Once I received this question from a follower and thought it would be a really good chance to talk about TIME.
Sleep is like a shy animal. Whenever we start measuring, counting, analyzing or simply observing it, it tends to leave.
At the same time, sleep is a natural mechanism of all leaving creatures. It happens unconsciously and can’t be controlled – we simply cannot give ourself an order to fall asleep and we cannot predict when exactly we will fall asleep.
With that said, all our efforts to control or measure sleep will end up with us being awake, because there is just too much attention.
We can even test this. If you know someone in your family who you think falls asleep in no time, you can ask them to show you how they fall asleep in 5-10 minutes. Let them know that you will come to check on them after that time passes and see what happens. I am more than sure, that person will “fail” the test, because they tried to go against the nature of sleep.
So if you want to fall asleep in 5 minutes intentionally – it probably won’t happen, as you go against sleep physiology. But! It doesn’t mean that falling asleep in such a short time is impossible. Of course it can happen, but only if we are oblivious of the need to fall asleep, when we aren’t trying and our body has enough of sleep drive.
So if you have sleep troubles, forgetting about time is one of the biggest steps towards better sleep.
👉Don’t setup a timeframe within which you need to fall asleep
👉Don’t check how much time is left until your bedtime
👉If you happen to wake up at night, don’t check what time it is
👉Don’t do the sleep math on how many hours you slept or left until waking up.
The less you know about time, the less you measure your sleep, the less you pay attention to sleep, the more likely sleep will come.