Turn the heating down

There are two cold things we ask of everyone and both are unpopular.

The first is a cold shower. Sixty seconds at the end of your normal one, water as cold as it goes, every morning. You will hate it for a fortnight and then you will find you feel flat on the days you skip it. It is the cheapest way to prove to yourself before breakfast that you can do a hard thing on purpose, and that proof tends to follow you into the day.

The second is the bedroom. It wants to be between sixteen and eighteen degrees Celsius (about sixty to sixty-five Fahrenheit), dark, and no warmer. Our bodies need to drop their temperature to fall properly asleep and stay there, and a room at twenty-two with the radiator on is fighting that all night. Bear's line is that central heating has been stealing our sleep for fifty years, and the cure is a thermostat and a thicker duvet.

Neither of these costs anything. One of them saves money. Start with the bedroom tonight and the shower tomorrow.