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Comment by zwischenzug | Hacker News Reader

I have two 'tricks' to falling asleep (but this article looks better).

The first is to play the 'unrelated words' game, where you think of a word as completely unrelated to the last word as possible.

The second is to count up and work out whether the current number is prime.

Both occupy the mind while minimizing stress, allowing the body to relax into sleep.

I'm definitely going to try the techniques in the article though.

This also made me think of Feynman's sleep experiments:

https://www.reddit.com/r/LucidDreaming/comments/1p1107/richa...

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i had trouble falling asleep for about the first 35 years of my life. then i hit on a technique i call “scenarios.” i have various made-up fantasy settings, like an island nation surrounded by a sea of mud, and i make up stories about its inhabitants, building on whatever stories i made up last time. this seems to short-circuit the problem i had earlier, where i could not get my brain to stop racing, worrying about various real-life issues.

i have always considered my technique to be so weird and awkward that i have never discussed it with anyone. but now i see, from reading the comments here, that other people have similar techniques. who knew.

I expect there are many who use what you call "scenarios"

What a gift!

... to be able to imagine wild scenarios.

I'm guessing you're a fantasy writer...

If not, I've never seen a more obvious sign..

Occupying the mind with a mundane task seems to be really helpful for me.

Getting stressful thoughts off my mind is important. But just trying to stop thinking about whatever is worrying me doesn't work because my mind doesn't like to sit there doing nothing, so it looks for something to fill the time with. And the easy choice is whatever issues or problems I've been struggling with lately.

But if I do a mundane task, my brain has something to work on, and it doesn't go looking for things to occupying itself, which means the risk of thinking about something stressful is much less.

Personally I use a crossword puzzle app on my phone. It requires my full attention to think through different words, and the clues give sufficient fodder that I can have some harmless, non-stressful mental tangents. And the thought of leaving a crossword puzzle and coming back later doesn't bother me, unlike say quitting a game of chess in the middle would.

How determining if a number is prime is not stressful? O_o

Well, there are algorithms... but I guess everyone's different :)

Maybe there's a kind of thinking you like to do that's 'routine' and irrelevant to daily stresses?

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