How to Fall Asleep In Less Than 30 Seconds
By
Steve Pavlina
Does it take you a while to fall asleep at night? Do
you find your mind dwelling on various thoughts before you're able to
finally drift off and relax into sleep? Do you find that you just aren't
sleepy enough when it's time for bed?
Realize that if it takes you 15 minutes on average to
fall asleep each night, that's more than 91 hours per year that you're
wasting. This is the equivalent of spending more than two 40-hour
workweeks just lying in bed waiting to fall asleep.
And if you have insomniac tendencies and take more
than an hour to fall asleep each night, you're spending more than nine
40-hour weeks on that pointless activity — every year. That's a
tremendous amount of wasted time.
If you'd like to change this situation, keep reading.
I'll explain the details and share a process for training your brain to
fall asleep almost instantly when you're ready to go to bed.
Drop Caffeine (at Least Initially)
First, if you drink coffee, tea (including green tea
and white tea), yerba mate, cola, or any caffeinated beverages on a
semi-regular basis, this method won't work very well at all, so I
strongly recommend that you get off all caffeine for at least 2 weeks
before you attempt to make improvements in this area. I also advise
that you drop chocolate during this time as well, including cocoa and
cacao, since those contain stimulants too.
Even a small cup of coffee in the morning can disrupt
your ability to fall asleep quickly at night. You may also sleep less
restfully, and you'll be prone to awaken more often throughout the
night. Consequently, you may wake up tired and need extra sleep.
Simply eliminating all caffeine from your diet can
improve your sleep habits tremendously. So if you haven't already done
that, please do that first before you attempt the training method I
explain later in this article.
If you really love your caffeine though, the good
news is that it's okay to add it back once you've gone through this
adaptation training. It will still disrupt your sleep a bit, but once
you've mastered the habit of being able to fall asleep in 30 seconds or
less, then most likely you'll still be able to continue the habit even
if you consume some caffeine during the day.
Train Your Brain to Fall Asleep Faster
A decade ago it might have taken me 15-30 minutes to
fall asleep most nights. Sometimes it would take more than an hour if I
had a lot on my mind. And very occasionally I could fall asleep within 5
minutes or less if I was very sleepy.
Today it's fairly normal for me to fall asleep within
30 seconds or less, and often I'm able to fall asleep in less than 1
second. My best is probably around 1/4 of a second.
How do I know this? Because I have a witness that
tells me how long I was out. I also know that I was sleeping because I
awaken with the memory of a dream. If my sleep time is only a second or a
fraction of a second, then it's obviously a very short dream. Some time
dilation occurs though, so a 1-second dream may feel significantly
longer… perhaps as if 5-10 seconds have passed within the dream world.
Is this narcolepsy? No, narcolepsy is very different.
I don't just fall asleep at odd times throughout the day, and I don't
have excessive daytime sleepiness. Most days I don't take any naps. One
thing I do have in common with narcoleptics is that I can start having
dreams immediately when I fall asleep, whereas most people don't enter
the dream state for at least an hour. I regard this as a positive
adaptation though, not a problem or defect.
I can't normally force myself to sleep when I'm not
at all sleepy. But when I'm ready to go to sleep, I can go to sleep very
quickly without wasting time trying to fall asleep.
I'm not able to do this 100% perfectly. If I have a
stressful day and there's a lot on my mind at night, I may find it more
difficult to relax and go to sleep. But most of the time under normal,
average conditions, I can get to sleep within 30 seconds or less.
I reached this point not by the exertion of conscious
will but rather through a long-term process of sleep training. So don't
think that there's some mental trick that you can use right away to
make this happen instantly. However, once you've trained yourself to
this point, the process is effortless. You'll be able to do it
automatically. It will be no more difficult than blinking.
Understanding the Training Process
The training process may take a long time — months or
even years, depending on how far you want to go — but it's not at all
difficult, and it needn't take a serious time commitment. In fact, the
training will most likely save you a significant amount of time. The
only challenging part is maintaining consistency long enough to get
results.
First consider that it's possible for you to fall
asleep faster. Have you ever been really tired and sleepy at the end of a
day, and you fell asleep very quickly after getting into bed? Have you
ever drifted off while watching a movie or reading a book? Have you ever
fallen asleep within less than 2 minutes after lying down? If you've
done it before, then consider the possibility that your brain already
knows how to fall asleep quickly, and if you create the right
conditions, then you're capable of doing this again. You just need to
train your brain to do this more consistently.
