Ask HN: How do you fall asleep? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you fall asleep?

3 pointsdustyreagan6 comments

I've always had trouble falling asleep. But not having a 9 to 5 has made it even worse. Left to my own devices I fall asleep when I'm mentally exhausted and wake up, without an alarm, when I'm rested.

I just can't seem to shut my mind off at will, and further I can't decide if the effort to go to bed at a reasonable hour is even necessary, aside from fitting in with social norms.

What do y'all do? Do you try to go to bed at a reasonable hour? Why? How do you shut your brain off and sleep?

View on HN

Start dreaming in your head. Don't think of real stuff or ideas you're working on. Dream or imagine something. Stretch. Get comfortable.

I struggle falling asleep sometimes as well. Actually, a lot of the time. Here's what helps for me:

1. Don't bring my laptop into the bedroom. If it's around, I keep giving in to the urge to check HN or Facebook or Twitter or my email "one last time" every 15 minutes or so.

2. I drink a glass of milk and take a melatonin tablet about 30 minutes before bed. Melatonin helps induce drowsiness.

3. Turn the light off. Seems totally obvious, but if I'm reading in bed, I may have my lamp on. Sometimes I just have to force myself to turn the f!#kng light off so I can fall asleep.

4. Turn the AC down. I sleep better when it's a little chilly, so I turn my thermostat down a few degrees a little while before bedtime.

5. Daydream. I just start running through some kind of scenario in my head and let the fantasy run until I fall asleep.

Truth be told, badly. I can lay awake all night thinking about stuff and then when I get up in the morning I can be more tired than I was when I got in.

Very frustrating, and I wished there was a reliable, non pharmaceutical way to get a good nights sleep. I've tried a lot of different things over the years, the only thing that seems to help me is to stop 'work' around 4 pm and to only work on physical stuff after that. (not that anything I do could legally be called work, but it keeps me busy nonetheless).

I don't think there a many people able to shut down their brain by pure willpower. When I notice that I can't go to sleep I get up again. Why?

Because when the body is not ready for rest, it's, atleast for me, impossible to force him. So I just start doing things like go for a walk in the dark, read a book or clean up. Once I get tired I hop back in bed and surprise, I'm able to fall asleep.

One thing I've found to help is listening to a podcast, oddly enough. Even though I enjoy the content, something about the sound from the TWiT network just seems to put me out if I'm laying in bed with it on.

Kids. They remove most barriers to sleep.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com