Not sure if you meant for this to be funny, but I laughed out loud at this because i do the exact same thing. I too can fall asleep within two minutes anytime, anywhere, while "working" on my "novel".
The trick is to never go to sleep with the actual intent of going to sleep. You go to sleep with the mentality of finally, some time for myself to just lie here and work on this project in my head. I work on fleshing out my little fantasy/sci-fi world or solving problems related to my pet programming project. I drift off seamlessly within minutes.
Attempting too hard to sleep is self-defeating; ironically, the stress of actively trying to sleep will prevent you from doing just that.
f.lux et al reduce the amount of time necessary to be away from the screen, but don't eliminate it. The only screen that's "safe" for me is a small black AMOLED screen (aka no backlight) with dim text.
With obstructive sleep apnea, you too can fall asleep in those stressful situations like driving, in the middle of a fire drill at your desk, and while attending an important work presentation!
(On the serious, I have an appointment to get a CPAP tomorrow and in the meantime I sleep sitting up with my feet elevated and avoid most of the ill effects, but it's only a short term solution because it must be weighted against the possibility of a DVT or other blood clot.)
Oh and your insurance (if you live in a country that has it) may require specific amounts of usage in the first month. Be very aware of that, it's easy to be "non-compliant" because you took it off in the middle of the night.
The main things I notice now... I used to be able to sleep 12 hours a night easy and wake up tired, now I can hardly sleep more than 8 hours and function completely fine on 6 hours. I can drive for more than 2 hours without having to pull over and take a nap. I don’t feel like I’m about to doze off at work regularly. My productivity has overall increased, but it was a gradual change that I don’t notice unless I think back to my productivity in the past.
If I lapse on usage, I find myself unable to really feel like I'm working at 100% efficiency. It takes a few weeks of nightly use before I feel good again.
You may not feel a night and day difference. It can be subtle, but things like not needing multiple naps a day can really make a difference to your quality of life.
If your SO says you snore, or choke and stop breathing, PAY ATTENTION. Get a sleep study!
Get it, the difference is huge. Be aware that it's one of those things that's like 10 good things and 8 bad things; but the good outweighs the bad.
Make sure they give you one of the newer machines that has an SD card in it. And it must be an APAP machine, not CPAP. The APAP continuously adjusts air pressure to match your current needs.
The SD card records details of every breath you take. You then plug that info into SleepyHead software and see what's happening to your body.
This is important, because in general the insurance companies only care that you use your machine 4+ hrs per night. They are happy if your AHI (a measure of how bad your apnea is) is below 5. But that still means you are having 5 serious events per hour. Which is bad, unless you're an insurance company.
Go to cpaptalk.com and apneaboard.com and learn how to interpret your SleepyHead data and fine tune your machine to get your AHI down to 0. Works for many younger people. Old folks tend to have other medical issues that keep them from getting full benefit from CPAP. Even they can still be helped; e.g. there are more sophisticated machines that will even help people breathe in and out if their body/brain can no longer do it automatically.
Here is a starting point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positive_airway_pressure