The main reason that you aren't falling asleep faster
is that you haven't trained your brain to do so. You may be able to
reach that point eventually, but you're not there yet. Similarly, you
may be able to do the splits if you engage in flexibility training, but
in the absence of such training, you probably won't be able to do the
splits at all.
If you want to fall asleep faster, you must
incentivize your brain to drop all other activity and immediately
transition into sleep when you desire to do so. That is the essence of
this approach. If there are few consequences for a lazy approach to
falling asleep, then your brain will continue to be lazy and inefficient
in this area. You haven't given it a good enough reason to select more
efficient behaviors.
Your brain is always active, even during deep sleep,
and it operates in different modes of consciousness, including beta
(waking), alpha, theta, and delta phases. When you lie in bed waiting
for sleep, you're waiting for your brain to switch modes. An untrained
brain will often take its own sweet time making the necessary state
change. So you may dwell on other thoughts… or toss and turn… or just
lie awake until your brain is finally ready to transition. This is a
common experience. Without incentives to become more efficient, your
brain will remain naturally lazy by default.
Your conscious mind might very much like to go to
sleep, but it isn't in charge. Your subconscious determines when you
fall asleep. If your subconscious mind is in no hurry to fall asleep,
then your conscious mind will have a hard time forcing it. In fact, your
subconscious may continue to bubble up thoughts and ideas to occupy
your conscious mind, distracting you with mental clutter instead of
letting you relax and slide into sleep.
A trained subconscious mind is obedient and fast.
When the conscious mind says to sleep, the subconscious activates sleep
mode immediately. But this only works if you're feeling at least
partially sleepy. If the subconscious doesn't agree with the need for
sleep, it can still reject the request.
The process I'll share next will teach your brain
that putzing around isn't an option anymore and that when you decide to
go to sleep, it needs to transition immediately and without delay.
The Process
The process involves using short, timed naps to train your brain to fall asleep more quickly. Here's how it works:
If and when you feel drowsy at some point during the
day, give yourself permission to take a 20-minute nap. But only allow
yourself exactly 20 minutes total. Use a timer to set an alarm. I often
do this by using Siri on my iPhone by saying, "Set a timer for 20
minutes" or "Wake me up in 20 minutes." The first one sets a countdown
timer, while the later phrase sets an alarm to go off at a specific
time. Sometimes I prefer to use a kitchen timer with a 20-minute
countdown.
Begin the timer as soon as you lie down for your nap.
Whether you sleep or not, and regardless of how long it takes you to
fall asleep, you have 20 minutes total for this activity… not a minute
more.
Simply relax and allow yourself to fall asleep as you
normally would. You don't have to do anything special here, so don't
try to force it. If you fall asleep, great. If you just lie there awake
for 20 minutes, also great. And if you sleep for some fraction of the
time, that's perfectly okay too.
At the end of the 20 minutes, you must get up
immediately. No lingering. This part is crucial. If you're tempted to
continue napping after the alarm goes off, then put the alarm across the
room so you have to get up to turn it off. Or have someone else
forcibly yank you off the couch or bed when they hear the alarm. But no
matter what, get up immediately. The nap is over. If you're still tired,
you can take another nap later — wait at least an hour — but don't let
yourself go back to sleep right away.
I think it's best to do your nap practice during the
day if you can, but you can also do it in the evening, as long as it's
at least an hour before your normal bedtime. Perhaps the best time for
an evening nap is right after dinner, when many people feel a little
sleepy.
You don't have to take the naps every day, but do
them at least a few times a week if you can. I think the ideal practice
would be one nap per day.
The next part of this process is to always wake up
with an alarm in the morning. Set your alarm for a fixed time every day,
seven days a week. When your alarm goes off each morning, get up
immediately regardless of how much sleep you actually got. Again, no
lingering.
Now when you go to bed at night, seek to go to bed at
a time that will essentially require you to be sleeping the whole time
you're in bed in order to feel well rested in the morning. So if you
feel you need a good 7 hours of sleep each night to feel rested, and you
plan to get up at 5am every morning, then get yourself into bed and
ready to sleep at about 10pm. If you take 30 minutes to fall asleep,
then you're getting less sleep than you need, and this is a disincentive
to continuing that wasteful habit.
