Doing this one thing before bed will help you fall asleep faster
There’s nothing worse than getting into bed and feeling ready to sleep when all of a sudden a flood of intrusive thoughts decides to jolt you awake.
Did I say the wrong thing today? I hope Anne isn’t angry at me.
I’ve got so many errands to run tomorrow. How will I get everything done?
What was that sound? Did I forget to lock the front door?
Before you know it, it’s been an hour and you’re still far from the land of nod.
So what can you do to switch off those annoying thoughts and fall asleep faster? Well, the key could be sitting on your desk right now.
According to a new study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, writing down a to-do list before turning in could be the secret to getting a longer night’s sleep.
Researchers from Baylor University monitored the sleep patterns of 57 adults and told half to write down “everything you have to remember to do tomorrow and over the next few days,” in bullet points or paragraph form for five minutes prior to going to bed. The other half were told to write down what they’d done that day and on the previous days.
“We live in a 24/7 culture in which our to-do lists seem to be constantly growing and causing us to worry about unfinished tasks at bedtime,” lead author and assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience at Baylor University, Michael Scullin, said in a statement.
“Most people just cycle through their to-do lists in their heads, and so we wanted to explore whether the act of writing them down could counteract night-time difficulties with falling asleep.”
What they found was that those who wrote a to do list before bed fell asleep “significantly faster” than those who simply wrote down that they had completed. Furthermore, those who wrote longer, more specific to do lists fell asleep even faster than those who wrote shorter, more general ones.
“We think that when people offload everything in their mind that might be hard to remember otherwise, it gives them some relief from that rumination,” Scullin told Time.
But it’s not enough to just think about what you have to do the next day, he explains. “It seems to be the act of writing it out that’s the key ingredient.”
Although the nine extra minutes of sleep the to do list participants got over their completed list counterparts doesn’t seem like much, it’s comparable to the results observed in clinical trials for some prescription sleep medications.
“It’s not insignificant,” he says. “Getting nine extra minutes of sleep every night can actually make a real difference.”
Tell us in the comments below, have you tried this method? Did it work for you?