My Mother Wore a Nightgown to Bed.

I Think I Finally Understand Why.

Maybe reducing cognitive load isn’t only about doing less. Maybe we’ve forgotten how to tell our brains that the day is over.

Yesterday, completely by accident, I started thinking about nightgowns.

Yes. Nightgowns.

Stay with me, because this ended somewhere I genuinely wasn’t expecting.

When I was younger, my mother had proper nightwear.

Pretty nightgowns. Often a matching robe. And those wonderfully old-fashioned bedroom slippers with the fluffy tops.

Later, I did the same.

You didn’t normally wander around all day wearing whatever you intended to sleep in that night.

You got ready for bed.

And suddenly I found myself wondering:

What if that little ritual was doing far more than making our mothers look elegant?

What if it was also telling the brain: The day is finished now.

We used to change states

Think about the sequence.

• Day clothes came off.

• You washed.

• The nightgown went on.

• The robe came out.

• Bedroom slippers replaced daytime shoes.

• The lights became softer.

• You were no longer dressed for shopping, work, visitors, cooking or errands.

• You were dressed for rest.

• Nobody called it nervous-system regulation.

• Nobody talked about cognitive load.

My mother certainly wasn't standing in front of the wardrobe discussing neuroscience.😂

She was simply getting ready for bed.

But in doing so, she was creating a very clear physical boundary between two parts of her life:

• Doing.

• And:

• Done.

And I'm beginning to wonder whether that boundary is something many of us have quietly lost.

The modern day has no edges

I'll happily put my own hand up here.

I work from home.

And I realised that I've fallen into exactly the habit I'm describing.

Comfortable clothes in the morning.

• I work in them.

• Eat in them.

• Sit on the sofa in them.

• Sometimes scroll on my phone in them.

• And eventually go to bed wearing something that isn't dramatically different from what I've been wearing for most of the day.

• There's no real transition.

• No costume change.

• No moment that says: Office closed.

This is particularly easy when you work from home.

Your kitchen table can be your office at 10am, your dinner table at 7pm and somewhere you're answering one final message at 9:30pm.

Your phone contains your work, family, banking, shopping, entertainment, news and social life.

We don't even have to move rooms anymore.

And perhaps that is part of the problem.

We have morning routines designed to start productivity. Almost nobody teaches us how to end it.

This is where the Zeigarnik effect becomes interesting

There is a psychological phenomenon called the Zeigarnik effect, named after psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik.

In simple terms, unfinished or interrupted tasks have a tendency to remain mentally active.

• The email you haven't answered.

• The thing you forgot to order.

• The problem you haven't solved.

• Tomorrow's dinner.

• The message sitting unanswered.

• That little job you told yourself you'd do later.

They don't necessarily disappear just because you've closed the laptop.

Research following Zeigarnik's early work has continued to explore how unfinished goals occupy our attention, while other research suggests that making a concrete plan for unfinished tasks can reduce some of that mental interference.

And that made me look at the humble nightgown completely differently.

Perhaps changing into night clothes was a tiny closing ritual.

Not because a nightgown possesses magical psychological properties.

It doesn't.

But because repeating the same sequence every evening may provide a powerful contextual signal:

Today's work is no longer happening.

The unfinished things can belong to tomorrow.

The unfinished email may not be the whole problem

We talk constantly about reducing mental load and cognitive overload.

• Use a planner.

• Automate things.

• Make lists.

• Batch your work.

• Turn notifications off.

And yes — all of those things can help.

But there may be another question worth asking:

When exactly does your brain receive the message that today's work is finished?

For many of us, the answer might be: It doesn't.

• We close one screen and open another.

• We finish working and start scrolling.

• We sit down to relax while still checking messages.

• We climb into bed and bring the entire outside world with us on a five-inch screen.

• The task changed.

• The brain never got the closing ceremony.

And then there's doomscrolling

This is where modern bedtime becomes particularly messy.

