If there is a zombie in your bedroom, you aren’t going to get much sleep. You can have fleece pajamas, silk sheets, and Ambien, but if there’s a growling zombie taking a bite out of your gluteus maximus, you can forget about your beauty sleep.

Sleep is important to your health both physically and mentally. It works out to a simple transaction: if you regularly get enough sleep, you have more energy and you tend to be healthier. If you consistently don’t get enough sleep, you end up an unhealthy person. You won’t find many doctors or scientific studies that dispute this.

I know what you’re thinking. “If the zombies are all around us, how can we think about sleep at a time like this?” I understand that there are times and seasons where life brings circumstances that interrupt our world. But the zombies are here to stay; they aren’t going away. Therefore it is absolutely necessary to establish a healthy lifestyle despite the dangers around us. Here are some helpful tips for getting a good nights sleep in the midst of our present zombie apocalypse:

Plan your sleep: schedule your bedtime early enough to give you a full nights sleep. If we we who are parents can do this with our kids, we can certainly plan our own lives at least as well. If you wake up around 5 AM like I do, then you want to get to bed between 9 and 10 PM.

Don’t bring zombies in the bedroom with you. I’m not just talking about the scary zombies on TV. I’m talking about those worries and distractions that take a bite out of your soul every time they come to mind. I understand most of us bring our phones with us into the bedroom in case someone calls with a family emergency. That’s fine; it’s legal. But as a suggestion: when you go to bed, just go to bed. You don’t need to check Twitter for a half hour, Facebook for 45 minutes, Instagram for another 20 minutes, and then download four games from the app store.

Beware stealth zombies: There are stealth version zombies you need to be careful about as well. Don’t bring work from the office into the bedroom. The bedroom is for sleeping, and for you married folks out there, the bedroom is also for your spouse. The bedroom is not a place that needs to electronically accessible to your boss, your coworkers, paperwork, problems, or whatever else you forgot to leave in your office. The bedroom is not for your work email account.

Finally, there is a zombie called “tomorrow.” He is a really shady character. Your bed is a great place to sleep now, not a place to worry about “tomorrow.” If you get a good night’s sleep, then get up nice and early, you can sucker punch “tomorrow” before he knows what hit him. “Tomorrow” can be really scary because you never quite know what he will look like. That’s why I choose to get up early; I like to catch him by surprise every time.

If there is a zombie in your bedroom, you aren’t going to get much sleep. So kick them out, and keep them out.