If you’ve been lying in bed staring at the ceiling, the most effective thing you can do right now is get up. It sounds counterintuitive, but staying in bed while you’re wide awake trains your brain to associate your bed with wakefulness rather than sleep. The techniques below range from things you can try in the next 60 seconds to habits that will help you fall asleep faster on future nights.
Get Out of Bed
The single most research-backed piece of advice for people who can’t fall asleep is simple: if you’re not asleep after roughly 15 to 20 minutes, leave your bed. Go to another room, keep the lights dim, and do something quiet and unstimulating, like reading a physical book or folding laundry. Return to bed only when you feel genuinely sleepy again.
This technique, called stimulus control, was developed by sleep researcher Richard Bootzin and is a core part of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia. The logic is straightforward. Every minute you spend tossing and turning strengthens a mental link between your bed and frustration. By reserving your bed for sleep (and only sleep), you rebuild it as a cue for drowsiness instead of anxiety. The same rule applies if you wake up in the middle of the night and can’t get back to sleep.
Slow Your Breathing Down
Once you’re back in bed feeling drowsy, controlled breathing can help you cross the line into sleep. The 4-7-8 method is one of the most widely recommended patterns: inhale through your nose for four counts, hold for seven counts, then exhale slowly through your mouth for eight counts. Repeat the cycle three or four times.
The long exhale activates your parasympathetic nervous system, the branch responsible for calming your body after stress. It lowers your heart rate and signals to your brain that it’s safe to wind down. The counting also gives your mind a concrete task, which interrupts the loop of worrying about not sleeping.
Relax Your Body From Head to Toe
Progressive muscle relaxation works by tensing and then releasing each muscle group in sequence, which makes your whole body feel heavier and looser. Start with your fists: clench them for about five seconds, then let go completely. Move to your biceps, then your forehead, jaw, tongue, shoulders, stomach, thighs, calves, and feet. For each group, hold the tension briefly, then release and notice the contrast.
A faster version of this is sometimes called the military sleep method, reportedly developed at the U.S. Navy Pre-Flight School. Instead of tensing muscles, you simply focus on releasing tension one area at a time. Close your eyes, take slow deep breaths, and relax your forehead. Let the relaxation spread down through your cheeks, jaw, and tongue. Drop your shoulders as low as they’ll go. Let your arms go limp one at a time, from bicep to fingertips. Work your way down through your chest, stomach, and legs. If a stray thought pops up, acknowledge it briefly and return your focus to whichever body part you’re on. With practice, this method can put you to sleep in about two minutes.
Scramble Your Thoughts
Racing thoughts are the most common barrier to falling asleep, and trying to suppress them usually makes them louder. Cognitive shuffling offers a clever workaround. Pick a simple word, like “lamp.” Then, letter by letter, think of unrelated words that start with each letter. For “L,” you might picture a lemon, a ladder, a llama. When you run out of L-words, move to A-words, then M, then P.
Cognitive scientist Luc Beaudoin designed this technique based on how the brain naturally transitions to sleep. Right before you fall asleep, your thoughts become scattered and random, with disconnected images drifting through your mind. Cognitive shuffling mimics that disorganized pattern on purpose, nudging your brain toward its natural pre-sleep state. It works partly because you’re not trying to stop thinking. You’re just redirecting your thoughts toward something too boring and random to keep you alert.
Check Your Room Temperature
Your body needs to drop its core temperature slightly to initiate sleep. If your bedroom is too warm, that process stalls. The recommended range is 60 to 67°F (15 to 19°C), which feels cool to most people. If you don’t have precise thermostat control, a fan, lighter blankets, or sleeping with one foot outside the covers can help.
A warm bath or shower about 90 minutes before bed can accelerate this cooling process. The warm water draws blood to your hands and feet, and when you step out, that blood rapidly releases heat from your skin. Your core temperature drops, and the effect is measurable: a University of Texas analysis found that this timing improved both the speed of falling asleep and overall sleep quality. If you’re reading this at 2 a.m., a warm shower can still help, though the effect is strongest with that 90-minute buffer.
Put Your Phone Away
If you’ve been scrolling while trying to fall asleep, your screen is actively working against you. Two hours of exposure to an LED screen suppresses the sleep hormone melatonin by about 55% and delays its natural onset by roughly an hour and a half compared to reading a printed book. The effects are dose-dependent: people who use backlit devices for more than four hours a day report worse sleep efficiency, more irregular timing, and more trouble falling asleep overall.
If you need something to do after getting out of bed, choose a paper book, a podcast on a speaker (with the screen face-down), or a simple activity like stretching. If you absolutely must use your phone, enable the warmest possible screen tone and keep the brightness low, though this only reduces the problem rather than solving it.
Eat a Small Snack if You’re Hungry
Hunger itself can keep you awake, and ignoring it rarely helps. A small snack that contains magnesium or tryptophan (an amino acid your body uses to produce melatonin and serotonin) can actually support sleep onset rather than disrupting it. The key is keeping it light enough that your digestive system doesn’t have to work hard.
Good options include a banana with a small handful of almonds (together they provide over 100 milligrams of magnesium), a few pistachios (which contain more melatonin than any other nut), a small bowl of oatmeal, or a serving of yogurt. Pumpkin seeds, cashews, and walnuts are also solid choices. Avoid anything heavy, sugary, or caffeinated. You’re looking for something that takes the edge off hunger without waking up your gut.
What to Do Tomorrow Night
Tonight’s sleeplessness is frustrating, but a few daytime habits make a significant difference over time. Expose yourself to bright natural light within the first hour of waking, which anchors your circadian rhythm and makes your body release melatonin on schedule later. Avoid caffeine after early afternoon. Exercise regularly, but finish vigorous workouts at least a few hours before bed.
In the evening, start dimming your lights and putting screens away about an hour before your target bedtime. Keep your sleep and wake times consistent, even on weekends. Go to bed only when you feel sleepy, not just because the clock says you should. These changes feel unglamorous, but they’re the foundation of every clinical sleep program, and they work better than any single-night trick when practiced consistently.