If you’re lying in bed unable to fall asleep, the single most effective thing you can do right now is get up. It sounds counterintuitive, but staying in bed while frustrated trains your brain to associate the bed with wakefulness. Below are both immediate fixes for tonight and longer-term habits that make tomorrow night easier.
Get Out of Bed After 20 Minutes
If you’ve been awake for roughly 20 minutes, or you notice yourself feeling frustrated, leave the bedroom. Move to another room if you can and do something low-key until you feel genuinely drowsy. The goal is to break the cycle where your bed becomes a place your brain links with tossing and turning rather than sleep.
Good activities for this window: reading something light (not gripping), folding laundry, journaling, gentle stretching, listening to calm music, or making a list for tomorrow. Avoid anything that rewards you for staying awake, like a compelling TV show or scrolling social media. When sleepiness hits, go back to bed. If another 20 minutes pass and you’re still awake, get up again. Repeat as many times as needed. This technique, called stimulus control, is one of the core components of the most effective behavioral treatment for insomnia.
Slow Your Breathing Down
Once you’re back in bed (or even while you’re in another room waiting for drowsiness), controlled breathing can lower your heart rate and shift your nervous system out of alert mode. The 4-7-8 method is simple to remember:
- Inhale through your nose for 4 counts
- Hold for 7 counts
- Exhale slowly through your mouth for 8 counts
Rest the tip of your tongue against the back of your front teeth and keep it there throughout. The long exhale is what matters most. It activates the branch of your nervous system responsible for calming you down. Run through three or four cycles without forcing it.
Distract Your Brain From Racing Thoughts
A busy mind is one of the most common reasons people can’t fall asleep. Telling yourself to stop thinking rarely works, but redirecting your thoughts onto something boring does. One technique that works surprisingly well is called cognitive shuffling. Pick a random, emotionally neutral word, like “garden.” Take the first letter, G, and picture as many objects as you can that start with it: goat, guitar, globe, grape. Visualize each one briefly before moving to the next. When you run out of G words, move to the second letter of “garden,” A, and repeat.
This works because it mimics the random, image-based thinking your brain does as it drifts toward sleep, while blocking the logical, problem-solving thoughts that keep you alert. The key is choosing neutral words. Animals, grocery items, and everyday objects are ideal. Avoid anything emotionally loaded.
Check Your Bedroom Temperature
Your body needs to cool down slightly to fall asleep. About two hours before your natural bedtime, your core temperature begins to drop, which triggers the release of melatonin. A room that’s too warm fights this process. The ideal range for most people is 65 to 68°F (18 to 20°C). If you don’t have a thermostat, a fan, lighter blankets, or wearing less to bed all help. Even cracking a window in cooler weather can make a noticeable difference.
You can also use this biology to your advantage. A warm shower or bath taken one to two hours before bed, even as short as 10 minutes, speeds up the post-bath temperature drop. The warm water pulls blood toward your skin’s surface, and once you step out, that heat dissipates quickly, cooling your core faster than it would on its own. A meta-analysis of the research found this measurably shortened the time it took people to fall asleep.
Put Screens Away Earlier
The light from phones, tablets, and laptops suppresses melatonin, the hormone that signals your brain it’s time for sleep. Blue light is the worst offender. In one Harvard experiment, blue light suppressed melatonin for about twice as long as green light and shifted the body’s internal clock by three hours. The recommendation is to avoid bright screens two to three hours before bed. If that’s not realistic, night mode filters help somewhat, but dimming the screen and switching to a non-screen activity at least an hour before bed makes a real difference.
If you’re reading this on your phone right now because you can’t sleep, finish the article, then put the phone face down in another room and try the breathing or cognitive shuffling techniques instead.
Cut Caffeine Earlier in the Day
Caffeine has a half-life of four to six hours, meaning that if you drink a cup of coffee at 4 p.m., half the caffeine is still circulating in your blood at 9 or 10 p.m. The other half doesn’t vanish either; it continues breaking down for hours after that. A good cutoff for most people with a standard evening bedtime is 2 or 3 p.m. This includes tea, energy drinks, and dark chocolate, not just coffee. If you’re particularly sensitive to caffeine, you may need to push that cutoff even earlier.
Should You Try Melatonin?
Melatonin supplements are most useful for people whose sleep timing is off, not for general insomnia. If your natural sleepiness doesn’t kick in until 2 or 3 a.m. and you need to be asleep by 11 p.m., a low dose of melatonin taken earlier in the evening can help shift that window. But if your problem is staying asleep, waking too early, or general restlessness, melatonin is unlikely to help much. Its sleep-inducing effect is relatively weak compared to what most people expect.
Your brain naturally produces about 0.3 milligrams of melatonin per day. Over-the-counter supplements range from 1 to over 10 milligrams per dose, which delivers far more than your body makes on its own. There’s no evidence that higher doses work better for most people. Starting with 1 to 3 milligrams is reasonable. Yale Medicine notes that most people don’t need more than 5 milligrams unless they have a specific sleep disorder. If you have liver problems, be cautious with higher doses, since your liver is responsible for clearing melatonin from the blood.
Build a Consistent Wind-Down Routine
If you can’t sleep on a regular basis, the single most powerful change is going to bed and waking up at the same time every day, including weekends. Your internal clock relies on consistency. Sleeping in on Saturday morning feels great in the moment but shifts your clock later, making Sunday night harder.
In the hour or two before bed, do the same few calming things in the same order. This could be a warm shower, then reading, then the breathing exercise. The specific activities matter less than the consistency. Over time your brain starts to recognize the sequence as a cue that sleep is coming, the same way a bedtime story works for a child. Pair this with the 20-minute rule on nights when sleep doesn’t come easily, and within a few weeks most people notice a meaningful improvement.