The message you're sending to your brain is that the
time you have to sleep is limited. You are going to get out of bed after
a certain number of hours no matter what. You're going to get up from
your nap after a specific amount of time no matter what. So if your
brain wants to sleep, it had better learn to go to sleep quickly and use
the maximum time allotted for sleep. If it wastes time falling asleep,
then it misses out on that extra sleep, and it will not have the
opportunity to make it up by sleeping in later. Sleep time squandered is
sleep time lost.
When you go to bed whenever and allow yourself to get
up whenever, you reward your brain for continued laziness and
inefficiency. It's fine if you take a half hour to fall asleep since
your brain knows it can just sleep in later. If you awaken with an alarm
but go to bed earlier than necessary to compensate for the time it
takes you to fall asleep, your still tell your brain that it's fine to
waste time transitioning to sleep because there's still enough extra
time to get the rest it needs.
Coffee and chocolate are also crutches because if you
don't get enough sleep, your brain can come to rely on a stimulant to
keep it going when necessary. If you remove these outs, then your brain
will soon connect the dots. It will learn that taking too long to fall
asleep equals not getting enough sleep, which means going through the
day tired and sleepy. By closing the door on potential outs like
stimulants and extra snooze time, you leave only one remaining option
for a solution. Sooner or later your brain will determine that going to
sleep faster is indeed the solution, and it will adapt by transitioning
into sleep much more quickly, so as to secure the full amount of rest it
desires.
Instead of continuing to give your brain the message
that oversleeping is okay or that stimulants are available, begin to
condition it to understand that sleep time is a limited resource. Your
brain is naturally good at optimizing scarce physiological resources; it
evolved to do so over a long period of time. So if sleep time appears
to be a limited resource, your brain can learn to optimize its use of
this resource just as it has learned to optimize the use of oxygen and
sugar.
If you get sleepy during the day as a result of
limiting your sleep time at night, that's perfectly okay. Take naps as
needed. It's okay to take multiple naps during the day if you need to,
but keep them limited to 20 minutes max, and don't have two naps within
an hour of each other. Whenever you get up, stay up for at least an
hour.
Once you get used to 20-minute naps — or if you don't
have that much time available for napping — try napping for shorter
intervals. Give yourself 15, 10, or even 5 minutes for each nap. I
sometimes take 3-4 minute naps (with a timer), which are surprisingly
refreshing, but only if I fall asleep quickly.
Teach your brain that a 20-minute nap means 20
minutes of total time lying down. If your brain wants to ruminate during
part of that time, it always means less sleep.
Also teach your brain that X number of hours in bed
at night is all it gets, and so if it wants to get enough sleep, it had
better spend virtually all of that time sleeping. If it spends time on
non-sleep activity, it always robs itself of some sleep.
Once you've adapted and you're able to fall asleep
quickly when you desire to do so, you can slack off on the training
process, ditch the alarm, and wake up whenever you want. Most likely the
training will stick. You can even add the caffeine back if you so
desire. But for a period of at least a couple months to start, I
recommend being strict about it. Take naps regularly, and use an alarm
to get up at a consistent time every single day.
I still prefer to get up with an alarm most days. I
don't need it to fall asleep quickly, but I tend to linger in bed more
than necessary without the alarm.
If this is too strict for you, I doubt you'll succeed
with this approach. If you give your brain an easy out, it will take
that out, and it won't learn the adaptation you're trying to teach it
here.
Everyone is different, so how long it takes you to
adapt depends on your particular brain. I'm sure some people will adapt
fairly quickly, within a few weeks, while others may take significantly
longer. There are many factors that can influence the results, with
perhaps the biggest one being your diet. In general, a lighter,
healthier, and more natural diet will make it significantly easier to
adapt to any sort of sleep changes. Regular exercise also makes it
easier to adapt to sleep changes; cardio exercise in particular helps to
rebalance hormones and neurotransmitters, many of which are involved in
regulating sleep cycles. If you eat a heavily processed diet (i.e.
shopping mostly outside the produce section) and you don't exercise
much, just be aware that I rarely see such people succeed with
worthwhile sleep changes of any kind.
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Friday, July 26, 2013
How to Fall Asleep In Less Than 30 Seconds
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