> 3. Put down screens like phone, laptop, and TV after about 8pm. The artificial, bright light throws off off your body's natural instinct to get sleepy when it gets dark.
What I am supposed to do during four hours with basically no media? That sound a bit extreme. 90 minutes of that ought to do.
Oh, if you DO watch something (eg. movie), try an app like redshift, to reduce make the light blueish, which is what actually deprives you of sleep.
Which three? If they're the ones I think you mean - then you've forgotten about the old tech called "dead tree" and "graphite" (or whatever your preferred medium)...
To be fair, I also use screens for at least part of four of those things (not counting buying books on Amazon, then it'd be all 5) and plenty of people also use a screen for books (even if you don't count e-ink, which isn't light-emitting so probably shouldn't count as a screen in this context). You can do without them entirely all parts of those activities, obviously, but it's less convenient and/or more expensive, and depending on your goals or workflow may be entirely inappropriate (some drawing/art, for instance).
It was a bit tongue in cheek, but it's not so much that I've forgotten about them, but that I think people giving this advice tend to forget that many folks just don't buy paper books, notepads to sketch or write on, pens and pencils, etc.
Yes, but those folks then can't complain about their sleep problems.
Trust me: For a big chunk of the population (and not just "older" people), spending four hours a day without screen time is not something special. Insisting you need a screen for not just one, but multiple activities listed makes you an inflexible person. And that is the type of person many employers do not want to hire.
For health reasons not related to sleep, I found I had to reduce my screen time. I'm the type of person who likes everything electronic. All my notes are in a text file, etc. But I did step back and looked at the bigger picture: The cost to my health was clear. The gains on insisting everything be electronic was much muddier. I was spending a lot of time on activities with a dubious ROI. Once you start getting older, the urgency with which you want to make your "free" time meaningful really kicks in. If I didn't change, I could easily see myself in my 50's still sticking to habits that do not benefit me too much.
This is in the context of shifting your schedule towards being an early-riser, so I imagine you'd be going to bed at no later then 10pm, not much more than the 90 minutes you are thinking of.
Personally I went from being a night owl (0100 or 0200 -> 0800 or 0900) to being an early riser (2130 -> 0500).
0900 is historically the beginning of the business day. "Bankers hours" start at 0800. Traditional businesses expect people to be at the office by then so I would think you would need to rise by 7 or 8 at the latest to be "normal". An early riser would be getting up a few hours before that.
Also in pretty much all parts of the world you've missed the sunrise by 9AM. Not really an early riser if the sun is fully risen before you wake.
What I am supposed to do during four hours with basically no media? That sound a bit extreme. 90 minutes of that ought to do. Oh, if you DO watch something (eg. movie), try an app like redshift, to reduce make the light blueish, which is what actually deprives you of sleep.