightly mantra. Finally, Shetty "calms his breath" with some slow in and out breathing. If that doesn't work, Jay "[scans his] body," and literally thanks his "organs for during their work that day." Job well done y'all.

For years Kelly Clarkson struggled with sleep. Like a lot of creative types, the winner of the first season of "American Idol" found her mind flooded with song ideas as she tried to nod off at night. "That's why I have a hard time sleeping," she told Self Magazine (via CBS News). Clarkson likes to jot down her late-night brainstorms, which is a lot like sleep journaling. Experts say this can help you get some quality rest.

By 2019, the "Since U Been Gone" star was on to a new and very next-level sleep hack: sex! "I was single for many years, so, I have children and how one makes children is generally what I do before bed," the mother of two said on "The Kelly Clarkson Show" (via ABC News). Clarkson goes on to admit she thought she might even be "asexual" before meeting her ex-husband Brandon Blackstock. "I never felt like, honesty, sexually attracted to anybody before him," she said in 2017. "And I'm not downing my exes. You know, everybody's different. But there was something about him."

The couple met in 2006, but he was in the friend zone until 2012, the pop star told Daily Mail – meaning Clarkson didn't find her secret to sound slumber until she was around 30 years old. Unfortunately, she might be singing those late-night blues again, as Clarkson and Blackstock filed for divorce 2020 (via ET).

Beyonce is a prolific creative force and that comes at a cost. Just like some of her peers, she has a hard time turning off her mind at night. She's one of those memes where the second you lay down your brain turns into a symphony of self-talk — in her case, almost literally. But she's also well-known for a spartan evening routine including an 11 PM curfew, following the old adage that nothing good happens after midnight.

That discipline doesn't necessarily equal perfect sleep hygiene, though, so she has a bedtime hack that actually takes all day. ​​"I am a person who has a hard time shutting off my brain," the songstress told Inc. "But if you are active during your day, you will be so exhausted you can't help but fall asleep. Having peace, happiness and healthiness is my definition of beauty. And you can't have any of that without sleep." She's also described her perfect wind down evening: a pizza, a beer, and time with the fam.

So Queen Bey understands the necessity of sleep, but she hasn't always extended that luxury to her entourage. The star keeps a tight schedule, and in her younger days, her staffers, by her own account, couldn't expect much shut-eye either. "I am a workaholic," she said in her 2011 documentary "Beyonce: Year of Four." (via Capital FM) "I don't believe in 'I need to sleep.' If I'm not sleeping nobody's sleeping. I'm one human being."

Malcolm Gladwell is the undisputed king of mining the world of tenuous social science findings for counterintuitive hot takes. He turns these insights into page-turning treatises on everything from what defines a "genius" and how to have difficult conversations. The man has sold nearly five million books, according to Lifehack. So of course this master of subverting consensus has sleep habits that come with a twist too.

"Malcolm Gladwell's email hack has seriously changed the way he works," trumpets the headline via Thrive Global. The writer's favorite trick to boost productivity and improve his mental health is what he calls the "24-hour email rule." He doesn't answer messages throughout the day. Instead, he reserves his evenings — when most people should be winding down — for catching up on messages from the past day. So instead of constantly refreshing his inbox, he allots his wind-down time for correspondence.

Gladwell says he was inspired by his father who never worked on weekends or past about 3 PM. "If everyone observed the 24-hour rule for responding to emails, the world would be as much better place," he claims. Aside from freeing Gladwell from his devices, he says the methods also set healthy boundaries. "If you don't answer people's texts and phone calls and emails right away, then they learn that, and they understand. They don't have to respond to my response right away, and I don't have to respond to their response right away."

Bill Gates was a hard-charging boss while making Microsoft a global goliath. The tech whiz famously revealed he used to memorize employee license plates to keep track of who was staying late. "I was quite fanatical about work," he told BBC Radio 4 in 2016. "I worked weekends. I didn't really believe in vacations." Bill also applied this standard to himself. "I felt that sleeping a lot was lazy," Gates wrote on his blog of his insomniac youth. "I routinely pulled all-nighters when we had to deliver a piece of software."

Gates, however, always knew his operating system was a bit sluggish when sleep-deprived, running on "​​caffeine and adrenaline." Later in life, he adopted a more sane seven hours a night approach after reading the seminal sleep tomb "Why We Sleep," by Matthew Walker, of California Berkeley's Center for Human Sleep Science. "Walker taught me a lot about this basic activity that every person on Earth needs," Gates writes.

Gates likely learned about this while in bed on his kindle. Each night the billionaire winds down with at least one hour of heady bedtime stories – mostly from the non-fiction (for geniuses) category. His blog features a bunch of tips he gleaned from this 11 PM to midnight research window. Gates says he's also ditched LED lights in the bedroom, sets the temp to a cool 65 degrees, and avoids naps after 3 PM.

Michael Phelps redefined the standard for Olympic greatness. The speedy swimmer won 28 medals including 23 trips to the top of the podium for gold. And Phelps says the underrated component to his staggering success is sleep.

"At a very young age I learned how important sleep was," Phelps told CNBC in 2017. "I really can't say it enough. I don't think people really pay enough attention to how important sleep is." Phelps explains sleep is time to "recover" – which he certainly needed while swimming hard seven days a week training for five summer games.

Phelps says his wind down starts around 9 PM when he gives his house a very relatable once over. "I basically give myself an hour to get up and take care of everything that needs to be done: making sure the windows are shut and the doors are locked to make sure we're all protected for the night," he told Travel + Leisure in 2021. He also limits the use of his phone to avoid blue light, which he explains, "triggers so many things in your mind." When Phelps finally closes his eyes he performs a kind of meditation where he visualizes a much detail about his room as he possibly can. "I would be shocked if you got around your room more than five times and you were still awake, it's just a really cool calming relaxation tool that I've used for quite some time that always works."

Stephen King might be responsible for more sleepless nights than anyone besides Steve Jobs. King is a master of horror, and if things in the closet or under the bed have you on edge, putting down this ridiculously prolific writer's works might be a sleep hack on its own.

King himself claimed during a TV interview with UMO in the 1980s that he actually sleeps with the lights on. But that same decade King declared his daydreams of the dark side don't actually keep him up at night, via CBC. In fact, he doesn't even write at night, so also doesn't make the mistake of trying to push productivity and sleep too close together. "It's always mornings. If I'm under the gun, I can work later in the day," he told The Wall Street Journal. "But my sweet spot is from 8:30 in the morning to 12:30 in the afternoon."

The early bird dismembers the worm maybe, but King is also a biphasic sleeper. He gets six or seven hours at night and then an afternoon nap for about an hour. This means the author winds down twice. Like everyone else, he brushes his teeth, but also washes his hands. Then things get specific. "The pillows are supposed to be pointed a certain way. The open side of the pillowcase is supposed to be pointed in toward the other side of the bed. I don't know why," he says in his biography, "Haunted Heart."