How to Fall Asleep: 13 Tips to Get to Sleep Fast

The fastest way to fall asleep is to lower your arousal, not to try harder. Slow your breathing, keep a consistent sleep and wake time, cool and darken the room, and get off screens about an hour before bed. If you are still awake after 20 minutes, get up, do something calm in low light, and come back when you feel sleepy. The 13 tips below break that down.

Plenty of people find it hard to fall asleep, whether the cause is stress, an irregular body clock, caffeine, or plain screen time late at night. The good news is that most of what actually helps is simple and within your control. Here is how to fall asleep faster, and what the sleep research supports.

13 Tips to Fall Asleep Fast

1. 4-7-8 breathing exercise

Often, you can’t sleep because there’s a lack of calmness and relaxation in your body. This is a breathing method developed by Dr. Andrew Weil to give you the relaxation to fall asleep. It should help you unwind and become drowsy to fall asleep at night. To do this, inhale for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 7 seconds, and exhale for 8 seconds. It’s as simple and easy as that, and you can do this repeatedly until you feel calmer. If counting in your head keeps you alert, our free 4-7-8 breathing timer paces each round for you so you can keep your eyes closed. Sometimes, the answer on how to fall asleep relies on breathing exercises. The same relaxation logic drives the military sleep method, a four-step routine that relaxes you head to toe before bed. And if it’s your mind rather than your body keeping you up, the cognitive shuffling technique crowds out racing thoughts with a stream of random images until you drift off.

2. Don’t break your body clock

Your body clock is so important when it comes to sleep. When you sleep at varying times, your body gets confused, which makes it harder to fall asleep. Your circadian rhythm, the internal clock that times sleep and wakefulness, keeps time best on a steady schedule. By sticking to a schedule or a night time routine every night, you’ll find it much easier to sleep at night. For instance, if you sleep at 10 pm every night, try to stick to this schedule. This also means preparing for bed at least an hour before your desired sleep time. You’ll find that you’ll naturally get drowsy when it’s almost time for bed, and in the same sense, even without an alarm, you naturally wake up in the morning after 7 to 9 hours of sleep.

3. Lower the temperature

There’s a reason it’s much easier to fall asleep in a cool room than in a warm one. Your core temperature naturally dips as you fall asleep and rises again as you wake, so a cool room, around 65 degrees Fahrenheit or 18 degrees Celsius for many people, works with that rhythm. Set your thermostat to whatever cool setting feels comfortable to you. A warm bath an hour or two before bed can help too, because your body cools down afterward and that drop signals sleep.

4. Avoid using your gadgets

Using your phone, tablet, laptop, or any electronics around you is the fastest way to lose sleep. Not only do you lose track of time and become distracted, but your devices suppress the melatonin in your body, which is the sleep hormone. If you find that you’re easily distracted by using your gadgets at night, put it away so you won’t be tempted to grab it when you can’t fall asleep. It’s also recommendable that you stop using your gadgets an hour before bedtime. And if the real issue isn’t that you can’t sleep but that you keep staying up on your phone when you’re exhausted, that’s a separate habit worth breaking. If it turns out that you need to use your devices at night, make sure to use blue light glasses to protect your eyes and your sleep. Avoid using devices as much as possible if you want to know how to fall asleep at night.

5. Do physical activity

You need to be exhausted at night to fall asleep and physical activity during the day helps with this. Not only does working out improve your sleep pattern, but it reduces the stress hormone in your body. However, you shouldn’t overdo your exercises as it can lead to poor sleep. By working out in the morning, you’ll find that you’re more exhausted when it’s time for bed at night. Exercise also releases endorphins and dopamine in your body, which are both hormones responsible for making you feel good and happy. When you’re happy, you generally fall asleep better at night.

6. Meditation

As another breathing practice, meditation is useful in helping you sleep better through mindfulness and relaxation. When you’re stressed, tensed, and thinking about many things, it’s almost impossible to fall asleep. And if the worry is specifically about whether you’ll sleep at all, that’s sleep anxiety, which feeds on the effort to force sleep and needs a slightly different approach. Through meditation, you can calm your mind, body, and soul. You’ll have more peace and relaxation in your body, helping you sleep better as meditation is known for releasing the tension in your body. Meditation improves your melatonin levels to help you achieve the state of sleep that you desire while letting you worry less about things you’re stressed about. Not only does it benefit your sleep pattern, but it makes you feel energized when you get up in the morning. If your body stays tense the moment your head hits the pillow, progressive muscle relaxation for sleep walks you down out of that alertness one muscle group at a time.

There are plenty of guided meditation apps for sleep. We recommend ours, Declutter The Mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XD_CQKsRbog

7. Avoid naps

If you’ve had a poor night’s sleep throughout the night, the tendency is to have short naps within the day, generally in the afternoon. While these can recharge your energy and mood effectively, naps harm your overall sleep at night. In fact, they’re the reason that you might be sleep deprived at night. To take care of your sleep pattern at night, it’s still ideal to have a complete sleep to avoid the need for naps within the day. If you do need a midday reset without the groggy nap hangover, try non-sleep deep rest, a short lie-down practice that rests your nervous system while you stay awake.

