Wellness Wednesday Issue #177

⏰ Missed breaks and off-the-clock work add up fast. Spot wage risk early before it becomes a claim.

🎧 Smart tech gifts your team will actually use.

💰 Starting something on the side? These low-cost business ideas are making real money in 2026.

✈️ Gen Z career minimalism is making people happier and wealthier.

Sleep is one of those things everyone knows they should prioritize and almost no one actually does. So, a friendly reminder: sleep is when your body does its most important work. It heals, regulates your mood, restores your focus, and sets the tone for every single thing you’ll do the next day. When it’s off, everything is off.

The TA team has collectively been through the insomnia spirals, the 3am wake-ups, the doom scrolling until midnight, and the next-day fog that follows. So we figured we’d share what’s actually working for us, in our own words.

Cameron: make it luxurious

I am a self-proclaimed sleepy girl. I don’t like staying up, and I don’t like waking up early. I love being in my bed. But this is coming from someone who used to dread trying to fall asleep just a few years ago. Insomnia, racing thoughts, the whole thing. After years of trial and error, I finally landed on a few non-negotiables.

• Get your most comfortable before bed. I brush my hair, do my heatless curls, run through my full skincare and teeth care routines, and change into the softest, no-tag, nothing-digging-in pajamas I own. If something is tight or scratchy, I will fixate on it all night.
• Phone away 30 minutes before bed. I tap my Hatch alarm clock to start my wind down, and once those sounds and lights kick on, my phone goes away. I read, chat with my partner, or watch TV instead of staring at a screen six inches from my face.
• Charlotte’s Web Sleep Gummies. I have taken CBD for years, and these are the single best thing I can recommend for falling asleep faster without the groggy morning hangover.
• Silk bonnet and eye mask. I use the Kitsch Pillow Eye Mask. Pitch black equals deeper sleep, full stop. Plus, I wake up with sleek hair that looks like I just did a blowout, which buys me extra time in the morning to sleep longer.

Kristel: give yourself grace

I am still a work in progress when it comes to sleep, but I’ve learned that my best nights usually come down to comfort, calm, and not letting my brain run the entire show at bedtime.

• Make the bed feel like a hotel bed. A silk pillowcase, cooling sheets, and a good pillow make such a difference. If the bed feels soft, cool, and cozy, my body gets the memo faster.
• Keep the room cool. I sleep best when the room is around 68 degrees. If it’s too warm, I wake up more often and never feel fully settled.
• No phone before sleep. This is the hardest one, but it matters. The nights I scroll before bed are usually the nights my brain refuses to clock out.
• Reconnect before winding down. Even a small moment of connection with my husband helps, whether it’s talking, laughing, or just having a quiet few minutes together before the day ends.
• Get the thoughts out. Journaling helps me empty my brain before bed. Sometimes it’s a full reflection, sometimes it’s just a messy list of everything I’m worried about or need to do tomorrow. Either way, it keeps those thoughts from following me into bed.

Thania: don’t be afraid to try things

I have a ton of trouble falling asleep, and I’ve been known to wake up a lot during the night. Here’s what’s helped.

• Invest in a comfortable bed. I have a Nectar mattress and it is worth every penny.
• Watch what you eat and drink before bed. Don’t drink too much water or you’ll be up all night. But also make sure you’ve eaten enough, because waking up with low blood sugar at 3am is its own special nightmare.
• Get some sleep supplements. I swear by the Momentum Sleep Pack and have noticed a real difference in how quickly I fall asleep.
• Don’t pre-stress about not sleeping. If you go to bed already anticipating you won’t fall asleep, you’ve made it harder. And if you lie there spiraling about how long it’s been, it gets worse. Try to catch that thought and redirect.
• Do something that calms your brain instead. Think about what you’re grateful for. Give yourself a genuine pep talk, like you would a kid who had a hard day. It sounds a little silly but it works.
• Don’t be afraid to change spots. Sometimes the couch is calling and that’s okay.
• Try to go to bed around the same time every night, even on weekends. Your body clock is real and it appreciates the consistency.

