Falling asleep faster: new ways to overcome sleep-onset insomnia
The importance of a good night's sleep
Thanks, Pam.
You don’t need to be an expert to understand the importance of high-quality sleep.
Just ask the parents of young children: if they don’t mention their own sleep deprivation, you’re likely to hear about the emotional unpredictability that ensues after one of the children hasn’t been sleeping well.
Sleep affects everyone - maybe not equally - but no one is immune, grown or small.
While discussions on the importance of sleep have taken place since ancient history, it wasn’t always an area of focus, especially in the performance-focused and entrepreneurial-minded spheres of thought.
In recent years, the tide is changing. I’m sure you see it. The old outlook is starting to sound as ungrounded as the Camel testimonials given by cigarette-smoking doctors in the early 20th century. Hindsight may be 20-20, but it’s still a wonder how we ever believed something so wrong.
Accelerated by the rich data and examples described in Dr. Matthew Walker’s 2017 book Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams, high-quality sleep is now being discussed as an essential building block of high-performance and productivity.
It’s been a focus of some of the world’s most listened-to podcast series, and now quality sleep is on the verge of becoming the new badge of honor.
Not convinced? Run your own experiment, and compare the differences between living on 4-5 hours of sleep vs. 7-8 hours.
Okay, so what do I do if I can’t sleep?
What is Sleep-onset Insomnia?
If you’ve been there, you know it all too well. Sleep-onset insomnia is the annoying experience of not being able to fall asleep when you decide to go to bed. You try to fall asleep … and you just lie there, awake.
The obvious impact of this is that it shortens your sleep window. Your alarm clock is going to ring at a certain time the next morning no matter when you fall asleep. Even on days when the alarm isn’t set, our bodies, chirping birds, the garbage truck, or any other unnamed influence can wake us up earlier than we’d like.
On the next day, you might get by feeling generally okay, maybe a little tired. But if sleep-onset insomnia sticks around for more than a few days, it becomes an all-encompassing drain.
If it’s recurring, it can be stressful. Unlike when I was a kid and was afraid of the monster under my bed, the sleep-onset insomnia monster is real.
Oh, the curse of knowledge. We’ve been educated on what a great night's sleep should look like (and explained all the cognitive downgrades we experience after a poor night of sleep), we’re even more in-tune with the harm this sleep-onset insomnia is causing us.
When this knowledge is combined with a dose of perfectionism - a common trait in high performers - the anxiety, frustration and lack of control caused by the sleep-onset insomnia might become more harmful than the actual lack of sleep itself.
So how can we go from awake to asleep in under 15 minutes?
Four Sleep Basics to Cover
Backed by science, anecdote and personal experience, the following sleep principles tend to contribute to a better night of sleep on most, but not all, occasions:
1. Be Consistent with Your Sleep and Wake Times
Having consistent sleep and wake times is typically better than going to bed and waking up at significantly different times throughout the week. This article explains it well.
Most will agree that up to an hour of variance is tolerable, but keeping the sleep/wake windows within 30 minutes of each other throughout the week, as much as possible, contributes to lower sleep latency and high-quality sleep. It works with children and it works just as well with adults.
The idea of consistency aligns very much with other processes in our lives. If you eat at consistent times, your body will crave foods at increasingly consistent times. Anyone who has dealt with healthy or unhealthy addictions can tell you the same thing. In many cases, the body is keeping time even if our minds are not.
Sticking to a fairly regular sleep and wake times can help train your circadian rhythm, and your body will know when to produce the chemicals it needs to enter rest mode.
One simple thing you can do this week:
In the same way you set a wake up alarm, set a bedtime alarm.
This could be the time you turn off the last light, or it could be the time you start your go-to-sleep routine, or both
2. Establish a Consistent Bedtime Routine
Consistency for the win, again. Consistency of routine is a trusty way to get your mind and body out of a wound-up state, and transition into a more relaxed state.
In the mind, repeating the same steps each night conditions the brain to associate those actions with sleep, reinforcing a "wind-down" trigger.
In the body, predictable, low-stress situations engage the parasympathetic nervous system (i.e. chill mode), reducing cortisol, triggering relaxation responses, and regulating the autonomic nervous system—helping the body transition into rest mode.
An easy mnemonic to remember:
Sympathetic = Stress ("fight or flight")
Parasympathetic = Peace (“rest and digest”)
There’s some importance to be placed on the activities of this routine. For most people, including a shot of espresso right after brushing your teeth would probably not be conducive to better sleep, if not for the caffeine then definitely for the shocking taste.
But for the most part, how to build this routine is up to you. The key is consistency, and simplicity.
Think about what you normally do before bed each night. If those activities are done haphazardly at different stages of the evening, see how many you can put into a series of activities during the 15-or-so minutes before bed.
If you find that there’s always some kind of annoying activity that you encounter before bed, see if there’s a way you can knock that out well ahead of your bedtime routine. The goal here is to create minimum mental strain before bed.
There’s nothing wrong with trying different tools like pre-sleep meditation, gratitude work or breath work. One suggestion here: pick your tool in advance. The aforementioned “mental strain” can be created by swiping and scrolling through the meditation options or chill-out music that you seek, completely undoing anything that the tool was designed to do in the first place.