8. Watch your diet

What and when you eat affects how easily you fall asleep. Large, heavy, or spicy meals close to bedtime can leave you too full or too warm to settle, so try to finish a big dinner about three hours before bed. If you get hungry later, a light snack is fine; a heavy one is not. Meals loaded with sugar and refined carbs late at night are linked to lighter, more broken sleep for some people, so lean on a balanced plate rather than a sugary one before bed.

9. Read a book

Reading a few pages in bed is a calm, low-stimulation way to wind down and shift your mind off the day. The catch is light, not the book itself. A paper book or an e-ink reader with no backlight is ideal; a phone or a bright backlit tablet gives off the kind of light that suppresses melatonin and keeps you alert. Keep the lamp dim and the story undramatic. For some genuinely low-key reading, try a meditation book.

10. Avoid caffeine

If you’re the type of person who drinks coffee, tea, or any caffeinated beverage before bedtime, this could be the reason why you’re not falling asleep at night. Caffeine is a significant factor in making you alert and awake, making it almost impossible to fall asleep with caffeine in your system. Caffeine isn’t just found in your favorite beverages, it’s also in chocolate, some teas, and a few soft drinks. Caffeine can linger in your system for several hours, so if you are sensitive to it, keep your last cup to the morning or early afternoon and cut it off at least six hours before bed.

11. Listen to relaxing music

Music plays a significant factor in a long-lasting sleep, whether you realize it or not. In fact, studies show that music plays a part in improving chronic sleep disorders such as insomnia. There are various kinds of relaxing music to listen to for deep sleep, whether classical music, jazz, or even music used in meditation. Music helps you fall asleep faster because if you’re surrounded by noise, music helps block out the noise. It’s almost impossible to fall asleep when you live in a noisy environment, and music seems to be the factor that helps fix your sleeping pattern. In the same spirit, a sound bath before bed uses gentle, sustained tones to help you wind down.

12. Limit the light in your bedroom

As you’re falling asleep, a dark environment benefits the melatonin in your body. When it’s bright, your body assumes that it’s time to wake up, and when it’s dark, this signals your body that it’s time to sleep. It could help you fall asleep better when you have pitch black curtains or make sure that there is no light in your room when you’re ready to fall asleep. If you don’t want your room to be completely dark, you could opt for an eye mask instead of numb to the light around you. Eye masks are also known to give comfort during sleep.

13. Find the right sleeping position

Your sleeping position says a lot about your comfort and relaxation. By finding the right position, you’ll find it much easier to fall asleep faster. Studies have shown that those who sleep on their sides have a much higher sleep quality than those who sleep in any other position. Even if traditionally, sleeping on your back was believed to be best, those who sleep on their sides are most comfortable. Ultimately, you can choose to sleep on your back, stomach, or side, and choose the one most comfortable for you.

You will not need all 13 of these at once. Pick two or three that fit your evening, a steady bedtime, a cool dark room, and a few slow breaths, and give them a couple of weeks before you judge them. Most sleep trouble responds to small, repeatable habits rather than one dramatic fix. If you want a little help winding down, these apps that help you fall asleep faster are a good place to start.

When to talk to a doctor

These tips support healthy sleep, but they are not a treatment for a sleep disorder. If you have trouble falling or staying asleep most nights for three months or longer, or you feel exhausted during the day no matter what you try, talk to a doctor. Ongoing sleeplessness can be insomnia or another treatable condition, and you do not have to just live with it.

Frequently asked questions

How long should it take to fall asleep?

For most people, drifting off takes somewhere between 10 and 20 minutes. Falling asleep the moment your head hits the pillow, or in under five minutes, can be a sign you are sleep deprived. Regularly lying awake for 30 minutes or more is worth paying attention to.

What should I do if I cannot sleep after 20 minutes?

Get out of bed and do something calm and boring in low light, like reading a few pages of a paper book, until you feel sleepy again, then go back to bed. Staying in bed frustrated teaches your brain to associate the bed with being awake, so a short reset often works better than lying there trying harder.

Does the 4-7-8 breathing method actually work?

It is a relaxation technique, not a cure for insomnia. Slowing your exhale calms the nervous system and eases the wound-up feeling that keeps many people awake, which can make it easier to drift off. It helps some people a lot and others very little, so treat it as one tool rather than a guarantee.

What is the best bedroom temperature for sleep?

A cool room, around 65 degrees Fahrenheit or 18 degrees Celsius for many people, supports the natural drop in core body temperature that happens as you fall asleep. The exact number is personal, so adjust to what feels comfortable to you.

When should I see a doctor about not being able to sleep?

If trouble falling or staying asleep happens most nights for three months or more, or you feel wiped out during the day no matter what you try, it is worth talking to a doctor. Ongoing sleeplessness can be insomnia or another treatable sleep condition.