How I'm getting better sleep this year thanks to these quirky gadgets

Getting to sleep on time and quickly often requires doing some preparation ahead of time. I prepare for bedtime by disabling my most addictive phone apps, like Instagram, TikTok, and Messages, through my Brick. It's helped me cut pre-sleep doomscrolling, go to bed quicker, and feel calmer upon falling asleep. 

The Brick is an NFC-enabled device that you can put anywhere in your home. After downloading the accompanying app and choosing which apps you'd like to disable access to, you tap your phone to the Brick, effectively blocking use of these apps until you retap. I try to do this on most nights. You can also set up schedules to routinely disable apps. 

Also: I bricked my iPhone to prevent doomscrolling - and accidentally fixed my life

I like to keep it attached to my fridge -- and far away from my bedroom -- so if I want to use these apps when I wake up I have to walk down a long hallway to enable them. Not only has it helped me prepare for bedtime, it's also been a boon for my morning routine. 

When my phone is Bricked as I wake up, I find myself getting out of bed quicker and beginning my day sooner. It's amazing how disabling these addictive apps right during these sensitive times of the day can kickstart productivity and boost clarity. 

When my bedroom overlooked a busy Brooklyn street, these Loop Dream earplugs would get major mileage. Sleep earbuds are great, and I've included some recommendations for them below, but these earplugs do just as well. They're light. Their purple color makes them easy to find in the morning, after one of the earplugs inevitably falls out of my ears. 

Also: I compared the viral $50 earplugs with my $300 sleep earbuds - here are the results

I've tested my fair share of sleep earbuds. If you need ambiance or brown noise to get to sleep, sleep earbuds can provide you with soundscapes and hook up to your own audio to whisk you away. But me? If I'm using an earbud or earplug to get me to bed, what I really want is silence. These sleep earplugs get the closest to delivering that. I've used them to get to bed as my roommates throw dinner parties, as my neighbors cause a ruckus outside my bedroom window, and as car horns honk throughout the night. 

No one needs a sleep tracker to get great sleep. In fact, what they really need is bedtime consistency, exercise during the day, and not too heavy a meal nor too many drinks before bed. Regardless, sleep trackers like the Oura Ring 4 allow sleepers to see their behaviors and choices ahead of bedtime to understand how those choices impact sleep. 

Several Oura Ring users say wearing the smart ring has helped them change some of their poorer sleep habits, like drinking too much alcohol before bedtime, because the ring monitors a user's heart rate, heart rate variability, body temperature, and respiratory rate, and shows users how these vitals are affected by alcohol or a later night. It's certainly helped me curb my poorer habits. Plus, it shows me the benefits of the good ones, like how much calmer I am when I read before bedtime. 

Also: I should've listened to my Oura Ring when it warned me about my health

The Oura Ring app delivers a few scores each morning: your Sleep Score, your Readiness Score, and yesterday's Activity Score. You can also tap into each score to understand its contributors, such as resting heart rate data during sleep. It's also become useful as a prognosticator of illness. It correctly detected two recent colds I've had, and it lets me know one or even two days in advance. 

One of my favorite traits about myself is the fact that I wake up around the same time each morning without an alarm. Well, without an audible alarm. I use the Hatch Restore 3's light alarm to wake me up, and most days it does a splendid job. (I still set a phone alarm for days when I have to be out of the house at a certain time.) 

There are a few facets of the smart alarm clock I don't like, including the fact that a lot of the alarm customizations are hidden behind a paywall. But it's easy to use, the light is strong enough to wake me, and it automatically connects to Wi-Fi, so I never have to manually change the time myself. 

The Restore 3 is currently on sale for $145 during the company's Sleep Week promotion, which ends March 22. This month, several wellness brands are running promotional deals on their sleep products to celebrate the National Sleep Foundation's Sleep Awareness Week, which runs from March 8 through March 14.  

Also: Waking up to a $250 alarm clock was more effective than I expected - but it's far from perfect