Joanna: protect the wind-down

I’ve been through different versions of “trouble sleeping,” and this latest chapter is the one where my Oura ring is finally showing scores that are trending up. The setup that was wrecking me: I share a bed with a partner who has sporadic insomnia, a recently adopted cat (Tofu) who has decided 5am cuddles and 8:30am meows are non-negotiable, and a brain that runs late into the evening because I work from home and run my own business. When work gets stressful, I have a thousand things rattling around right before lights out. So here’s what I do now:

• Phone in sleep mode the moment I get in bed so I’m not tempted by notifications, scrolling, or the sneaky “just one quick check.”
• We officially kicked Tofu out of the bedroom. As much as I love her, the 5am cuddle demands had me up and groggy. Now she comes in when we open the door in the morning, and we get our snuggle time then. Worth the compromise.
• A guest room set up for sleep emergencies. If one of us is having a bad night, we don’t make the other one suffer through it. Either of us can sleep apart when we need to, no drama. The permission to separate has actually made our sleep better overall.
• Read at the same time every night. Consistency is doing more for me than any single tactic. I let my brain shift gears with a book for a bit, instead of trying to power down right after I close my laptop. I love physical books, but have been loving the Kindle night mode (white text on black background so I can read in the dark).
• Sleepy gummies on the challenging nights. I’ve tried a few brands, and the Flav City ones are my current go-to. They help me fall asleep faster and actually stay asleep through the night.

Sleep sets the stage for the rest of your day. It’s when your body goes to work to heal your heart, steady your mood, recover physically, and clear the fog so you can show up at work, home, and in life as the best version of yourself. When sleep feels like a struggle, it affects everything: your energy, focus, patience, and productivity all depend on getting high quality sleep.

If you’ve noticed changes in your sleep patterns, Sleep Doctor is here to help you find your way back to great rest. They move past the guesswork to help you understand exactly what’s happening while you’re asleep, so you can stop powering through and start living the day.

Take the Sleep Quiz and get one step closer to the rest you deserve.

You’ve nodded through enough AI conversations to know the gap is closing too slowly. The acronyms keep multiplying, the tools keep launching, and “I really should learn this” keeps moving further down the list.

Most AI primers are dense, jargon-heavy, and built around capabilities you’ll never use.

HubSpot’s free AI for Business Builders guide is a no-jargon, four-part crash course. Plain English, real examples, and clear answers to the three questions everyone’s actually asking: how to use AI to grow what you’re building, how much to invest, and where to start.

Inside the guide:

• A four-part roadmap to AI literacy (no buzzwords)

• How LLMs and generative AI actually work

• Prompt engineering tactics with real-world examples you can apply today

• A clear frame for what to invest in (and what to skip)

Companies worldwide are already seeing a 250% return on their AI investment. This guide is how you start catching up.

👉 Download HubSpot’s free AI for Business Builders guide.

You’re five days from Memorial Day weekend. Three days off, no scheduled meetings. And yet a meaningful percentage of us will still answer the Sunday email, “just quickly check” the inbox Saturday morning, and say yes to favors we don’t have time for.

If that’s you, you’re not weak-willed. You’re running a piece of psychology that’s older than your job.

Your brain is overestimating the cost of no.

Vanessa Bohns, a social psychologist at Cornell, has spent two decades studying how people respond to being told no. The finding that keeps surfacing: we are catastrophically bad at predicting how the other person will react.

In a series of studies with Frank Flynn, people consistently overestimated how negatively the asker would feel after being declined. The asker, in reality, mostly shrugged and moved on. Bohns calls it an “asymmetry of awareness” — the person saying no is running a horror movie about hurt feelings and damaged relationships, while the person hearing no is already drafting their next ask to someone else.

The practical takeaway: when your nervous system tells you saying no will be devastating, the data says otherwise. The awkwardness lasts about 30 seconds. The relationship survives.

How to interrupt the pattern this weekend

Use the 24-hour rule. Default response to any non-urgent ask: “Let me check and get back to you.” The social pressure to say yes peaks at the moment of asking. In 24 hours it dissolves; the commitment wouldn’t have.

Drop the apology preamble. Notice how often “no” comes wrapped in over-explanation. Try the shorter version: “I’m not able to take this on, but thanks for thinking of me.” Then stop talking.

Pre-decide your weekend access window. One hour Saturday morning, or nothing until Tuesday. Write it down, tell one person, stick to it. Memorial Day weekend doesn’t get a do-over.

You’re not going to become a different person by Tuesday, but you might come back having proved one small thing to yourself: that saying no is a skill, not a personality flaw, and the world keeps spinning regardless.

The reading list never shrinks. The tabs keep piling up. And somewhere between the headlines and the hot takes, the actual story gets lost (along with another 30 minutes of your morning).

1440 is a free daily newsletter that cuts through all of it: the day’s most important stories from 100+ sources distilled into one clean five-minute read covering business, politics, tech, science, and culture, fact-based and free. It’s the habit that finally sticks because it actually fits into a real morning.

👉 Subscribe to 1440 for free.

📆 FREE EVENT: Hear Scott Galloway speak at the AI Strategy Summit on June 4. Don’t miss this one!

💋 Girlboss is the navigator for your career, your hustle, and whatever comes next.

🧳 The under-$15 luggage scale that saves you from the overweight-bag panic at check-in.

💻 The wireless keyboard lineup worth picking from before your next WFH day.

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