

Ask HN: How do you fall asleep? - dustyreagan

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.<p>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.<p>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?
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username3
Start dreaming in your head. Don't think of real stuff or ideas you're working
on. Dream or imagine something. Stretch. Get comfortable.

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mindcrime
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.

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jacquesm
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).

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stravid
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.

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runevault
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.

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donohoe
Kids. They remove most barriers to sleep.