One simple thing you can do this week (pairs well with #1)
Document and stick to a 15-minute bedtime routine.
Include anything you already do, but this time, write it down.
Set a start and end time
Try for 7 days in a row (if you adjust the start/end times on the weekends, try to keep the duration the same)
Take note of how you feel on day 8, and decide if you want to continue, adjust, or halt.
3. Sleep in a dark room and 4. sleep in cool room
These two are some of the most common suggestions you’ll find in any guidance on getting higher quality sleep. In essence, they are two more ways to prioritize consistency and the removal of stressors before bed.
Sleeping in a dark room:
There’s a lot of science to prove the importance of a dark room when it comes to getting high-quality sleep. There are also a few studies that claim that some ambient light doesn’t make too much of a difference. And we all know of a guy who fell asleep by the poolside. So, how much does darkness really affect sleep? Let’s put the science side for a minute.
Beyond what it might do to the brain, light in the room can be distracting and annoying to the mind. Waving shadows of trees on the wall; a flickering street lamp; a reminder of that neighbor who never turns off the spotlight above their garage.
Very simply, blocking out the light reduces the possibility of a mental intrusion as you lay down to sleep.
One simple thing you can do this week:
5 minutes before you start your bedtime routine, score your room’s darkness on a scale of 1-10 (10 being complete blackout).
Turn off the light, and observe any light that’s coming in. How does this work for your level of light sensitivity?
Make a note of where you can block the light. Consider blackout curtains and other remedies for penetrating lights. If too much light can’t be blocked, consider exploring a soft sleep mask.
Sleeping in a cool room
Most people have a different definition of what temperature defines a “cool room.” But most people agree that if the room feels too warm, falling asleep becomes more difficult.
There’s a physiological reason for this: decreased body temperature (a 1-2º dip at bedtime) is a central part of your body’s transition into “sleep mode.” Higher temperatures signal to the brain that it’s time to wake up and stop producing melatonin (the sleep hormone).
Your warm body, bundled under a comfortable blanket, atop a thick cushy mattress is like, really good at generating heat. So you need to surround yourself with cool air to keep the balance. Small adjustments to the blanket are like adjusting the thermostat, allowing cooler air to enter, or stay out from under the covers.
If the room is too warm, there’s no cool air to drift under the covers, and there’s no reprieve from your own body heat. This body heat is what causes us to stir or wake, and is the reason why a cooler room tends to help us get better sleep.
One simple thing to do this week:
Turn down the temperature (or turn up the A/C if you’re in warm weather) so that it feels chilly before you get into bed.
If it feels comfortable while you’re getting into bed, there is a chance the temperature beneath the covers will rise too high and be uncomfortable as your body, bed and blankets create a pocket of heat.
Four Unconventional Ways to Overcome Sleep-Onset Insomnia
If you’ve covered the basics and are still having trouble falling asleep, test these lesser-known practices that help decrease sleep latency.
(The first one is pretty controversial, so please feel free to skip it if it sounds like utter heresy.)
Go ahead and use your phone (but do it like this, and not like that)
If you’ve covered the basics and continue to lay in bed without falling asleep, I am suggesting that you grab your phone!
This can be helpful if a racing mind is what’s causing your sleep-onset insomnia. Focusing on something else can help relax your mind and body, and get you into sleep mode.
What tends to work:
Watching something mindless, like a short comedy show or funny animal videos.
Read something light.
Easy fiction, nothing too heavy. I find Ernest Hemingway’s works to be great for pre-sleep reading.
No-pressure non-fiction, like narrative histories or biographies. Ben Mezrich’s works are good for this.
Obviously, you can read without your phone. In contrast to other sources, I’m suggesting that reading on your phone is okay.
What to avoid:
Avoid scrolling, whether it’s scrolling a social media channel, or hunting for something to watch or read. Scrolling and hunting activates certain circuits in the brain associated with reward and reinforcement. These prime us for action and get us further from a sleep-ready brain.
Avoid “serious topics.” How you define serious is up to you - but for the most part, topics that cause you to start actively thinking, like planning and assessing, can move you away from sleep mode. A book of “50 ways to solve all of your problems” is not conducive to chilling you into sleep mode.
Overall, you want to find something that allows you to focus in and zone out. Get out of your head and let your mind float without needing to cling onto a serious narrative (whether that’s in your head or on the screen). Limit it to 30 minutes max, and try the pillows again.
One simple thing you can do this week:
In order to avoid searching or scrolling for something to read/watch during these moments, create a shortlist of “emergency content” you can engage in if you need to zone out before bed.
Your challenge will be to avoid distractions when you pick up your phone (the phone is very good at distracting us, so be careful!) and go right to the content. Skip the scrolling, the newsfeeds. Do not check your email. Just go to the cat video and lay back.
Lastly, you need to commit to watching or reading. Pick something and stick to it; try to avoid flip-flopping around. Really absorb the material, even if you’ve seen it a hundred times. The goal is to let your mind wander … which ties in with the next suggestion…
Let your mind wander … towards questions
The difference between a racing mind and a wandering mind is the level of control we try to exert on our thoughts.
