and everything from shifting work schedules to child care and school disruptions can make it hard to establish a daily routine. But every little bit helps. “For me, one of the things that helped a lot early in the pandemic was to have a start and end time for my work day,” Martin said. “I just would pretend that I was going to go to work, and I would get up and get dressed, and have breakfast and do all the things that I normally would, and start my day, and then have a time that I would just shut down my computer.”

Sleep is a basic human need, just like food or oxygen, and most adults need about seven hours a night. If we miss out on it for a night or two, we may notice problems like difficulty with decisions, not feeling mentally sharp, and becoming less tolerant of social conflict. Lack of sleep “kind of makes it harder for us to function around other people,” Martin said.

. When the pandemic hit, rates of insomnia spiked around the world, driven by everything from the stress of living during an international public health crisis to the changes in daily life wrought by lockdowns

Remember sleeping? For too many Americans, it’s a distant memory: a time when we were able to get in bed, close our eyes, and drift off unencumbered without worries about contracting Covid-19, or the hours of work that piled up after supervising a day of remote school, or whether we need to buy a different kind of mask (aga