• The phone follows us into bed.

• One quick check becomes another video.

• Then another headline.

• Then someone's comment.

• Then something irritating.

• Then something worrying.

• Then somehow it's midnight.

Bedtime screen use has repeatedly been associated with poorer sleep, and expert reviews have found that both screen exposure and the content we engage with before bed can interfere with healthy sleep.

So now think about the combination.

• Unfinished tasks.

• No strong boundary between work and home.

• The same environment.

• Often the same clothes.

• And a device beside us serving an endless supply of new information.

Then we wonder why we wake up feeling mentally foggy or we wake up at 3.00 am

I'm not suggesting that wearing pyjamas will cure brain fog. Brain fog can have many causes and deserves more serious consideration than that.

I'm suggesting something simpler: Maybe our brains need clearer endings.

Fashion has apparently rediscovered the nightgown

And here's the funny part. Just as many of us stopped wearing traditional nightgowns…

Fashion decided to bring them back.

In 2026, British Vogue called the “granny nightie” one of the summer's key dress trends, highlighting loose cotton and silk styles with lace, ribbons and embroidery. Some versions were relatively affordable; others stretched into hundreds or even well over £1,000.

Then, in September, The Washington Post wrote about a $328 Jane Austen-inspired Dôen nightgown, noting that the nightgown-as-outerwear trend had been growing for several years. The article also touched on the popularity — and rising prices — of vintage sleepwear, including bias-cut pieces from the 1940s and 1950s.

South China Morning Post has also reported on the return of elaborate nightwear after decades dominated by oversized T-shirts and casual sleep clothes.

So apparently we're buying back the lace with a price tag attached to it.

• The bows.

• The romance.

• The nostalgia.

But I wonder whether we've missed the most valuable part.

We brought the nightgown back as fashion. Maybe what we really needed to bring back was the boundary.

The expensive nightgown isn't necessary

Before anybody clicks away thinking I'm about to suggest spending $328 on pyjamas…

Absolutely not. 😂 The useful part of this old habit costs almost nothing.

You simply need some kind of repeated signal that separates:

My active day

from

My resting evening.

For me, I've decided to start with something ridiculously simple.

During the day, I'll wear daytime clothes — even though I work from home.

At night, I'll change into pyjamas.

Not because anyone will see me apart from my husband and the cats 😂

Not because I need another beauty ritual.

But because I want the act of changing clothes to mean something again.

We're finished for today.

Create your own Mental Closing Shift

It doesn't have to look like 1955.

Your closing ritual could simply be:

Change into clothes that you only wear for relaxing or sleeping.

Wash your face.

Put the laptop away rather than leaving it staring at you from the table.

Write tomorrow's unfinished jobs down so your brain doesn't have to keep rehearsing them.

Lower the lights. Light a candle

Put your phone somewhere other than beside your pillow.

Make tea.

Put on ridiculous fluffy slippers if that's your thing.

Mine may make a comeback. 😉

The specific actions aren't the interesting part.

The repetition is.

• This happens.

• Therefore today's work is finished.

Maybe our mothers knew something we forgot

I don't want to recreate the 1950s even though I am a vintage lover.....

But I know also that there are plenty of things about that era that can happily stay in the history books.

But I might steal this one little ritual.

Because somewhere along the way, convenience removed many of the borders from our lives.

• Home became work.

• The phone became everything.

• Day clothes became night clothes.

• Entertainment became endless.

• And tomorrow's problems gained permission to sit beside us in bed.

Perhaps reducing cognitive load isn't always about becoming better at managing everything.

Maybe sometimes we need to stop managing.

• Change the clothes.

• Close the laptop.

• Put tomorrow's jobs somewhere safe.

• Lower the lights.

And tell the brain something it may have been waiting all evening to hear: We're done now.

Tomorrow can wait.

And perhaps that old nightgown was never quite as silly as we thought.

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