When the mind starts to race, a natural reaction is to think harder in order to settle it down. We start reacting to all the thoughts, which are usually affected by your current state, tired and trying to settle down, which is not the ideal mindset for producing chilled out, sleep-inducing thoughts.
My suggestion in this case is to relinquish control and let your mind wander, specifically towards questions.
Easier said than done, but very practical. A simple trick is to use phrases like “I wonder,” “What about,” or “How would XYZ?” You don’t have to put any pressure on yourself to ask legitimate questions.
The point is to flip your thinking from pressure-filled statements and planning and scheduling into benign statements of curiosity; not come up with a list of mental performance tasks.
The secret (and the hardest part) is to not answer these questions.
A trick for this is to simply use “Hmm… I wonder” as your default answer. If you feel yourself trying to answer one of these questions, insert the default answer and generate another “What about…?” statement in your mind.
Lastly, keep a soft tone in your inner voice and fill your questions with genuine (if unanswered) curiosity.
One simple thing you can do this week:
Let your mind wander towards questions in order to induce that sleepy feeling
Flip statements around into “what about …?”, “how would …”, and “I wonder what …” statements
Don’t try to answer the questions, just keep asking.
Use “Hmm… I wonder …” as your default answer to prevent your planning and scheduling mind from interrupting your questions monologue.
Practice this throughout the day, so it’s not a new concept at bedtime.
You would not be the first person to have fallen asleep by swapping sheep with a series of hmm, I wonder’s.
Sit up, lights off, eyes open
Another unconventional approach to beating sleep-onset insomnia is deciding to sit up at the edge of your bed and keep your eyes open for 10 minutes.
Hang your feet off the bed, keep the lights off, and then pick a spot on the wall (or imagine a place on the wall if your room is very dark) and just look towards it. You don’t have to stare; blink normally. Don’t worry too much about your posture, this isn’t a meditation practice (although good posture is never a bad thing).
And just sit for 10 minutes. You can focus on your breathing, but you don’t have to. You could do a quick body scan, but that’s also optional.
The key here is to keep your eyes open softly, blinking when needed but for all intents-and-purposes, staring at one spot on the wall.
This can do a few things:
It can cool you down. If you’re sitting up with your feet over the edge of the bed, without a blanket in your cool room, your body temperature is likely to drop which can create feelings of sleepiness.
If you’re combining this with the Ask Questions approach, you might find that sitting and asking yourself rhetorical, unanswered questions is sleep inducing.
You might even combine this with #1. Instead of reading that engaging short story as you lay in bed, sit up on the side of the bed and read. Keep your mind open, your body temperature cool, and ask yourself open-ended questions as you read or watch.
Try it this week if you’re having trouble falling asleep. Does it work? What would you modify? Take note and report back.
At last, enjoy the silence
This one is definitely easier said than done, because I know that for myself any bout of sleep-onset insomnia makes it hard to enjoy anything.
But as you lay there having a really hard time falling asleep, think about the last time you actually had some time to yourself, without looking at anything or being required to tend to someone else’s needs.
Maybe you actually just need this time, and your body and brain are asking you to enjoy some peace and quiet.
This is certainly not the case for all, or even a majority of sleep-onset insomnia cases, but it might be the case for yours.
With this realization, there’s no immediate remedy other than the fact that your sleep-onset-insomnia-induced-anxiety might dissipate by 5-10% by simply acknowledging that you’re exactly where you’re supposed to be. Maybe it’s not an insomnia curse at all, but a blessing to give you some much needed alone time.
These are a few unconventional tactics that have helped me fall asleep more quickly when I’m having a hard time. What other ways have you tried to conquer sleep-onset insomnia? Leave a note in the comments, or share on Instagram with your thoughts.
A Few Sleep-related Questions to Consider
In addition to your sleep basics and trying out some unconventional tactics to reduce sleep-onset insomnia, there is one critical reminder to share: great sleep doesn’t happen in isolation.
Great sleep is often the result of a combination of activities we need to do (or avoid) throughout the day.
How I been actively been lately? Being more active throughout the day, especially short walks after meals, can help use up the energy that may show up as pre-sleep anxiety.
How’s my diet? How’s my hydration? The body always knows, and if you’re dehydrated, under-nourished (not necessarily hungry, but lacking sufficient nutrients) or both, you might have a harder time getting into relax mode before bed.
Have I taken moments of pause throughout the day? It’s a tall order for the brain and body to run at 100 mph all day long and then be expected to come to a complete halt at 9 or 10 at night. Take a few moments (really just moments, 60 seconds or so) to stop during the day. Keep the phone away. Close your eyes if you can. Ask a few non-answerable questions. And then get back to your day. Practicing these small moments of pause will train you to know what it feels like to slow down when it's close to bedtime. Not having practiced this feeling can make “rest and relaxation” a foreign concept at night.
All in all, be kind to yourself and think in terms of small improvements. I’d love it if you conquered your sleep-onset insomnia tonight after reading this article or incorporating other practices that help you relax and fall asleep. If that’s not the case, focus on the process, and the outcomes will follow.
