Write a to-Do List Before Bed to Help You Fall Asleep Faster.
If you’re having trouble falling asleep at night, your ticket to town to postpone sleep might be on your to-do list.
In a recent study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology, a group of people either made a list of what they had already done or a list of things to do over the next few days.
The groups then slept in the laboratory, where their sleep was monitored. People on the to-do list fell asleep on average nine minutes faster than those who wrote down what they had already done.
Those who carefully made their to-do lists and jotted down a number of details did even better, falling asleep 15 minutes faster than everyone else.
Scientists believe that the main thing is to offload the to-do list. Without writing things down, we often lie in bed and scroll through the to-do list in our head, preventing sleep.
If you have to do a dozen things tomorrow, jogging through them, all this can be more incapacitating than tiring.
When you write things down, you ensure you don’t forget them. This reduces stress levels and frees the mind to sleep.