Written by Gretchen Rubin
There’s a lot of advice out there about getting good sleep — it’s VERY important. We quickly adjust to being sleep-deprived, and don’t notice that we aren’t functioning at a normal level, but lack of sleep really affects us. If you’re feeling blue or listless, try going to sleep thirty minutes earlier for a week. It can really help.
Here are tips that have helped me get good sleep:
Good habits for good sleep:
1. Exercise most days, even if it’s just to take a walk.
2. No caffeine after 7:00 p.m.
3. An hour before bedtime, avoid doing any kind of work that takes alert thinking. Addressing envelopes–okay. Analyzing an article–nope.
4. Adjust your bedroom temperature to be slightly chilly.
5. Keep your bedroom dark. Studies show that even the tiny light from a digital alarm clock can disrupt a sleep cycle. We have about six devices in our room that glow bright green; it’s like sleeping in a mad scientist’s lab. The Big Man has a new pet, a Roomba (yes, he loves his robot vacuum) that gives out so much light that I have to cover it with a pillow before bed.
6. Keep the bedroom as tidy as possible. It’s not restful to fight through chaos into bed.
If sleep won’t come:
7. Breathe deeply and slowly until you can’t stand it anymore.
8. If your mind is racing (you’re planning a trip, a move; you’re worried about a medical diagnosis), write down what’s on your mind. This technique really works for me.
9. Slather yourself with body lotion. This feels good and also, if you’re having trouble sleeping because you’re hot, it cools you down.
10. If your feet are cold, put on socks.
11. Stretch your whole body.
12. Have a warm drink. Supposedly warm milk contains melatonin and trytophan and so helps induce sleep, but in fact, a glass of milk doesn’t contain enough to have any effect. But it’s still a soothing drink. My nighttime favorite: 1/3 mug of milk, add boiling water, one packet of Equal, and a dash of vanilla. A real nursery treat.
13. Yawn.
14. Stretch your toes up and down several times.
15. Tell yourself, “I have to get up now.” Imagine that you just hit the snooze alarm and in a minute, you’re going to be marching through the morning routine. Often this is an exhausting enough prospect to make me fall asleep.
16. If you still can’t sleep, re-frame: re-frame your sleeplessness as a welcome opportunity to snatch some extra time out of your day. I get up and tackle mundane chores, like paying bills, organizing books, or tidying up. Then I start the day with a wonderful feeling of having accomplished something even before 6:45 am.
What am I missing? Are there some more great sleep-inducing strategies out there?
If you’d like to read more about happiness, check out Gretchen’s daily blog, The Happiness Project.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
The best method I’ve ever discovered for falling asleep is forcing myself to lie perfectly still in a less comfortable position. It’s also effective to combine this with counting breaths. In fact, what I did was choose three positions — the most comfortable was the one I intended to fall asleep in, and was last. Sometimes if it was chilly, I’d also not be totally covered and just let myself feel cold until it was time to go to the last position.
The steps are
1. Get in the least comfortable position and lie still while counting breaths backwards from 100 to 66.
2. Get in another position and lie still while counting breaths backwards from 66 to 33.
3. Get in your most comfortable position and count breaths backwards from 33 to 1. (I never got to 1.)
If everything else fails, then zopilem 10 :)
Several other ways of ‘fcousing on breathing’ are described in my web site (non-commerical).
See this link for a various options
http://countingbreaths.com/brochure-us.pdf
Also this popular article for Insomnia
http://www.countingbreaths.com/insomnia.html
Try one or more options described in above documents. Sleep is 100% guaranteed unless there is some physical disease. Please e-mail through my web site if you do not get results.
Great tips!
I usually suffer point nr 8. I just can’t get my next day tasks out of my head or just think about several things that bothered me during the day. Sometimes can’t fall asleep because of it for several hours.
I’ll definitely try your tip for it.
Something that helps me is reading something that’s really boring until the book falls out of my hand and I fall asleep with the (low) light on. On a similar note, I wear a head lamp (it’s dorky, I know) when I read in bed so that way the room is dark enough to relax but I can still read.
If the book is so boring that I absolutely can’t read any more of it, I go through the alphabet and think of each word that stars with that letter. I’m usually out by “aggressive.”
Very nice tips. I would like to add number 17. If all these things don't work for sure the problem is in your bed.
Snoring is not only unpleasant for your partner in bed (or in the worst case first). It can be a sign of a dangerous disease called sleep apnea. It will be great!!! if you have some devices to help you please see at http://www.antisnorepillow.us/
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