How do you decide when to sleep? When did you decide? Who decided that? We spend about a third of our entire lives asleep and yet we give it far less than a third of our thoughts to it. We rarely give it much thought at all. How odd.

Perhaps your work schedule expects you to wake by a certain hour and you worked backwards from there. But how often have you fallen asleep by that point? Staying up late on your phone doesn’t count. Others at home might depend on your availability, such as kids who need help preparing for school. Have you had enough rest to help? To set a good example? Maybe you lack a fixed sleep schedule. Your rest could follow your whims, your circumstances, or the vicissitudes of your mental state. We seem to possess so little control over our sleep despite its paramount importance.

And yet, our minds depend on sound sleep to make sound choices. You might not feel a late hour here or a late hour there but a chronic lack of rest adds up. Before long, you lose trust in your ability to judge whether you should stay up in the first place, not unlike a drunk out of touch with their own inebriation. What do you get out of staying up so late? How would a well-rested you feel about such a sacrifice? If you can’t simply choose to have a full night’s sleep, how much more precious does that make the sleep you can get? How will you plan your sleep differently tonight?